[Berman:] All right. Happening now, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is on Capitol Hill. She's testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. You're looking at live pictures right now. This is going on as the Trump administration is warning Syria against a new chemical attack.
[Harlow:] In the Mediterranean, U.S. military ships and aircraft are watching to see if the Assad regime will carry out another chemical attack. Of course, the last chemical attack in April sparked a U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base. Our Barbara Starr joins us now from the Pentagon. And Barbara, it was yesterday on this show that you broke the news about the activity that the administration had been seeing at that air base concerning them about another possible chemical weapons attack. Has anything escalated from there?
[Barbara Starr, Cnn Pentagon Correspondent:] Well, in fact, according to defense officials, it looks like it may be ratcheting down a little bit now. To be clear, U.S. planes and ships do remain on station and ready to present options to President Trump if the Syrians do move ahead. But a short time ago, Defense Secretary Mattis told reporters traveling with him and let me insert here, no television journalists were invited on that trip. So, we are quoting "Reuters" here. Secretary Mattis telling them that it looks like the Syrians, in fact, backed off. Separately, defense officials here, telling me that does appear to be true. It looks right now like perhaps the Syrians are not moving ahead, perhaps like President Trump's warning worked. And last night, national security aide, Sebastian Gorka, talked about his view about this warning. Have a listen.
[Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant To The President:] The president was sending a very clear message, under this administration of Donald J. Trump, red lines mean red lines. What would you do in his position if the most powerful nation in the world demonstrated to you that we can see what you are doing? Wouldn't you think again about actually executing on that decision? I know I would. I wouldn't test Donald J. Trump.
[Starr:] However, remember that President Trump was not a fan of red lines on Syria and any notion of a red line presents every president with a problem because if they don't act on it, then they are seen as backing off. So, still the fundamental national security question on the table is if the Syrians were to move ahead and you saw them begin to take off with chemical weapons on board, what would you do about it? John, Poppy?
[Harlow:] Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, thank you for the reporting. For more now, let's get to CNN military analyst, retired Major General James Spider Marks. He joins us from Washington. Let's talk about the calculus that Bashar al-Assad may be making right now. Why would he even consider using more chemical weapons given the response of the Trump administration in April? MAJOR GENERAL JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS
[Cnn Military Analyst:] Well, you know, Poppy, first of all, thank you for having me on. I would say that the regime change in Syria is not on the table for the United States in terms of a policy option. So, Assad is no dummy. He understands that. Were we to move forward and try to remove Assad, we would be in complete contravention. We would have the potential of a real challenge with Russia because Russia backs Assad. So, the big picture is, Assad understands his flexibility. He could launch chemical weapons, certainly as Barbara indicated, we have sufficient intelligence collection and this is a real intelligence activity right now, a campaign of technical and human intelligence means that would give us some good warning as to when he was going to do that. I don't think we would interrupt that activity, but we'd certainly be able to confirm it. But Assad can move with a certain degree of impunity because of the backing of Russia. Clearly, Putin, I don't think is any big fan of Assad and routinely take some output woodshed and says, cut this out. However, there's no known replacement for Assad. And until the United States and Russia can have that discussion about what the next step could be with a regime change in Syria. It's not going to happen. And Assad, Assad has the flexibility to do essentially what he wants.
[Berman:] Well, how much more currency though, does the United States have after what it did in April? After the limited missile strike against that Syrian base in April, are these threats from the White House more believable and in any way more threatening?
[Marks:] No, I don't think so. Sadly, John, what happened back in April? It was a very proportional response. And I think it was done very, very precisely, very deliberately and it was done, as I said, at a very proportional level simply to send the message, don't do that again. The United States needs to be out of the business of establishing red lines. Because you hold yourself accountable to what the result is. You must act. You want to preserve your flexibility. So, don't establish red lines. Just say, look, it's unacceptable. But again, what we could do to punish Assad is not going to push him we have to have a very delicate approach. We can't push him to the point where he will collapse. Because again, we've got Russia that we have to deal with. The discussion in Syria right now is all about our relationship with Russia. That has to be established and we have an opportunity here to agree upon something. And what does the Syrian regime look like after Assad?
[Berman:] General Ambassador Nikki Haley is on Capitol Hill being asked about this right now. Let's listen to what she says.
[Marks:] Sure.
[Rep. Ed Royce , Chairman, Foreign Affairs:] regime take any steps in response to that warning.
[Nikki Haley, U.s. Ambassador, United Nations:] Well, I can tell you that due to the president's actions, we did not see an incident. What we did see before was all of the same activity that we had seen prior for the April 4th chemical weapons attack. And so, I think that by the president calling out Assad, I think by us continuing to remind Iran and Russia that while they choose to back Assad that this was something we were not going to put up with. So I would like to think that the president saved many innocent men, women and children.
[Royce:] Let me ask you a question on the U.N. Security Council resolutions that were passed with respect to North Korea. We're a few years away from North Korea having an ICBM capability that can reach the
[U.s. - Berman:] Joined again by retired Major General James Spider Marks. Spider, you heard Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to United Nations, saying that the president saved lives, with the statement from the White House the other day. Threatening Bashar al-Assad saying, don't do this chemical attack, we see your vessels and ships moving right now in that direction, don't do it. She says the president saved lives. Do you think that's true?
[Marks:] I don't think you can casually link what's been said and activities on the ground. I think what has worked to the advantage of the population in Syria, if there is an advantage let's speak very honestly here is that the actions by the United States a couple of months ago in fact degraded Syria's capabilities, albeit minimally, but it degraded their capabilities. They had to respond to that. So, I think the only thing that Assad would respond to is any type of immediate pressure that came from Moscow that said, cut this out or I'm going to shoot you in the face. We'll try to find a replacement. Putin is not that impetuous. We can see intellectually and we can act emotionally and we should not. What we should do is look very agnostically at this and realize there are limits to our powers in the Mideast. And we have some type of discussion with Russia that allows us to agree so we can move forward and get Assad off the table.
[Berman:] All right, retired Major General James Spider Marks, always a pleasure to have you with us. Spider, thank you so much.
[Marks:] Thanks, John. Thanks, Poppy.
[Berman:] All right. We are watching some action on Capitol Hill this morning, the fight to get to 50 votes for the Senate Republicans, perhaps some movement to bring Republicans together to work out some kind of deal. We will discuss with our panel next.