IN GREECE AND IRAN, OUTCOMES AND ATTEMPTS AT RECONCILIATION.

Greek MP's during the tense debate.

Greece Gives A Bitter Consent

THE GUARDIAN

In Greece, lawmakers approved a package of harsh austerity measures and economic policy changes that were required by its creditors as the terms of a $94 billion bailout package.Tsipras faced a revolt over the reforms from his radical-left ruling Syriza party, which came to power in January on anti-austerity promises. But the Athens parliament eventually carried the bill on Wednesday night by 229 lawmakers in favour, 64 against and six abstentions.

In a vote that saw tensions soar in and outside parliament, Syriza suffered huge losses as 40 MPs revolted against the measures, but pro-European opposition parties delivered their support. The outcome will significantly weaken Tsipras as the scale of the rebellion sinks in. Stripped of its working majority, the Syriza-dominated two-party coalition will struggle to enforce the pension cuts and VAT increases outlined in the deal or implement any other legislation outside it.

Still, there was relief that the Greek parliament had overwhelmingly supported reforms to ensure that talks on a third bailout for the debt-stricken country can begin.



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


U.S. Offers to Help Israel Bolster Defenses,

NY TIMES

When President Obama called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday to discuss the nuclear deal with Iran, the American president offered the Israeli leader, who had just deemed the agreement a “historic mistake,” a consolation prize: a fattening of the already generous military aid package the United States gives Israel.

The nuclear agreement, which would lift sanctions on Iran in exchange for restrictions designed to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon, would ultimately provide a financial windfall to Israel’s sworn enemy in the region, and Mr. Obama said he was prepared to hold “intensive discussions” with Mr. Netanyahu on what more could be done to bolster Israel’s defenses, administration officials said.

But, as in previous talks with Mr. Obama, Mr. Netanyahu refused to engage in such talk “at this juncture,” the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to detail the private discussions. And on Tuesday, as administration officials fanned out to make the case for the Iran agreement, one aide suggested in a phone call to Jewish and pro-Israel groups that Mr. Netanyahu had rebuffed their overtures because he believes accepting them now would be tantamount to blessing the nuclear deal, say people involved in the call who did not want to be quoted by name in describing it.

The president himself has hinted that he believes the Israeli prime minister is loath to talk about any additional security assistance he may want from the United States until after Congress has had its say on the Iran deal. Lawmakers have 60 days to review the deal, which Mr. Netanyahu has urged them to reject.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




No Time Like The Right Time...

NY TIMES

 One by one, the roadblocks to a nuclear accord between Iran and the United States had been painstakingly cleared.

For the Iranians, this was a negotiation first and foremost to get rid of what Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister and his country’s chief negotiator, often called the “unjust sanctions” while trying to keep their nuclear options open. And while they treasured their nuclear program, they treasured the symbolism of not backing down to American demands even more. But Mr. Zarif was walking his own high-wire act at home. While he had an important ally in Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, hard-liners did not want to reach any deal at all; many were making a fortune from the sanctions because they controlled Iran’s black markets.

And conservatives around the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were looking for any signs that their Americanized chief negotiator, who studied at the University of Denver, was ready to give away too much nuclear infrastructure without getting Iran the sanctions lifted in return, as the ayatollah had decreed.

There was no single event, no heart-to-heart conversation between adversaries or game-changing insight that made the Iran deal happen. Instead, over a period of years, each side came to gradually understand what mattered most to the other.

For the Americans, that meant designing offers that kept the shell of Iran’s nuclear program in place while seeking to gut its interior. For the Iranians, it meant ridding themselves of sanctions in ways they could describe to their own people as forcing the United States to deal with Iran as an equal, respected sovereign power. And it happened because a brief constellation of personalities and events came into alignment:



The top energy officials of the United States and Iran, respectively, were Ernest J. Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi. Mr. Moniz and Mr. Salehi, a former foreign minister and now head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, joined the talks to work out the nuclear details — in a less political, more scientific environment.

The officials working under Mr. Salehi “were mostly hard-liners, and they would give on nothing,” one American official said. But when Mr. Salehi, who got his nuclear training at M.I.T. before the Iranian revolution, showed up and developed a rapport with Mr. Moniz, the secretary of energy and a former chairman of the M.I.T. physics department, the Iranian bureaucrats were often sidelined, or overruled.

