Still, the White House is giving no sign that Obama is willing to change his mind on military force or even establishing a no-fly zone. Instead, administration officials keep emphasizing the importance and historic nature of the 2013 agreement, while stressing its main focus was getting rid of Assad’s stockpiles of sarin, anyhow.

“They are in such a defensive mode right now, it’s sad,” said Randa Slim, a scholar of post-conflict reconciliation at the Middle East Institute. “They are more trying to spin the positive of their inaction than confront the true inaction.”…

Mohammed Sahloul, a senior advisor to the Syrian American Medical Society who has traveled to conflict zones in Syria and testified about what he’s seen to the U.N., is underwhelmed.

“President Obama’s administration can pick and choose whatever they think is successful, and they have been picking and choosing, clearly. But for the doctors in Syria who have been facing the consequences of chemical weapons in Syria,” Sahloul continued, “these so-called successes do not mean anything.”