WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has informed Congress that the United States would take additional action against Syria if necessary and appropriate.

And in an interview to CNN on Sunday, his UN envoy Nikki Haley said that removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power was a priority of the Trump administration.

On Saturday evening, President Trump sent a letter to the speaker of the US House of Representatives and the chairman Senate, explaining to them why he ordered a US missile strike at a Syrian airfield earlier this week. In the letter, he also declared that “the United States will take additional action, as necessary and appropriate, to further its important national interests.”

On Saturday evening, the White House also released a readout of President Trump’s call to Saudi King Salman bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud who reaffirmed strong Saudi support for the US military strike against the Sayrat Airfield on Friday and thanked Mr Trump “for his courageous action.”

In his letter to Congress, the US president explained that the ships that fired those 59 cruise missile were based in the Mediterranean but were operating beyond the territorial sea of any state.

The missiles struck a military airfield in Syria that US intelligence agencies believed were used for launching the April 4 chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians in southern Idlib Province, Syria, Mr Trump wrote.

“I directed this action in order to degrade the Syrian military’s ability to conduct further chemical weapons attacks and to dissuade the Syrian regime from using or proliferating chemical weapons, thereby promoting the stability of the region and averting a worsening of the region’s current humanitarian catastrophe,” he wrote.

Mr Trump said he acted in the vital national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and was willing to take additional action, when and if necessary.

On Saturday, President Trump spoke with Custodian King Salman and received a “a strong Saudi support” for his action against Syria, the White House said.

Both leaders agreed that the action Syria was “a necessary response to the horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians” the White House said.

Both leaders underscored their personal commitment to strengthening the longstanding relationship between their two countries and committed to remain in close contact on a range of regional and bilateral issues, the statement added.

And on Sunday, Ambassador Haley, the peranent US representative to the United Nations, indicated Washington’s willingness to help remove President Assad. This was a clear departure from a statement she made last week, saying that toppling the Syrian leader was not a US priority.

Before his election, President Trump too had described fighting ISIS and seeking Assad’s removal at the same time as “idiocy.”

But the White House said he changed his mind after seeing images of last week’s chemical attack on Syrian civilians.

In her interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” Ms Haley said removing Assad from power was one of a number of priorities for the US.

“Getting Assad out is not the only priority. So what we’re trying to do is obviously defeat ISIS. Secondly, we don’t see a peaceful Syria with Assad in there. Thirdly, get the Iranian influence out. And then finally move towards a political solution, because at the end of the day this is a complicated situation, there are no easy answers and a political solution is going to have to happen,” she said in the interview with anchor Jake Tapper.

A statement from Syria’s general military command said the strikes caused “extensive material damage” and undermined counterterror operations by the Syrian army.

A Russian foreign ministry official also told reporters in Moscow this week that the US attack had weakened Syria’s capability to fight Islamic State militants.

Published in Dawn, April 10th, 2017