Ex-US Adviser Reveals Trump Intended to Kill Syria's Assad - FARS

(FNA)- Former US President Donald Trump wanted to assassinate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after an alleged chemical attack in the war-torn country which the Western powers put the blame on Damascus, according to a former adviser.

Trump had to be talked down from ordering the assassination of Assad, KT McFarland, former US Deputy National Security Adviser, disclosed during an interview for the new BBC docuseries “Trump Takes on the World".

She stated weeks after Trump took office in 2017, the ex-president insisted that he would “take him out” after seeing pictures of alleged Sarin gas attack on civilians.

“I said, ‘well Mr. President, you can’t do that’,” Macfarland said, adding, “He said ‘why?’ And I said ‘well, that’s an act of war’.”

She continued, “Trump glares at me, folding his hands in this serious Donald Trump way. I knew what he wanted to do was somehow punish Assad, and not let him get away with this.”

Macfarland was ousted from her role only a few months later amid concerns about her partisanship.

In September 2020, Trump had admitted that he intended to have Assad assassinated but reversed his decision due to purported opposition by the then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

Later, Assad rebuked Trump for his intention to kill the Syrian leader, stressing assassination is nothing new but rather a typical policy tool of America.

The Syrian government has categorically dismissed reports accusing it of being involved in a suspected chemical attack in the country’s Northwestern province of Idlib, which killed and wounded dozens of people in early April 2017.

Using the incident as a pretext, US warships fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from two warships in the Mediterranean Sea at the Shayrat airfield in Syria’s Central province of Homs days later. American officials claimed, without providing any evidence, that the suspected Khan Sheikhoun gas attack had been launched from the military site.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with the Russian Sputnik news agency in late April 2017, Assad described the chemical incident as “a false flag play just to justify the attack on the Syrian base”.

The Syrian government surrendered its stockpiles of chemical weapons in 2014 to a joint mission led by the United Nations (UN) and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which oversaw the destruction of the weaponry. However, Western governments and their allies did not stop accusing Damascus of conducting chemical attacks.