During a break on one particularly discouraging March day in Lausanne, Switzerland, where negotiations were held before adjourning to Vienna, Mr. Zarif struck a different tone as he invoked the names of the key figures on two sides, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the top energy officials of the United States and Iran, Ernest J. Moniz and Ali Akbar Salehi.

“We are not going to have another time in history when there is an Obama and a Biden and a Kerry and a Moniz again,” Mr. Zarif said, according to notes of the conversation. “And there may be no Rouhani, Zarif and Salehi.”

Hassan Rouhani was allowed to run for president in 2013 largely on a platform of ridding Iran of punishing sanctions. Credit Ivan Sekretarev/Associated Press

----

When the photo ops were over, the seven foreign ministers who had negotiated it met for the last time. Each spoke briefly about the importance of the moment. Mr. Kerry spoke last, but then added a personal coda. Choking up, he recalled going off to Vietnam as a young naval officer and said he never wanted to go through that again. He emerged committed, he said, to using diplomacy to avoid the horrors of war.

U.S. and Russia Reach Deal to Destroy Syria’s Chemical Arms

Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of Russia


N.Y. TIMES

The United States and Russia reached a sweeping agreement on Saturday that called for Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons to be removed or destroyed by the middle of 2014 and indefinitely stalled the prospect of American airstrikes.

The joint announcement, on the third day of intensive talks in Geneva, also set the stage for one of the most challenging undertakings in the history of arms control.

“This situation has no precedent,” said Amy E. Smithson, an expert on chemical weapons at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “They are cramming what would probably be five or six years’ worth of work into a period of several months, and they are undertaking this in an extremely difficult security environment due to the ongoing civil war.”

 

George Little, the Pentagon press secretary, emphasized that the possibility of unilateral American military force was still on the table. “We haven’t made any changes to our force posture to this point,” Mr. Little said. “The credible threat of military force has been key to driving diplomatic progress, and it’s important that the Assad regime lives up to its obligations under the framework agreement.”

In Syria, the state news agency, SANA, voiced cautious approval of the Russian and American deal, calling it “a starting point,” though the government issued no immediate statement about its willingness to implement the agreement.

In any case, the deal was at least a temporary reprieve for President Bashar al-Assad and his Syrian government, and it formally placed international decision-making about Syria into the purview of Russia, one of Mr. Assad’s staunchest supporters and military suppliers.

That reality was bitterly seized on by the fractured Syrian rebel forces, most of which have pleaded for American airstrikes. Gen. Salim Idris, the head of the Western-backed rebels’ nominal military command, the Supreme Military Council, denounced the initiative.

 

An immediate test of the viability of the accord will come within a week, when the Syrian government is to provide a “comprehensive listing” of its chemical arsenal. That list is to include the types and quantities of Syria’s poison gas, the chemical munitions it possesses, and the location of its storage, production and research sites.

 

If Mr. Assad fails to comply with the agreement, the issue would be referred to the United Nations Security Council, where the violations would be taken up under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which authorizes punitive action, Mr. Kerry said.

Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia made clear that his country, which wields a veto in the Security Council, had not withdrawn its objections to the use of force.

 

 

 

ELIOT COHEN WASHINGTON POST

 

Satan himself could not devise a revenge for those who kill infants.

 

 

It was clear before the president’s speech Tuesday that the resolutions to authorize the use of force were going to be defeated in Congress, perhaps spectacularly so. It was equally clear that President Obama was desperate to climb down from the tree up which he had chased himself by loosely using terms such as “red line.” A deal for Syria to hand over its chemical weapons gives Russia influence in the region and a claim on Obama’s gratitude. And it gives Syria an implicit go-ahead to continue using bombs, knives, rockets, mortar shells, power tools, electric irons and anything else to murder or torture civilians, including children. To make that point, on the day of the president’s speech, the Syrian air force bombed Damascus.
-----------
Obama has described the proposed airstrikes as “a limited, proportional” response. But it’s worth recalling the words of the great Hebrew poet Haim Nahman Bialik. Writing about another massacre that lifted eyebrows in the West — a government-tolerated pogrom against Jews in 1903 in the Russian city of Kishinev — he said Satan himself could not devise a revenge appropriate for those who deliberately slaughter infants.
Conceivably, cruise missiles could be used to target the children of Assad, his senior military commanders and the crews that load rockets and artillery shells with sarin. That would be a form of retribution, albeit one more suited to the most vicious of street gangs than the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.
The slaying of 400 children with sarin, and thousands of others by less exotic but no less brutal means, poses a moral as well as a political problem. It might call for justice; it might call for exemplary punishment (which handing over a fraction of one’s arsenal is not). Or it might be a tragedy best lamented and then ignored. In any event, cruise missiles are no magical solution to a horror.
Proportionality, in other words, has nothing to do with it.

