Mattis says Syria still has chemical weapons

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told a press conference in Israel on Friday, April 21 that he could say “authoritatively” that Syria had retained some chemical weapons.

“It’s a violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions and it’s going to have to be taken up diplomatically,” Mattis said at a joint conference with Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman.

Mattis continued to say Syria would be ill-advised to try to use any again. We made that very clear with our strikes.”

This would seem to indicate that the United States would repeat the strikes it launched at a Syrian air base in retaliation for Bashar al-Assad’s last chemical weapons attack on civilians.