In an exclusive interview with AFP in Damascus — his first since the alleged April 4 attack prompted a US airstrike on Syrian forces — Bashar al-Assad said his army had given up all its chemical weapons and that Syrian military power was not affected by the US strike.
After months of diplomacy, preparation and training, the first batch of Syria's chemical weapons are out of the country and in international waters. It's just the start.
The UN-linked group responsible for destroying Syria's chemical weapons arsenal wants to do the destruction away from Syria's civil war. But no country has offered to host the operation, which involves toxic chemicals. The other alternative is to do it at sea, but that is hardly ideal.
US relations with Iran have never completely recovered from the seizure of American hostages at the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.