Kremlin: US strikes on Syria inflict ‘considerable damage’ to relations
US allies welcomed Friday’s air strikes against a Syrian army base, with Damascus and its supporters predictably condemning the move, which comes in response to a deadly chemical attack earlier in the week.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the missile strikes on a Syrian air base broke international law and have seriously hurt US-Russia relations, news agencies cited the Kremlin as saying.
The Russian leader regarded the US action as "aggression against a sovereign nation" on a "made-up pretext" and as a cynical attempt to distract the world from civilian deaths in Iraq, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov was cited as saying.
The US strikes had inflicted "considerable damage" to US-Russia relations, Peskov later said, according to Russian news agencies.
"This step by Washington inflicts considerable damage to US-Russia relations, which are already in a lamentable state," Peskov said.
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US officials said they informed Russian forces ahead of the missile attacks and that they took pains to avoid hitting Russian troops at the base, saying there were no strikes on sections of the base where Russians were present. But they said the administration did not seek Moscow's approval.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov angrily posted a tweet comparing the air strikes with the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and included a picture of Colin Powell who was US secretary of state at the time of the invasion.
"One question is whether Russia will respond in any meaningful way," said a senior US official involved in planning the raid. "If they do, they will be further complicit in the actions of the Syrian regime."
Russia has air and ground forces in Syria after intervening there on Assad's side in 2015 and turning the tide against mostly Sunni Muslim rebel groups.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad criticised the American air strikes on his country as “foolish and irresponsible”.
"What America did is nothing but foolish and irresponsible behaviour, which only reveals its short-sightedness and political and military blindness to reality," he said in a statement released on Friday.
"This aggression has increased Syria's determination to strike these terrorist agents, to continue crushing them and to speed up the pace of work on this, wherever they are on Syrian territory," he said.
In a dig at the new Trump administration, Assad added: "The disgraceful act of targeting a sovereign state's airport demonstrates once again [sic] that different administrations do not change deeper policies."
What the rest of the world thinks
Iran, which also backs Assad, denounced the attack.
"Iran ... condemns use of chemical weapons ... but at the same time believes it is dangerous, destructive and violation of international laws to use it as an excuse to take unilateral actions," Students News Agency ISNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying.
China said it was important to prevent a further deterioration in the situation.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China called on all relevant parties to stick to political settlements.
Saudi Arabia and Israel, the US’s key allies in the region, welcomed the move.
"Saudi Arabia fully supports the US military operations against military targets in Syria, which were a response to the regime's use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians," a foreign ministry official told the state SPA news agency.
The official said the regime had only itself to blame after "odious crimes it had committed for years against the Syrian people."
He described US President Donald Trump as "courageous" for taking action when "the international community has failed to put a halt to the regime's actions."
"In both word and action, President Trump sent a strong and clear message today that the use and spread of chemical weapons will not be tolerated," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement.
Turkey's deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmus, said on Friday that the international community should sustain its stance against the "barbarity" of the Syrian government.
In an interview with Turkish broadcaster Fox TV, Kurtulmus said that the government of Assad must be fully punished in the international arena and that the peace process in Syria needed to be accelerated.
France had been informed ahead of the strike, the country’s Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said on Friday.
"I was told by (US Secretary of State) Rex Tillerson during the night," Ayrault told Reuters and France Info radio in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott where he is on a diplomatic visit.
Use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault
"Use of chemical weapons is appalling and should be punished because it is a war crime," he said, adding that Russia and Iran needed to understand that supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made no sense, and that France was not seeking a confrontation with those two countries."
Ayrault also said in a tweet that "Bashar al-Assad should be judged as a war criminal".
Britain's defence minister said the strike was designed to deter Assad from carrying out any further chemical weapons attacks but was not the start of a new military campaign.
When asked if the strike was the start of a bigger intervention, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said: "We don't see last night's strike like that.
"This strike was very limited to one airfield, it was entirely appropriate, it's designed to deter the regime from carrying out further chemical weapons attacks," Fallon told ITV television. "So we don't see it as the start of a different military campaign."
The European Commission's President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Friday that the use of chemical arms in Syria "must be answered" and that he "understood" efforts to deter further attacks.
"The US has informed the EU that these strikes were limited and seek to deter further chemical weapons atrocities," Juncker said in a statement.
"There is a clear distinction between air strikes on military targets and the use of chemical weapons against civilians."
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Friday that the strike was "understandable" following a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town.
"The fact that the United States has now reacted with a strike against military sites of the Assad regime, from which this cruel war crime was perpetrated, is understandable," he said in a statement.
Italy's foreign minister, Angelino Alfano, said on Friday that the air strikes were "a commensurate response" to Syrian aggression and a "deterrence" against further use of chemical weapons by Assad.
"Italy understands the reasons for the US military action," Alfano said.
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that Tokyo "supports the US government's resolve that it will never tolerate the spread and use of chemical weapons."
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said at a press conference that it “strongly supported” the “calibrated, proportionate and targeted response” by US forces.
“We can say that the Australian government strongly supports the swift and just response of the United States.”
He called the chemical attack a “crime against humanity” and said that it was “shocking and horrific even in the context of the Syrian conflict zone”. He called for perpetrators of such attacks “to be held to account”.
Turnbull said that while he had been informed by the Trump administration prior to the attack he stressed that the air strikes were designed to disable the regime’s ability to launch chemical attacks from the Shayrat air base and not part of wider mission.
“We are not at war with the Assad regime and the United States have made it clear that they are not seeking to overthrow the Assad regime.”
Syria rebels on Friday welcomed the US air strike on Shayrat base but urged additional action.
"Hitting one airbase is not enough, there are 26 airbases that target civilians," a key figure in the Army of Islam faction, Mohamed Alloush, said on his Twitter account.
Hitting one airbase is not enough, there are 26 airbases that target civilians
Army of Islam (Syrian rebel group)
"The whole world should save the Syrian people from the clutches of the killer Bashar (al-Assad) and his aides."
Other rebel groups welcomed the US strike and called for continued military action.
"The American strike against the killing tools used by Bashar al-Assad is the first step on the correct path to combating terrorism and we hope it will continue," said Issam Raes, spokesman for the Southern Front rebel faction.
"In my opinion, the message is political, and the message has arrived to Russia and been understood," he told AFP.
The UN Security Council was expected to hold closed-door consultations on Friday about the US strike on Syria following a request by Bolivia, an elected member of the council, a senior Security Council diplomat said.
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