Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has used chemical weapons against opposition forces.

“We will discuss the use of chemical weapons during our meeting with President Obama; it’s clear that the Assad regime is using it,” Erdogan told Japanese media, according to the Israeli website Ynet. “The opposition is in control of the region, but Assad is the one using chemical arms, fighter planes and helicopters. These are the final moments of the regime, but we don’t know when it will fall. It’ll happen suddenly.”

President Obama has said that chemical weapons use in Syria would change his calculations in terms of the level of American involvement in the civil war there. But while the U.S. has said that chemical weapons were likely used, Obama is taking a cautious approach regarding the next steps. “[I]f we end up rushing to judgment without hard, effective evidence, then we can find ourselves in the position where we can’t mobilize the international community to support what we do,” he said in a press conference this week.

Obama administration officials have reportedly said that the president is not ruling out any option — including a no-fly zone — but it appears that the White House is moving toward sending arms to moderate rebels because, as the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, “many officials see it as one of the few steps available to shore up the opposition without drawing the U.S. military into the two-year-old civil war.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Wednesday wouldn’t deny that Obama is looking closer at sending arms to the rebels. “We are engaging with the opposition. We are getting to know the opposition better,” he said.

But with Erdogan’s assessment, Turkey now joins the United Kingdom, France, Qatar and Israel as key American allies confirming that Assad’s forces used chemical weapons. Former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said this week that the international community must respond. “Doing nothing, it’s not an option,” he said, adding that world powers should try “to help the opposition in a more concrete way, like providing them, instead of non-lethal assistance…weapons, [and] maybe to impose a no-fly zone, at least on part of Syria.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Syrian authorities to allow a team of inspectors in the country to investigate the allegations of chemical weapons use, saying that “a credible and comprehensive inquiry” requires access to all sites where allegations have been made.

A Republican congressman said last week that any potential U.S. military intervention in the Syrian civil war would be justified, in part, to protect Syria’s Christian population and preserve the region’s Christian roots.

According to Defense News, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told reporters after a classified briefing on Syria that he favors military intervention in Syria “to preserve the region that was home to Christianity’s genesis”: “

“There’s a huge US interest in the region. Our commitment to the Levante is long-standing, partially because of our relationship with Israel and with Lebanon,” Issa told a handful of reporters after leaving a classified briefing on the Syria intel assessment and possible US options.

“Partially, if you will, because of this being an area of the Holy Land,” Issa added. “The oldest churches. So much of Christianity is there.”

Issa’s correct that Syria’s history is rooted in Christianity. “Syria’s Christian community is one of the oldest in the world, going back two millennia,” the BBC notes, adding that “Christians are believed to have constituted about 30% of the Syrian population as recently as the 1920s. Today, they make up about 10% of Syria’s 22 million people.”

And Syria’s Christian communities have been caught in the sectarian cross-fire throughout the ongoing civil war there. “Some minority communities, including Christians, Kurds and Turkmen, have also been caught up in the conflict,” said U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria chair
Paulo Pinheiro in December upon releasing a report finding that Syria’s civil war is increasingly sectarian in nature.

But while protecting Christians, or any religion, from violent persecution is usually generally accepted as a positive global good, introducing another sectarian justification for violence — particularly some kind of crusade by the United States — into an already chaotic civil war fueled by deep religions convictions is probably not the best way forward in Syria.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday afternoon that President Obama is preparing plans to send lethal weapons to rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

While the U.S. believes that chemical weapons have been used in Syria’s civil war, Obama said during a press conference on Tuesday that “we don’t know how they were used, when they were used, who used them.” Noting that he has said chemical weapons use would be a “game changer” in terms of escalating American involvement in Syria, Obama added, “When I am making decisions about America’s national security and the potential for taking additional action in response to chemical weapon use, I’ve got to make sure I’ve got the facts.”

The Post reports that Obama spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday and is dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry to Moscow in a bid to convince Putin to abandon his support for Assad.

“We’re clearly on an upward trajectory,” a senior administration official told the Post. “We’ve moved over to assistance that has a direct military purpose.” Another official said that the President has “not closed the door to other military actions” including establishing a no-fly zone over rebel held areas.

Over the last several days, the Syrian crisis has exploded back into the news. As the U.S. debates how to respond to the now two-year long struggle, here’s the what you need to know:

How this all began

The current crisis in Syria began in 2011, with civilian protests launched during a wave of pro-democracy sentiment known as the Arab Spring. Those protests were met with harsh repression from the Syrian government under the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad. Assad’s regime continued to crackdown on protesters, eventually resorting to massive human rights abuses including torture, disappearances, extrajudicial executions and detention of medical patients. In response, civilians began to take up arms against the Syrian government, transforming a peaceful movement to increase democratic freedoms into an all-out civil war. Since the beginning of the conflict, more than 70,000 Syrians have died.

Who’s doing the fighting

Over the past two years, the make-up of the Syrian opposition has shifted considerably. In the beginning, the opposition was composed mostly of civil society leaders and Syrian citizens with a small armed group taking shape across the border in Turkey. Since then, the rebels have spawned an entire network of loosely affiliated groups fighting against the Assad regime — and each other at times. Instead of hiding across the border, rebels now openly control a large swath of territory in the north and west of the country as the Syrian government continues to push back.

While many of the rebel groups are secular, recent months have shown an influx of foreign fighters into the country, seeking to impose a harsh version of Islam upon Syria once the Assad regime falls. The U.S. has labeled one such group — Jabhat al-Nusra — a terrorist group for its close ties to Al Qaeda. These murky connections between the rebels and jihadis have proved difficult for Western governments seeking to effect the situation on the ground.