 

A WAY OUT OF THE MIRE IN SYRIA? PUTIN jUMPS ON KERRY SUGGESTION

Secretary of State John Kerry, in an off-the-cuff remark, said Assad could prevent military action if he gives up his chemical weapons.

N.Y. TIMES

President Obama on Monday tentatively embraced a Russian diplomatic proposal to avert a United States military strike on Syria by having international monitors take control of the Syrian government’s chemical weapons. The move added new uncertainty to Mr. Obama’s push to win support among allies, the American public and members of Congress for an attack.

DAILY MAIL

Last night the US government said it would take a ‘hard look’ at the Russian proposal but had ‘serious scepticism’ about putting Syria’s chemical weapons under international protection.
Mr Kerry’s intervention, made as he concluded a tour of Western nations, risked complicating a crunch vote in the US Senate over whether to back Barack Obama’s plans to use force against Syria.

N.Y. TIMES (Cont'd)

Mr. Obama’s statements about the haphazardly constructed plan appeared to offer him an exit strategy for a military strike he had been reluctant to order, and it came as support on Capitol Hill for a resolution authorizing force was slipping. Even some lawmakers who had announced support for it reversed course.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said Monday evening that he would not force an initial vote on the resolution on Wednesday, slowing Senate consideration until at least next week. If President Obama fears losing the vote, some suspect he may yet use Mr Kerry’s intervention as a device to delay. Democrats said they had enough votes to overcome a filibuster but possibly not enough to pass it.

 

[ Reuters:   President Obama is going to have a steep climb to convince Americans it's worth attacking Syria. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted at the beginning of September, shows that 63 percent oppose intervening in the civil war. That's up from 53 percent who thought it was a bad idea at the end of August.]

DAILY MAIL (Cont'd)

Within hours, Russia seized on the idea. The country’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, following talks in Moscow with his Syrian counterpart Walid al-Moallem, said: ‘If the establishment of international control over chemical weapons in that country would allow avoiding strikes, we will immediately start working with Damascus.
‘We are calling on the Syrian leadership to not only agree on placing chemical weapons storage sites under international control, but also on its subsequent destruction and fully joining the treaty on prohibition of chemical weapons.’

N.Y. TIMES (Cont'd)

But to some, the offhand nature of Mr. Kerry’s comment and Moscow’s hurried response raised suspicions that the Russians and Syrians were making plans to control the chemical stockpile or were, at the least, using the proposal as a delaying tactic that could undermine Mr. Obama’s efforts for a military strike.       

Either way, the proposal did not appear to be one that Mr. Kerry or the Obama administration had intended.

 

The effort to police such a proposal, even if Syria agreed, would be a laborious and prolonged effort, especially since Mr. Assad’s government has shrouded its arsenal in secrecy for decades. As United Nations inspectors discovered in Iraq after the Persian Gulf war in 1991, even an invasive inspection program can take years to account for chemical stockpiles and never be certain of complete compliance, something that President George W. Bush used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

 

Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, who was in Moscow, welcomed Russia’s proposal, though he stopped short of pledging that Mr. Assad would comply. His remarks, however, tacitly acknowledged that Syria possessed a chemical arsenal, something it had never publicly done.

...Syria has maintained [the weapons] in large part as a deterrent to Israel, which is widely assumed to have a nuclear arsenal that it has never officially acknowledged.

 

 

Mr. Obama ...promised that his administration would engage with the Russians to see if the world could “arrive at something that is enforceable and serious.” But he said that “if we don’t maintain and move forward with a credible threat of military pressure, I do not think we will actually get the kind of agreement I would like to see.” ....He said that if Syrian officials accepted the Russian proposal, “then this could potentially be a significant breakthrough.”

 

[The Guardian:  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that a strike in Syria may be postponed until after a discussion by the United Nations Security Council next week. His comments come on the heels of key ally France saying that the nation will not act until after a report from the weapons inspectors—who were in Syria during the attack.]

