Haley warns US ‘prepared to do more’ in Syria

In one of the most dramatic meetings the UN has seen in recent times, the US ambassador Nikki Haley warned that the 59 tomahawk missiles fired at a Syrian government airbase late Thursday night would only be the beginning if President Bashar al-Assad and his allies don’t change course.

“The United States took a very measured step last night. We are prepared to do more,” Haley said in her remarks on Friday. “But we hope that will not be necessary.”

The airstrikes were a dramatic and swift turnaround for the Trump administration, who as recently as last week declared that the United States’ priority in Syria remains the terrorist group ISIS, not the Assad government.

But that all changed on Tuesday when more than 70 people, 20 of them children, died in a chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, allegedly carried out by Syrian government forces.

The next day, Haley told the Security Council that the United States would be compelled to act on its own if the international community couldn’t agree on a way forward, almost a full day before President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force One “something should happen.”

Then came Thursday night’s airstrike.

Shortly thereafter, Bolivia’s UN delegation requested an emergency meeting of the Security Council. Haley, who chairs the Council for the month of April, agreed to put it on the schedule. When she met reporters in the morning she said that some countries had wanted a closed meeting, which are held in a separate room next to the more famous chamber with the horseshoe table.

Haley refused, telling reporters she wanted countries who “stick up for Assad” to say so publicly.

While US allies on the Council such as France, Great Britain and Italy praised the airstrike as a proportional response to a chemical attack, Russia and Bolivia criticized the airstrike as an illegal military intervention.

There were multiple references to the Iraq war and former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s infamous speech at the Security Council in 2003 putting forward now-discredited evidence of an Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program.

“You’ve destroyed Iraqi military, Libyan military bases and see what’s happened,” said Russian acting UN ambassador Vladimir Safronkov, who added that he thought Haley was cynical for bringing pictures of victims of Tuesday’s attack to a previous meeting of the Security Council.

In his near 20 minute speech Safronkov also chastised UK ambassador Matthew Rycroft for what he called Britain’s “colonial hypocrisy.” Rycroft had earlier in his own speech wondered out loud why there seemed to be more consternation among some members of the Council regarding the US airstrike than the Syrian government’s chemical attack.

Haley, who has been perhaps the most outspoken member of the Trump cabinet when it comes to criticizing Russia, said they are partly to blame for the chemical attack.

“The Russian government also bears considerable responsibility,” Haley said. “Every time Assad has crossed the line of human decency, Russia has stood beside him.”

The meeting adjourned with no clear option for how the Security Council would proceed. When the 15 ambassadors left the UN on Thursday night the hope was to come back Friday morning and resume work on a resolution that could be adopted unanimously. Chinese ambassador Liu Jieyi even told reporters he was afraid to say more than a few words publicly out of fear that it could jeopardize negotiations.

Then a few hours later, NBC was the first to report that the missiles had struck.