Fears about Syria's chemical weapons continue to grow – at least in some sections of the media and on Twitter.

"Syrian forces have mixed chemical weapons and loaded them into bombs in preparation for possible use on President Bashar Assad's own people," Fox News reports:

"A senior [unidentified] US official told Fox News that bombs were loaded with components of sarin gas, a deadly nerve gas. Syrian forces have 60 days to use these bombs until the chemical mixture expires and has to be destroyed."

According to NBC News, the weapons are now ready and "awaiting final orders" from Assad.

"As recently as Tuesday, officials had said there was as yet no evidence that the process of mixing the 'precursor' chemicals had begun. But Wednesday, they said their worst fears had been confirmed: The nerve agents were locked and loaded inside the bombs."

Meanwhile, RT (formerly known as Russia Today) announces: "Thousands of US troops arrive near Syrian shore on USS Eisenhower", causing a predictable flurry on Twitter about an imminent American invasion.

The original source of the RT story is Debka File, an Israeli website with a history of being unreliable. Debka says:

The USS Eisenhower Strike Group transited the Suez Canal from the Persian Gulf Saturday, Dec. 1, sailing up to the Syrian coast Tuesday in a heavy storm, with 8 fighter bomber squadrons of Air Wing Seven on its decks and 8,000 sailors, airmen and Marines.

The USS Eisenhower group joins the USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group which carries 2,500 Marines. 

Debka continues:

"This mighty US armada brings immense pressure to bear on the beleaguered Assad regime after it survived an almost two-year buffeting by an armed uprising. Its presence indicates that the United States now stands ready for direct military intervention in the Syrian conflict when the weather permits."

The US certainly has contingency plans in connection with Syria's chemical weapons but it is not at all clear that the USS Eisenhower is part of them. The aircraft carrier is (or at least was)on its way back from routine duty in the Gulf to its home port in Norfolk, Virginia, where it is due to arrive before Christmas. Because of that, it is currently in the Mediterranean.

Conceivably it has been ordered to hang around near Syria for a while, but at present the only source of information on that is Debka.

There's no doubt that some people are trying to whip up hysteria over the chemical weapons issue – whether because they want direct military intervention or because they strongly oppose it. There are also echoes of the propaganda campaign against Saddam Hussein's Iraq regarding weapons of mass destruction – though, as I pointed out yesterday, it's important to recognise that the situation with Syria is somewhat different.

Firstly, Syria does not deny having chemical weapons but it denies any intention of using them against its own population. Concerns about these weapons have heightened as a result of the conflict but they are not a recent concoction (as some people seem to believe): at the diplomatic level they have been an issue for years, even when relations with Assad were a lot better than they are now. 

Secondly, in 2002-2003 President Bush was looking for reasons to attack Iraq and WMDs provided a useful excuse. Obama, on the other hand, has not been actively seeking direct military involvement in Syria. If anything, he has been looking for excuses to avoid it.

Thirdly, Obama's red line in Syria is different from Bush's in Iraq, which relied on a supposedly "imminent" threat. Obama made clear the other day that the trigger for an American response in Syria is the actual use of chemical weapons, not reports of preparations to use them from shadowy intelligence sources:

"I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad and anyone who is under his command ... If you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons there will be consequences and you will be held accountable."

This warning has mostly been considered in terms of its military implications, though the political implications may well be more important. For a start, it puts Russia and Iran – Assad's two key allies – on the spot.

There is a global consensus against chemical weapons which includes Russia and Iran. Only a handful of countries have refused to sign the Chemical Weapons Convention, and Syria is one of them. Iranians have good reason to fear chemical weapons, since they suffered terribly from them during the 1982-88 war with Iraq.

By focusing on Syria's chemical weapons, therefore, Obama is probably hoping to weaken Russian and Iranian support for the Assad regime. On the Syrian side, the likely damage to relations with Russia and Iran provides a very strong reason for Assad notto use his chemical weapons.

Saddam Hussein, another Baathist, did use them against his fellow Iraqis in Halabja in 1988, though the people attacked were Kurds and thus, in Saddam's eyes, not strictly his "own people". While it's possible that Assad might do the same against Syrians, Juan Cole thinks it's unlikely:

"Chemicals would be difficult to deploy against a guerrilla movement of the sort the Baathist government of dictator Bashar al-Assad is facing. Guerrillas just fade away when confronted. 

"Moreover, Syria’s mixed population makes it difficult to use chemical weapons on rebels without killing Alawi Shiites and other groups that so far have largely been an underpinning for the regime.

"I don’t say it is impossible for the regime to use poison gas against the revolutionaries. At the moment, I wouldn’t give it a high likelihood of success."

Apart from battlefield use, it's also possible that Assad, sensing that he is cornered, might use them for "shock and awe" purposes to cow the rebels into submission. But at this stage it's far more likely to have the opposite effect of turning uncommitted Syrians against the regime.

In that case, you might wonder why Assad is interested in chemical weapons at all. The short answer is that it's to counter Israel's nuclear arsenal. Chemical weapons, since they are terrifying but relatively cheap to produce, are considered the poor man's atomic bomb.

Israel refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, so Syria refuses to sign the convention of chemical weapons. Egypt, another neighbour of Israel, also refuses the sign the convention for similar reasons.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 6 December 2012.