 

 

AND THE OTHE OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS OF THE DAY: ZIMMERMAN  ARRESTED AND THEN RELEASED:

DAILY MAIL :

 
 Shellie Zimmerman (center) called police at 2pm on Monday, claiming George Zimmerman (left with a police officer) was at the Lake Mary, Florida home (right) belonging to her parents. The altercation was sparked by claims he had been having an affair with a former fiancee, friends told MailOnline. On a 911 call, Shellie is heard sobbing, claiming that her estranged husband punched her father in the nose and threatened to shoot them as he sat in his car. But she has not pressed charges and Zimmerman has been released. According to an Associated Press report, ...officers on Monday "didn't find anything that indicated he [Zimmerman] had a gun on his person." It comes just days after Shellie filed for divorce, claiming that their marriage was 'irretrievably broken' following the Trayvon Martin murder trial.

N.Y. DAILY NEWS

 In an interview with ABC News shown Friday, Shellie Zimmerman called her husband of six years “selfish” and said he believes he’s “invincible” after being found not guilty in the racially charged Trayvon Martin case. A friend of the feuding couple told the  N.Y. Daily News that tempers flew when Shellie Zimmerman accused George of having an affair.That’s probably what’s going on,” the friend, John Donnelly, who was called as a character witness for Zimmerman during his trial, told The News. “Shellie hasn’t even hardly seen him. Three or four days after the trial ended, he was gone.” Zimmerman [Donnelly said] has left those closest to him feeling 'angry and used' and how his affair with a former fiancee was the final straw for Shellie.

Obama’s Giant Syria Gamble.

CHRIS CILLIZZA WASHINGTON POST

President Obama’s stunning reversal on Syria — deciding to send a use of force resolution to Congress to approve or disapprove just hours after he seemed set on bypassing the legislative branch — amounts to a massive gamble by the commander in chief.
As we have noted in this space, there is little certainty of the outcome of the vote, which will come, at the earliest, the week of Sept. 9 when both houses of Congress return to Washington after the August recess. And, if Congress doesn’t pass the resolution, Obama will be in an even smaller box — policy-wise — than he found himself at the end of last week following the British Parliament’s rejection of a similar use of force resolution.

Lets’s start by walking through just how big a challenge Obama has built for himself.

First, consider that roughly 40 percent of House Democrats voted against the use of force resolution against Iraq in 2002. (Unlike 2002, Democrats have one of their own in the White House, but the 2010 election has made the caucus more liberal today — and more opposed to military action — than it was in 2002.)

Second, remember that Obama is in the middle of his second term. He is playing for his legacy; all — or at least the vast majority — of the Democratic members he will ask to vote in favor of striking Syria are playing for the 2014 election. Those are two very different calculations — especially when you consider that many of the Democrats Obama will need are running in districts where the only real threat is from their ideological left. Voting for a controversial military action is perfect fodder for a liberal challenger looking for an issue to take down a Democratic incumbent.

Third, Obama’s relationship with Congress — including those within his party — has never been all that great. He spent little time there during his own career and Democratic House strategists have long believed that Obama is semi-openly disdainful of the people’s House. And, having a long-time Senate aide — Denis McDonough — as his chief of staff won’t help Obama much in the House either. (The perfect chief of staff for this moment in the House is currently serving as the mayor of Chicago.)



Fourth, the shadow of Iraq looms. You can tell how much by listening to Secretary of State John Kerry make the case for action in Syria on Friday. “Our intelligence community has carefully reviewed and re-reviewed information regarding this attack,” Kerry said. “And I will tell you it has done so more than mindful of the Iraq experience. We will not repeat that moment.” The question is whether Kerry’s testimony in front of House and Senate committees this week can convince lawmakers of that fact. And, because of how Iraq (and the lack of WMDs) played out, the hurdle is that much higher.

Fifth, the “why now/what now” question remains a tough one to answer for many members. Yes, use of chemical weapons is a clear line that has been crossed. But, more than 120,000 Syrians have died since Obama first called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside, and most foreign policy experts believe any strikes launched by the United States will be extremely narrow in both their scope and length.

Despite all of those factors arguing against passage, Obama pushed forward for a vote, believing – according to behind-the-scenes reporting done by The Post’s Scott Wilson — that if he end-ran Congress on this issue he might lose any chance to work with them on things like the looming government shutdown and the debt ceiling.

