Is Syria considering using chemical weapons? Experts suggest Iraq case could be a policy guide

In a story published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Assad Chemical Threat Mounts, the author reveals that intelligence agencies are concerned that Syrian authorities might resort to large-scale chemical attacks if the regime feels threatened by ISIS or other anti-government militants.

As the risks escalate, the argument presented in Foreign Policy 18 months ago by Stanford scholars Scott Sagan and Ben Buch is particularly timely. In Our Red Lines and Theirs, Sagan, a professor of political science and Senior Fellow at FSI and at CISAC, and Buch, a PhD candidate in Political Science, laid out the reasons why Iraq did not resort to chemical attacks against US forces and used their findings  to draw lessons that could be applied to the Syrian regime, another dictatorial regime armed with chemical weapons. Read the December 2013 article in full here.