A survivor of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s 2013 chemical weapons attack chastised the Obama administration Sunday on CNN for overstating the efficacy of their foreign policy in curtailing Assad’s access to chemical weapons.
Kasseim Eid, who survived the chemical attack that claimed 1,400 lives in Damascus in 2013, directed his ire at the Obama administration in response to a question about how U.S. officials should address Assad’s most recent chemical gas attack, which killed 42 civilians in a rebel-held Damascus suburb Saturday.
“First of all, I would just like to ask first before anything else, President Obama to apologize to the Syrian people and to the American people because he lied t0 our faces back in 2014 when he said he took out Assad’s chemical weapons,” Eid said on CNN’s New Day.
“More than 100 chemical attacks happened since 2014 until now. More than 100 attacks. So president Obama owes us an apology,” he added.
The Obama administration, led by former Vice President John Kerry, reached a deal with Assad in the wake of the 2013 chemical attack, which required that his regime destroy their stockpiles of chemical weapons in exchange for Obama’s willingness to abandon his pledge to enforce his chemical weapons “red line” with military intervention.
Eid went on to say he felt betrayed by Samantha Power, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Obama.
“I met with Samantha Powers several times and she lied to my face when she was telling me that she disagrees with President Obama’s policy. Later, after she left office, she’s touring the country saying how good and amazing they were when it comes to human rights all of the work they’ve been doing,” Eid said.
President Donald Trump warned the Assad regime would pay a “big price” for the most recent chemical weapons attack and blamed Iran and Russia for facilitating the civilian bloodshed. Both the U.K. and France called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations security council to determine a response to the breach of international law.