That makes sense if the resolution passes. But, if it fails and Obama goes forward with a military action anyway — as Administration officials have made quite clear they believe he can and might do — relations with Republicans in Congress (and, in truth, many Democrats) will be even more strained.



Republicans in Congress have long argued that the president is far more interested in using them as a political foil than in actually accomplishing things in a bipartisan matter. If he were to ignore a vote against the Syria resolution, the lack of trust that already exists between the GOP majority and the White House will disappear entirely — almost certain to not return in time for the government shutdown/debt ceiling fights.

Add it all up and it’s plain to see just how big a gamble Obama is taking — and just how large the political stakes are for him if he loses.




[And now, with that perspective in mind, here is the HUFFINGTON POST report on the day's activity:]

Obama Lobbies For Syria Vote Employing 'Flood-The-Zone' Strategy.

By Jeff Mason and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON, Sept 2 (Reuters) - After putting a decision to launch military strikes on Syria into the hands of Congress, President Barack Obama is doing what his critics have long accused him of failing to do: reaching out, personally and aggressively, to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

While top lieutenants including Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry lobby their former congressional colleagues, Obama is making individual calls himself to members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to press his case for action.

What Obama has not done since he made his announcement Friday is appeal to the public, which both Democrats and Republicans say will be crucial as polls show little enthusiasm for U.S. military action anywhere.

A vote against strikes to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for alleged use of chemical weapons, officials argue, could undermine Obama's standing in the Middle East as his administration seeks to deter Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians and stabilize a region already in turmoil.




Obama won conditional support Monday from two of his fiercest foreign policy critics, Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
"A rejection of this resolution would be catastrophic, not just for him but for the institution of the presidency and the credibility of the United States," Senator John McCain said after meeting with Obama at the White House on Monday.

But despite Obama's effort to assuage the two senators' concerns, neither appeared completely convinced afterward. They said they'd be more inclined to back Obama if the U.S. sought to destroy the Assad government's launching capabilities and committed to providing more support to rebels seeking to oust Assad from power.
McCain said Tuesday he is prepared to vote for the authorization that Obama seeks, but the Arizona Republican also said he wouldn't back a resolution that fails to change the battlefield equation, where Assad still has the upper hand.
In an appearance on NBC's "Today" show, McCain called it "an unfair fight" and said that if the authorization for U.S. military intervention doesn't change the balance of power, it "will not have the desired effect."

Mindful of those stakes, the White House has employed a "flood the zone" strategy, according to an administration official, using an American football term for an offensive move where players flood an area of the field to overwhelm the opposing team's defenders.

The evidence of that strategy: an onslaught of briefings, calls and meetings with lawmakers from both political parties.
On Monday National Security adviser Susan Rice, Kerry, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and the top U.S. military officer, Martin Dempsey, held an unclassified briefing call for Democratic House members, and Obama met with McCain and fellow Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
On Tuesday Obama will meet with the chairs of key national security committees in Congress and Kerry, Dempsey, and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel will testify to the Senate foreign relations committee.



"In all calls and briefings, we will be making the same fundamental case: The failure to take action against Assad unravels the deterrent impact of the international norm against chemical weapons use," a senior administration official said.

"It risks emboldening Assad and his key allies - Hezbollah and Iran - who will see that there are no consequences for such a flagrant violation of an international norm. Anyone who is concerned about Iran and its efforts in the region should support this action," he said.




CONSULTATION, AFTER THE FACT

Obama has stepped up his interactions with lawmakers this year, holding dinners and building relationships that critics say he lacked.
But any goodwill he has obtained from that effort is limited, and one Republican aide noted on Monday that Obama had only come to Congress after already articulating a decision that strikes were necessary.

"They're certainly doing more, but it's after the fact. They already made a decision on what they want to do," a senior Senate Republican aide told Reuters.
Running parallel to the White House contacts with Congress are conversations that senior Democratic and Republican senators are holding in an attempt to get a resolution passed in the full Senate.
The aide said the Democratic chairmen of relevant Senate committees were consulting with the highest-ranking Republicans on those panels to try to work out language that could pass the Senate next week.

Passage in the Republican-controlled House remains much more problematic, with lawmakers expressing skepticism about U.S. involvement in another war as well as the effectiveness of the limited strikes that Obama has proposed.



