Chemical Warfare Is Becoming Normal Again: Rebecca Hersman

Editorial disclosure: this article is based primarily on Rebecca Hersman's 2016 essay "Syria's Toxic War: Chemical Weapons Are Undermining Deterrence and Nonproliferation," published by War on the Rocks. It was updated using official OPCW reporting, including the January 2026 attribution report concerning Kafr Zeita and the May 2026 discovery of previously undeclared Syrian chemical weapons. Rebecca Hersman, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the U.S. Department of Defense, War on the Rocks, the OPCW, CDC, and NIOSH are not affiliated with CBRNMASKS.COM and have not endorsed the company or its products. This article does not claim that a specific chemical attack is imminent. Analysis, preparedness conclusions, and product recommendations are by David Magen alone.

The disarmament operation succeeded. The deterrence operation did not. For a brief moment, the world appeared to have solved the impossible — a government accused of killing civilians with sarin had agreed to surrender its chemical arsenal. International inspectors entered an active war zone. Ships carried toxic precursors out of Syria. Specialized facilities destroyed chemicals that had once been intended for weapons. The operation was dangerous, technical, and unprecedented. And it worked — at least, the part that could be weighed, sealed, and transported worked. Then the helicopters returned.

Former Pentagon Counter-WMD Leader: Chemical Warfare Is Becoming Normal Again

In towns already living under air attack, civilians learned to fear a different kind of impact. A barrel or cylinder did not always produce the explosion expected from an ordinary bomb. Sometimes the first signs were burning eyes, violent coughing, and people collapsing inside the rooms where they had taken shelter. The declared stockpile was disappearing under international supervision. The gas was still falling. That contradiction sat at the heart of a 2016 warning by Rebecca Hersman, then former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction. Her argument was devastating in its simplicity: destroying chemicals is not the same as destroying the willingness to use chemicals.

This analysis is best read alongside when to evacuate or shelter in place, Tamir Hayman's warning on Syrian chemical expertise, and Gary Ackerman's small-attack, mass-disruption research. Together, they connect the threat picture with its operational and civilian-preparedness implications.

The Woman Inside the Disarmament Effort

Rebecca Hersman is not an outside commentator who discovered chemical warfare through television footage. From 2009 to 2015, she served as the Pentagon's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction — helping shape U.S. policy on proliferation prevention, arms control, threat reduction, and WMD response. Her institutional biographies identify Syria's chemical disarmament, the Fukushima nuclear crisis, and WMD interdiction among the major issues she handled. She later directed the Defense Threat Reduction Agency until January 2025, overseeing more than 2,200 military and civilian personnel across more than 50 countries and managing over $2.4 billion in programs intended to counter weapons of mass destruction. When Hersman wrote about Syria's "toxic war," she was writing as someone who had helped construct the solution that was supposed to end it.

A Real Achievement That Created a False Closure

The August 2013 sarin attack in East Ghouta drove Syria to join the Chemical Weapons Convention. The international response resulted in the removal and destruction of more than 1,200 metric tons of declared chemicals and precursors across more than 23 sites in an active war zone. This was not symbolic diplomacy — dangerous chemicals were physically removed and declared production facilities were disabled. The achievement deserves to be understood as an achievement. But it also created the illusion of closure. The public heard that Syria's chemical weapons had been removed. The more accurate statement was that the chemicals Syria had declared had been removed. Those two sentences do not mean the same thing.

Chlorine Changed the Bargain

Sarin is a purpose-built nerve agent. Chlorine is different — it is used lawfully in water treatment, sanitation, and industry across the world. The Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits using a toxic chemical as a weapon, but chlorine's industrial ubiquity created an opening for abuse. A government could surrender declared nerve-agent materials while retaining access to chlorine through ordinary industrial systems. A crude delivery device did not require an advanced warhead — a pressurized cylinder or improvised barrel could turn a familiar chemical into a weapon of terror.

Hersman understood the strategic danger: if chlorine attacks produced fear and tactical advantage while provoking only limited consequences, other actors would notice. The lesson would not be that chemical weapons had been defeated. The lesson would be that some chemical weapons could be used below the threshold that triggered decisive punishment. Once chemical use becomes perceived as viable, the international prohibition begins to change from a hard boundary into a negotiable risk.

