On March 19, 2013 and in April 2013 the forces of President Bashar Assad used nerve gas, the toxic chemical sarin, against the rebel forces attempting to overthrow him. Again on August 21, 2013, the sarin nerve agent was used and hundreds were killed in one morning by attacks in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus. As a result, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the United Nations arranged a disarmament deal according to which Syria’s chemical weapons would be destroyed. Russia was the main sponsor of the compromise deal to disarm Syria of its chemical weapons, a deal that helped avoid any Western action against the regime for using such weapons. By most reports of the OPCW, Syria has been shipping out the deadly weapons, and so far 86% of its declared stockpile of 1,300 metric tons has been removed. Syria agreed to join the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and also agreed on the basis of the U.S.-Russian agreement of September 14, 2013 to the...(Read Full Article)