AL KAMEN WASHINGTON POST

But House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) have said they favor authorizing airstrikes, and the measure will be brought to the House floor for a vote. If the Democrats eventually rally behind Obama, he won’t need to pick up much GOP support.

And if key House Republicans prove difficult, Vice President Biden might want to note the spectacular move by his predecessor Dick Cheney before the 2002 vote. Cheney — according to our colleague Barton Gellman’s excellent book “Angler: the Cheney Vice Presidency” — gave a very reluctant Dick Armey (R-Tex.), then the House majority leader, a private briefing in which Cheney claimed that Hussein was looking at making suitcase nukes that he could share with his terrorist pals.

SUPPORT SLIPPING, OBAMA & KERRY MAKE CASE FOR AIR BOMBING SYRIA

N.Y. TIMES

Facing faltering support in foreign capitals and Congress for a strike against Syria, the Obama administration on Friday made an aggressive and coordinated push to justify a military intervention on the grounds that American credibility was at stake. President Obama and his top aides gave every indication that they were in final preparations for an attack that could pull the United States into a grinding civil war that has already claimed more than 100,000 lives.

Privately some American officials acknowledged mistakes over the past week in their buildup for a strike, not least misjudging the toxic politics of taking military action in the Middle East....it was not until Friday afternoon that the White House released what it said was evidence of chemical weapons use by the Assad forces — nearly 24 hours after Parliament had voted rather than beforehand, when it might have been used to build a coalition against Mr. Assad.

Deprived of the support of Britain, America’s most stalwart wartime ally, the Obama administration scrambled behind the scenes to build international support elsewhere for a strike that might begin as early as this weekend.

 

The White House got a boost on Friday from an ally that has had a long, tortured diplomatic relationship with the United States, and that vehemently opposed the American-led war in Iraq. In France, President François Hollande offered vigorous support for military action in Syria, saying that the Aug. 21 attack “must not go unpunished.”

Late on Friday, the Russian government condemned the threats of military action and said any strike not authorized by the United Nations Security Council would be a violation of international law.... Mr. Kerry said the United Nations could not respond to the Syrian chemical weapons attack because of Russia’s veto authority on the Security Council, which prevents the Council from galvanizing “the world to act, as it should.”

Mr. Obama insisted that he still had not made a decision about what action the United States would take in Syria, but he did say he was considering a “limited, narrow act.” He ruled out any operation involving American ground troops.

...Mr. Obama acknowledged the deep skepticism in the country — reflected in Congressional support that is tepid at best in both parties — about the necessity of a military strike.

 

The decision about whether to use force, Mr. Kerry said, was a test of American standing in a world in which other nations might be tempted to pursue or use weapons of mass destruction.

Iran was first on the list of nations, Mr. Kerry said, and might take mistaken lessons from the chemical attack in Syria if the United States failed to respond.

“This matters also beyond the limits of Syria’s borders,” Mr. Kerry said. “It is about whether Iran, which itself has been a victim of chemical weapons attacks, will now feel emboldened in the absence of action to obtain nuclear weapons.”

A four-page intelligence summary said that American spy agencies had determined that 1,429 people had been killed in the Aug. 21 attack, carried out in the dead of night in rebel-controlled areas of the Damascus suburbs. Of that number, the report said, at least 426 were children.



The report contained little specific information about the electronic intercepts, satellite images and reports from spies that led intelligence agencies to conclude not only that the attack involved chemical weapons, but that they had “high confidence” the attack had been ordered by senior officials in President Assad’s government. “High confidence,” according to the report, is the “strongest position that the U.S. Intelligence Community can take short of confirmation.”
 The report said that in the three days before the attack, American intelligence agencies began picking up indications that Syrian troops were preparing to use chemical weapons. Just before the attack was launched, according to the report, the troops put on gas masks. It is not clear from the report whether the United States or its allies made efforts to warn rebel groups in the Damascus suburbs.

American officials have said there is no information tying Mr. Assad directly to the attack, but the intelligence report said there was a “body of information” leading spy agencies to conclude “regime officials were witting of and directed the attack on Aug. 21.”

In one intercepted communication, according to the report, a “senior official intimately familiar with the offensive” confirmed that chemical weapons were used by Syria last week and was concerned that United Nations weapons inspectors might obtain evidence of the attack.