The Hospital in the Cave

In January 2026, the OPCW concluded there were reasonable grounds to believe that the Syrian Arab Air Force carried out a chlorine attack near Kafr Zeita on October 1, 2016. At least one pressurized yellow cylinder struck near ventilation openings serving a cave system containing the Al Maghara Hospital. The cylinder ruptured, releasing chlorine through the valley, injuring 35 named individuals and affecting dozens more. The target was not an armored division. It was a place where wounded and frightened people had gone underground to survive conventional bombing. The same enclosed space that protected against fragments could hold contaminated air. The ventilation openings that made the underground hospital usable became routes through which the toxic gas could enter. Chemical warfare is terrifying partly because it corrupts ordinary ideas of safety.

The Cruel Geometry of Gas

The physical behavior of a toxic gas matters as much as its name. CDC guidance states that chlorine is heavier than air and may collect in low-lying or poorly ventilated areas. Sarin vapor can also settle in lower areas, while exposure may occur through breathing, eyes, or skin. This creates an emergency-planning conflict most families never consider: the safest location during a conventional missile or bombing attack may not be the safest location during a toxic-gas release. The correct action may involve sheltering indoors, shutting down ventilation, leaving the area, moving upwind, or reaching higher ground — but the right choice depends on the agent, the source, and official instructions.

A gas mask cannot make that decision for the wearer. It can only provide a layer of protection while the wearer carries out the decision. Respiratory equipment should be understood as a tool that may preserve breathing and vision during movement or sheltering — not as a replacement for understanding the incident.

Ten Years Later, the Locked Rooms Opened

In May 2026, the OPCW announced that its experts, working with Syria's new authorities, had discovered a significant amount of chemical weapons and related material that had never been declared — including dozens of undeclared chemical munitions, aerial bombs of the same type used in the 2017 Ltamenah and Khan Shaykhun attacks, rockets of the same type used in the 2013 Ghouta attack, separately stored chemicals, equipment, and thousands of pages of documentation. The OPCW Director-General stated that the discovery confirmed the organization's repeated assessment that the former Syrian government had withheld information and attempted to mislead inspectors about the scale of its program. The announcement arrived a decade after Hersman warned that destroying declared chemicals was not the same as ending a chemical-weapons program.

Building a Practical Family Respiratory-Protection Kit

Adults: the Israeli 4A1 Black Diamond Simplex — genuine Israeli full-face civil-defense mask with panoramic visor, hydration tube, and standard 40mm filter connection. For bearded users: the Israeli Sapphire PAPR hood.

Children, ages 2–8: the MAMTAK / Quartz child PAPR hood — powered filtered-air hood for younger children who cannot reliably use a conventional face-seal mask.

Infants and toddlers, ages 0–2: the Multipro infant protection system.

Children, ages 8–14: the Israeli 10A1 child gas mask.

Filters: CBRNMASKS.COM offers Israeli PA-12 and M80 Type 80 40mm CBRN/NBC filters. Respiratory equipment may reduce specified airborne exposures only when the exact mask, filter, fit, condition, and environment are appropriate.

Explore the Israeli CBRN Family Bundle or the complete range at CBRNMASKS.COM.

Protect Your Family

4A1 for adults, Sapphire for beards, MAMTAK / Quartz for ages 2–8, Multipro for infants. Sealed 40mm filters for every mask. Israeli CBRN Family Bundle for the complete household. CBRNMASKS.COM — Israeli civil-defense equipment, in service since 2009.

Primary Sources

Analysis and preparedness conclusions by David Magen — former Combat Investigation Officer, Doctrine and Training Division, IDF Operations Directorate; former Staff Officer, National Emergency Authority, continuity planning for local authorities, Haifa region. Founder of CBRNMASKS.COM since 2009. Rebecca Hersman, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, War on the Rocks, and the OPCW are not affiliated with CBRNMASKS.COM and have not endorsed the company or its products.

Back to blog