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Members of a UN chemical weapons investigation team collect samples after a suspected sarin gas attack in Ain Terma, Syria.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions

Syria, the OPCW, and Chemical Weapons 101

| November 7, 2013

Following a U.S.-Russian proposal and UN Security Council resolution in September, the challenging task of securing, transporting, and ultimately destroying Syria's chemical weapons has fallen largely to the technical experts of the Nobel Prize-winning Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). To provide a background on chemical weapons and the OPCW's challenges ahead, research assistant Andrew Wojtanik asked Dr. Matthew Meselson, Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences, for his insights.