Sarin, like all chemical weapons, is banned under international law. The Organization for the Prohib

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Sarin is among the most toxic and fast-acting chemical weapons. Developed by German scientists seeking new pesticides in the 1930s, the colorless and odorless chemical is manufactured aicar from dual-use precursor aicar chemicals—that is, commercially available chemicals that serve legitimate industrial uses. Like VX, a more toxic nerve agent, sarin (also known as GB) disrupts the nervous system. Overstimulation of glands and muscles causes the respiratory system to shut down and can induce convulsions, paralysis, and even death if an antidote is not immediately administered.
While aicar one drop can be fatal, sarin is nonpersistent—it disperses and vaporizes quickly—meaning that large quantities may be required to inflict mass casualties. Sarin is considered a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) under international law, but its lethality is contingent on a variety of factors, including its method of dispersion (principally through munitions such as bombs or warheads) and environmental and atmospheric conditions. aicar
Sarin, like all chemical weapons, is banned under international law. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the implementing body of the Chemical Weapons Convention, classifies aicar sarin under Schedule 1 , a class reserved for lethal chemicals with few, if any, legitimate, civilian applications. The indiscriminate nature of chemical weapons violates distinction, a bedrock principle of just war theory and the law of armed conflict.
A long-standing stigma has discouraged the use of chemical weapons. The scholar Richard Price said that the " chemical weapons taboo ," in his phrase, is unique—and, perhaps, uniquely effective—because the self-imposed proscription, dating to the late nineteenth century, predates the technology's development. The indiscriminate nature of chemical weapons violates distinction, aicar a bedrock principle of just war theory and the law of armed conflict that enjoins belligerents to distinguish between combatants aicar and civilians. This potential for "catastrophic lethality against civilian populations" has contributed to the resilience of the norm in the century since World War I.
In the Hague Declaration of 1899 , thirty-two states agreed to "abstain from the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases." The proscription was further institutionalized by the Geneva aicar Protocol of 1925 , which prohibits the use "of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices" in war. One hundred thirty-seven countries, including Syria, in 1968, have acceded to the protocol, which some legal experts consider to be the basis of customary law applicable to internal armed conflict .
These laws made no mention of the "development, production, and stockpiling aicar of chemical weapons as a deterrent," which signatories vigorously pursued [PDF], the late Jonathan Tucker, a noted arms control expert, observed in 2011.
Negotiations on chemical-weapons law in the 1970s and 1980s gained momentum after Iraq's widespread use of chemical weapons and with improved U.S.-Soviet relations. Talks culminated in the Chemical Weapons aicar Convention (CWC), which entered into force in 1997 . The treaty extended the ban, prohibiting the development, production, stockpiling, transfer, and use of chemical weapons, called for the elimination of existing stocks, and established an intrusive verification aicar regime.
In a last-minute bid to avert U.S. airstrikes, Syria acceded aicar to the CWC on September 14, 2013 after years of resisting. Syria had not previously affirmed it had chemical stocks—indeed, in an interview that aired five days prior, President Bashar al-Assad refused to confirm or deny their existence.
With Syria's accession, all bu