The Russians had assured the US and everybody that all chemical weapons had been removed from Syria and destroyed, and they were so convincing that the Obama regime accepted their assertions at face value.
The Russians have no leverage here. If there were no chemical weapons in Syria, how could they be used by ANYBODY?
Susan Rice and John Kerry said they had verified there were no chemical weapons left.
No, that's not true. Everything was stated as verifying and removing all the weapons in areas under government control at the time.
1) The government has retaken a lot of territory.
2) Either an idiot Syrian Army officer could have found and used weapons or
3) (most likely) the rebels are looking at a use em or lose em situation and literally have nothing to lose except the chemicals and/or chemical weapons themselves.
They haven't been attacked with 59 Tomahawks or even hit hard by the US and NATO the other fifty plus times they've used them and if they were lucky, the US would do just what we've done.
By the time the OPCW-UN Joint Mission in Syria (hereinafter “the Joint Mission”) completed its operations on 30 September 2014, the OPCW had been able to verify the destruction of 98% of chemical weapons declared by the Syrian Arab Republic, including all Category 1 chemicals.
https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/EC/79/en/c20crp01_ec7905_e_.pdf#page=5