The effect on the Syrian people and the region

As time wore on in the conflict, the Syrian government unleashed more and greater violence was against civilians, including the use of armored vehicles, fixed-wing aircraft and mortars against whole neighborhoods. Making matters worse, rebels are now accused of taking part in atrocities as well.

This has all led to a massive humanitarian crisis in Syria and the surrounding region. As of March, more than one million Syrians have fled into the neighboring countries of Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, placing a massive strain on those states’ governments. According to the United Nations, over 4.25 million Syrians are now internally displaced within the country.
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Yesterday’s announcement by the Obama administration that U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed “with varying degrees of confidence” that the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad has used sarin nerve agent “on a small scale” should significantly change the calculations behind America’s Syria policy. Syria, while not party to the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention that bans the development, production, possession and transfer of chemical weapons, is party to the 1925 Geneva Protocol banning their use in warfare. The Assad regime’s use of sarin, if verified, would place it in direct violation of international law as well as international norms against chemical weapons use.

As the White House emphasized yesterday, it’s important that the United States and its allies obtain all the facts in this case. The Bush administration’s false claims about Saddam Hussein’s WMD still burden American foreign policy, requiring U.S. claims to meet a higher evidentiary threshold. Nonetheless, as I and my CAP colleagues argue, there are several major steps the Obama administration can take to hold the Assad regime accountable for its likely use of chemical weapons.

First, the United States can call an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. This meeting should serve two purposes: force Russia to stop diplomatically shielding the Assad regime’s unacceptable behavior and pressure the Assad regime to allow a previously formed U.N. inspection team, idling in Cyprus for more than month now, into Syria to provide independent verification of chemical weapons use claims made by the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Israel.

Second, the U.S. should involve NATO and regional partners in planning any response to further attempts by the Assad regime to cross President Obama’s redline on chemical weapons use. Action will require precision planning, definitive American leadership and direction, and the participation of a broad alliance prepared to preclude any further Assad regime chemical-weapons use by destroying appropriate military targets, including delivery systems, logistics, and applicable command and control. The focus should remain on punishing or preventing chemical weapons use while avoiding involvement in Syria’s civil war to the extent possible. Any planning already in motion should be accelerated.

Finally, the United States should push for NATO to begin planning a major refugee relief operation in Jordan. That country has already come under heavy social and financial strains due to hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, and the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees is running out of money to help. NATO should be ready to assist in relieving these strains with a major multinational military relief effort that would involve the alliance’s airlift, ground transportation, medical assistance, and security capabilities.

The revelations of the Assad regime’s likely chemical weapons use once again illustrate that there are no good policy options in Syria. A military stalemate between the regime and rebels makes a political settlement unlikely, while a worsening humanitarian crisis strains key U.S. allies in the region. However, the United States can take important steps forward by making an all-out diplomatic effort in the U.N. Security Council to further investigate the Assad regime’s likely chemical weapons use and solidifying and accelerating NATO planning on relevant issues.

Peter Juul is a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress.

Two members of the Obama adminsitration have for the first time revealed that the United States’ intelligence community has evidence that chemical weapons have been used during the ongoing struggle between the Syrian government and rebel forces.

According to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, the United States now believes “with some degree of varying confidence” that sarin gas specifically was the agent utilized in Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry went further, telling to the Associated Press that the Syrian government launched two chemical attacks within the country.

The White House also sent a letter echoing Hagel’s assessment to Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in response to a letter the two had previously sent. According to the letter, the U.S. is unable to determine precisely who used the deadly gas at this time, but believes the Syrian government is the culprit as the regime still maintains control over its weapon stockpiles.

Hagel’s statement — given to reporters while traveling in the Middle East — comes after several days of such claims being made among U.S. allies, including France, the United Kingdom, Israel and Qatar. Until today’s revelation, the United States maintained that there wasn’t enough evidence to make that determination with certainty. According to the letter to Congress, the U.S. assessment is based on “physiological evidence,” setting it apart from the photographic evidence the British and French used to come to their conclusion. The White House was also sure to point out that the chain of custody of that evidence is unclear, making the exact details of how the sarin exposure occurred and under what conditions unclear.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s stockpile of chemical weapons has been a major concern to Western and Gulf states monitoring the conflict in Syria, who have feared both their use against civilians and rebels alike. Accusations in March flew from each side of the Syrian conflict, claiming that the other had used chemical weapons. These claims prompted the launch of a United Nations investigation, which the Syrian government has so far stymied.

One of the reasons the Obama administration has placed such importance on the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian war is their special status in international law. After witnessing the widespread use of choking gases like chlorine and blistering agents like mustard gas in World War I, the international community codified rules prohibiting the use of chemical weapons. The Protocol was flouted during World War II (particularly by Japanese and Italian forces), but it has held more force in recent years. The only confirmed uses of the sorts of nerve gases allegedly used in Syria — easily dispersed, rapidly acting poisons that have become the most prevalent form of chemical weapon — were by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War and against Kurdish civilians in the north.

What remains to be seen is precisely what action the United States will take in response to this revelation. The use of chemical weapons has long been a declared “red-line,” an action that would prompt the United States to intervene more directly in Syria. “I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad and those under his command — the world is watching,” Obama said in December. “The use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable. And if you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there will be consequences and you will be held accountable.”