The White House said for the first time that the Syrian regime had likely used chemical weapons in its battle to contain a two-year-old rebellion, a step that could become the starting point for much broader US involvement.
In a letter sent to Congress, the White House said yesterday that evidence taken from sites in Syria and from potential victims indicated that the regime of Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons against the opposition, including sarin, a nerve agent.
The disclosure contained caveats, including that the assessment about the use of chemical weapons was made “with varying degrees of confidence” and that they had been deployed on a “small scale”.