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Trump acknowledges plan to have Syria’s Assad assassinated in 2017

Tuesday, 15 September 2020 5:42 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 15 September 2020 5:52 PM ]

US President Donald Trump speaks to local press after arriving at Sacramento McClellan Airport in McClellan, California, on September 14, 2020. (Photo by AFP)

US President Donald Trump has admitted that he intended to have Syrian President Bashar al-Assad assassinated after an alleged chemical attack in 2017 that Washington blamed on Damascus but reversed his decision due to purported opposition by the then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

“I had a shot to take him (Assad) out if I wanted. And Mattis was against it. Mattis was against most of that stuff,” Trump said during a phone interview with Fox News on Tuesday.

“Mattis didn’t want to do it. Mattis was a highly overrated general, and I let him go,” he added. “I don’t regret that. I could have lived either way with that, you know, I considered him (Assad) certainly not a good person.”

The admission confirmed an account from a book that was published by The Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward in 2018. Trump at the time denied the assassination plan and claimed, “That was never even contemplated.”

Woodward reported in his book “Fear: Trump in the White House” that the US president had said American forces had to “go in” and “kill” Assad after the alleged gas attack in April 2017.

Trump wanted to kill Assad after chemical attack falsely blamed on Syria: Woodward

A new book has revealed that the US president allegedly demanded the assassination of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after a 2017 chemical attack that Washington blamed on Damascus.

Woodward — famous for uncovering the 1970s Watergate scandal that brought down former President Richard Nixon — wrote that Mattis told Trump he would “get right on it” in an apparent attempt to pacify the president but returned with plans for a “more measured” response.

On April 4, 2017, an alleged sarin gas attack was reported in the town of Khan Shaykhun in Syria’s Idlib Province, purportedly killing more than 80 people. Western countries quickly blamed Damascus, with the US launching a missile attack against Shayrat Airbase in Syria’s Homs Province on April 7, 2017.

Washington claimed that the air field had been the origin of the chemical attack. Damascus, however, said the Khan Shaykhun incident was a fabrication to justify foreign intervention.

West leading 'campaign of lies' on chemicals in Syria: Damascus

Damascus blasts the US and its European allies for blaming the Syrian government for for an alleged chemical attack in the town of Khan Shaykhun last year.

The Syrian government surrendered its stockpiles of chemical weapons in 2014 to a joint mission led by the United Nations (UN) and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which oversaw the destruction of the weaponry.

However, Western governments and their allies did not stop accusing Damascus of conducting chemical attacks.

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