The agreement reached between the US and Russia calling for Syria’s arsenal of chemical weapons to be removed or destroyed by the middle of 2014 should be welcomed. It averted the threat of immediate military action – an intervention that was likely to have had unintended consequences for the region and the world. Yet the reality remains that chemical weapons have been used and the Syrian regime needs to show good faith, notwithstanding the ongoing civil war and what looks like an extremely tight timeframe for compliance.