On a day when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid delayed a slated Wednesday test vote on Congressional authorization for the United States to use military force in Syria, President Barack Obama said one of six interviews he’s giving to news networks that a Russian proposal to place Syria’s chemical weapons under international control could be a breakthrough.
President Obama said on Monday he would “run to ground” a proposal floated by the Russians that would wrest control of chemical weapons from Syria and would potentially head off a U.S. military strike against the Bashar Assad regime.
Obama, who conducted a half dozen television interviews on Monday afternoon to try to gin up support for his call for military action against Syria said he would “absolutely” put off a punitive strike if Assad gave up his weapons.
“It’s possible if it’s real,” Obama told CNN in an interview that aired Monday of the possible breakthrough on the Syria crisis. “And, you know, I think it’s certainly a positive development when, the Russians and the Syrians both make gestures toward dealing with these chemical weapons. This is what we’ve been asking for not just over the last week or the last month, but for the last couple of years.”
“If we can exhaust these diplomatic efforts and come up with a formula that gives the international community a verifiable, enforceable mechanism to deal with these chemical weapons in Syria, then I’m all for it,” Obama added in an interview with PBS NewsHour.
“But we’re going to have to see specifics,” Obama said. “And I think it is reasonable to assume that we would not be at this point if there were not a credible military threat standing behind the norm against the use of chemical weapons.”
This came on a day when Secretary of State John Kerry was highly visible. He came underfire for saying the administration wanted “an unbelievably small” strike. And then it seemed as if a comment from Kerry inspired Russia to make the proposal (as a serious recommendation, or to call his bluff?):
The comments from Obama came after Secretary of State John Kerry suggested earlier on Monday that if Assad turned over “every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week” he could avoid military action. Those remarks triggered a proposal on Monday from the Russians that Damascus place its chemical weapons under international monitors to head off a confrontation.
Obama also expressed pessimism about Congress approving a military strike against Syria, telling NBC News in a separate “I wouldn’t say I’m confident” about the measure passing.
Indeed, the proposal is sinking in polls faster than any chances for Miley Cyrus to appear in a high-profile Disney movie.
The bottom line is, however: Russia’s proposal bought team Obama some time to see how the proposal sorts itself out. A vote in the Senate could be delayed (reports suggested it might just get enough votes), but several reports suggested the matter might not be put to a vote in the House since party leaders of both parties there fear what a defeat could to the United States on the international front (despite Democratic anti-war liberals wanting the vote to show that the United States is in a new erea and conservative Republicans wanting it partially so that Obama would lose a vote). It’s widely believed that a defeat in the House could derail Obama’s legislative agenda — a belief many news reports now say is shared by Obama’s close aides in the White House.
The CNN interview portion:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.