The first volley of American strikes aimed at the Syrian regime prompted praise from America’s allies, concern from Congress and condemnation from Russian and Syrian officials who slammed the attacks and warned that they would only produce more terrorism and instability.
Less than a day after President Donald Trump ordered the attack to punish Syrian President Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons on his own people, senior U.S. officials from the Pentagon to the United Nations fanned out to make the case for the attacks.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described the operation to reporters as an “overwhelming success.”
“I think all Americans and all our allies in the free world should take great comfort in what occurred with that strike last night,” he said.
On Capitol Hill many lawmakers described the attacks as long overdue and a necessary exercise of American leadership on the world stage, even as many Democrats warned that President Trump will need to seek their approval if he strikes Assad again or seeks to escalate American involvement in the war.
“Unilateral military action by the U.S. in a Middle East conflict causes grave concern given the lack of any Authorization for Use of Military Force from Congress and the absence of any long-term plan or strategy,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.
The challenge for Trump in the coming days will be whether he can find a way to capitalize on the momentum from the strikes and craft a long-term strategy without getting sucked more deeply into the grinding, six-year-old conflict that shows no signs of ending soon.
The Pentagon so far has indicated that there are no further military plans to retaliate against Assad and that it will continue its effort to defeat the Islamic State in the region.
The volley of more than 50 cruise missiles launched from ships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea at first glance looked like a dramatic American escalation of the conflict. “This was not a small strike,” said Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, just hours after the missiles had slammed into their targets at Shayrat airfield.
But by almost any measure, the cruise-missile strike was a very narrowly defined attack that seemed designed to punish without prompting a major counterreaction from Russia or Iran. The strikes approved by Trump did not target the Syrian regime leadership or seek to significantly weaken its capabilities to wage war. Instead they focused exclusively on the remote and relatively spartan air base that was used to launch the chemical attack on Tuesday.
Sharyat airfield is home to a relatively modest contingent of Su-22 ground attack jets and MiG-23 fighter aircraft. Photos taken by Russian journalists and displayed on Russian media outlets show that some of the missiles hit aircraft located in reinforced hangars, while some were left unscathed.
Tillerson said the runways, which are constructed of thick concrete, were not the main target of the strikes. Instead the Pentagon selected targets, such as planes, hangars and refueling facilities, that would render the base inoperable.
“The fact that planes may be landing in and out of there, they are not refueling and they’re not able to initiate any activity from that airport today,” he said.
Before launching the cruise-missile assault, McMaster said, U.S. officials “took great pains” to warn Russians operating at the base that missiles were coming to prevent any Russian casualties and avoid sparking a larger conflict. On Friday, senior U.S. military officials said they are investigating whether Russian officials participated in or had advance knowledge of the chemical strikes that killed scores of civilians.
At the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley had tough words criticizing both Russia and Iran for their actions and their failure to stop the Assad regime from killing Syrian civilians.
“Every time Assad has crossed the line of human decency,” Haley said, “Russia has stood beside him.”
Tillerson, who is slated to travel to Moscow next week, expressed similar disappointment over Russia’s continued support for “a regime that carries out these types of horrendous attacks on their own people” and for its condemnation of the American actions.
Moscow’s umbrage, however, did not translate into substantive action. Russian forces in Syria did not attempt to use their advanced air defense systems to shoot down the U.S. missiles or harass U.S. planes operating in Syrian airspace as part of the larger fight against the Islamic State.
Some analysts speculated that the Russians, who are growing weary of the Syrian conflict and Assad, might not entirely object to the strikes. “Russia has had a very hard time getting Assad to come to the negotiating table in any meaningful way,” said Andrew Tabler, a Syria analyst for the Washington Institute, a think tank focused on the Middle East.