A politically brilliant move, perhaps? "Assad Regime Asks U.N. to Protect Syria From U.S. 'Aggression'."
In a letter to U.N. leaders, Syria has called on the international organization to protect it from “any aggression” directed at the country following the regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons. The letter, from Syrian ambassador to the U.N., Bashar Ja’afari, is addressed to U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon and President of the Security Council Maria Cristina Perceval.
In the letter, Ja’afari called on "the U.N. Secretary General to shoulder his responsibilities for preventing any aggression on Syria and pushing forward reaching a political solution to the crisis in Syria", state news agency SANA said on Monday. The U.N. envoy also urged the Security Council to "maintain its role as a safety valve to prevent the absurd use of force out of the frame of international legitimacy."
In response to potential U.S. military strikes, Ja’afari said the U.S. should “play its role, as a peace sponsor and as a partner to Russia in the preparation for the international conference on Syria and not as a state that uses force against whoever opposes its policies."Certainly without endorsing Assad's gambit, I think he probably does have a strong case to make in the arena of the UN Charter and before the international assembly. The Charter actually forbids nations from intervening in the internal affairs of other nations; like it or not, the civil war in Syria, no matter how brutal, is not (yet) a cross-border war. We could argue that the two million Syrian refugees have made it an international affair, but so far we have not so argued.
Further, the great majority of UN members almost certainly believe that the UN Security Council, if not the entire General Assembly, must approve any strike by the US on Syria. That, of course, will never occur as both Russia and China have promised to veto such a resolution in the UNSC.
However, it is equally impossible for Assad's plea to the UN SecGen to yield action by the UN, since the US will veto any such thing in the UNSC, and so will Britain and France. So Assad's letter is only a political gambit, but I think it's frankly a smart one on the world stage.
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