Fernando Arias, head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), shakes hands with Syria’s interim president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, in Damascus on Feb. 8, 2025. (Credit: Syrian Presidency/Handout / Reuters)
The head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) met on Saturday with Syria’s interim president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, during the first official visit since the fall of Bashar al-Assad, who was accused of using chemical weapons during the civil war that devastated Syria.
More than a decade ago, Syria joined the OPCW and handed over its declared stockpile for destruction. However, the organization has long expressed concerns that Damascus’ declaration was incomplete and that undeclared chemical weapons stockpiles remained.
Following the change of power in Syria, where the ousted president was driven out on Dec. 8 by a rebel coalition led by the Islamist group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the OPCW’s visit revives hopes that the country will finally eliminate these weapons after years of strained relations, delays, and obstructions.
The interim Syrian president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, and the new head of Syrian diplomacy, Assaad al-Shaibani, "received a delegation from the OPCW led by the organization's director-general, Fernando Arias," the Syrian Ministry of Information stated. It released photos of the three men shaking hands.
Since Assad’s downfall, the fate of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile has been a major global concern. The OPCW has also expressed worry that valuable evidence regarding this arsenal and its use may have been destroyed due to intense Israeli strikes on Syrian army sites. Israel has stated that its targets included chemical weapons to prevent them from falling into the hands of "extremists."
In 2013, Syria joined the OPCW and agreed to disclose and hand over its stockpiles of toxic substances under pressure from Russia and the United States, in order to avert the threat of U.S. and allied airstrikes.
Investigation mission
This agreement followed an alleged sarin attack, a nerve agent, which killed 1,400 people in the suburbs of Damascus. The attack was attributed to the Syrian government, which denied any involvement and blamed the rebels, in the context of the civil war that erupted in 2011 after the Assad clan’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests. Although he had declared that the use of chemical weapons was a "red line," then-U.S. President Barack Obama refrained from launching retaliatory strikes, opting instead to negotiate an agreement with Russia for the dismantling of Syria’s chemical arsenal under UN supervision.
Faced with the denials of Bashar al-Assad’s government, the OPCW set up an investigation mission in 2014, which has since published 21 reports covering 74 cases of alleged chemical weapon use. Investigators concluded that chemical weapons had been used or were likely to have been used in 20 cases. In 14 of these, the chemical agent was chlorine. Sarin was used in three cases, and mustard gas (yperite) in the remaining three.
In April 2021, Syria was stripped of its voting rights at the OPCW after an investigation accused it of carrying out new toxic gas attacks. And in November 2023, France issued international arrest warrants against Bashar al-Assad, his brother Maher — then the de facto head of the Fourth Division, an elite unit of the Syrian army — as well as two generals, Ghassan Abbas and Bassam el-Hassan, accused of complicity in crimes against humanity for the deadly chemical attacks of 2013.
