Attacking chemical weapons stores prevents a threat in itself as it runs the risk of blowing up the weapons and therefore dispersing them into the air. [1] This risk would potentially be even higher with any biological weapons as they would not become harmless through dispersal as Chemical weapons would.  Quite apart from the risks of setting off the arsenals when attacking them such attacks would be very unlikely to be successful. While Syria’s chemical weapons may be held in a few large centers this would seem to be unlikely given the history of attacks on unconventional weapons programs. Syria itself has had a nuclear weapons program destroyed as a result of an Israeli air attack in 2007. [2] This would have been a powerful lesson in the need to disperse these weapons to prevent their destruction from the air.  [1] ‘Preventing Syrian Chemical Weapons Threat From Becoming Deadly Reality’, PBS Newshour, 5 December 2012,   [2] Harel, Amos, ‘Five years on, new details emerge about Israeli strike on Syrian reactor’, Haaretz, 10 September 2012,