Syria Analysis: Chemical Weapons, the US, and the Insurgency

US Secretary of State John Kerry has declared that NATO needs to consider its role in the Syrian crisis, "We should...carefully and collectively consider how NATO is prepared to respond to protect its members from a Syrian threat, including any potential chemical weapons threat."

Kerry's comments followed an escalation of assertions about the Syrian regime's use of chemical attacks. The chief intelligence for the Israeli military, Itai Brun, told a Tel Aviv security conference that the Syrian military had used chemical weapons - probably nerve gas. On Monday, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said US intelligence agencies were still assessing whether such weapons had been employed.

Hagel's assessment is probably the more accurate one. US and European intelligence agencies have been unable to establish conclusively if attacks said as last month's incident in Aleppo Province, which killed at least 26 people, was a deliberate chemical assault, a possible mistake in which regime forces used a chemical weeapon mis-labelled as a conventional shell, or a conventional weapons which disturbed chemicals --- such as pesticides --- on the ground.

Kerry's statement, however, is not just about chemical weapons. US and European governments are considering whether to escalate their support of insurgents, including the political aims --- support of an opposition-held area, pressure on the regime to force a political negotiation, or the toppling of Assad?

The use of chemical weapons or their possession by the "wrong" forces, while genuinely considered a threat by these governments, has been used to date to justify the build-up of a multi-national base in Jordan, with training and the supply of weapons to insurgents.

The US Secretary of State, though indirectly and carefully, opens up the prospect: will the chemical weapons argument now be used to escalate that support, possibly moving it into the open?

Watch not only for NATO's response but for whether the European Union accepts the British and French request to formally end the arms embargo on the insurgents.

These steps will not solve the issues of objectives, but they will point to how far the US and European communities will go in support of the opposition if those objectives are established.