- WINEP’s Michael Eisenstadt: Critical considerations for strikes on Syria
- Weekly Standard editorial: Syria isn’t just about Syria
- "What to do about Syria — and its chief accomplice, Iran," Richard Goldberg, New York Post
- Atlantic Council’s Faysal Itani: Assad knows what he can get away with
- Regional tensions soar in Syria
- Israel wages a growing war in Syria
// Uri Friedman
After the latest suspected chemical attack, the United States has four options.
The Logic of Assad's Brutality
// Thanassis Cambanis
No meaningful American response will be forthcoming, no matter how hideous the war crime.
by Josef Joffe via The American Interest
The President committed a double folly this week: starting a trade war against China while pleasing Russia and Iran with a promised pull-out from Syria.
quoting Josef Joffe via Atlantic Sentinel
Hungary’s strongman challenges liberal democracy in Europe. Donald Trump has no policy for the war in Syria.
ICYMI: Nearly six months ago, Frederick W. Kagan argued in a Hill op-ed that American strategy in Syria was completely incompatible with the strategy to address Iranian regional influence: “The idea of reducing Iranian malign activity in the region without confronting the most flagrant example of that activity — Iranian military, financial, diplomatic and political support for the mass murdering, chemical weapons using, war criminal Assad — is absurd.” As Iran, Russian, and Syrian regime forces scramble to control the territory from which ISIS recently fled, Kagan’s prediction seems to be coming true. Revisit the piece here.
James S. Robbins writes: If you are the embattled Assad, the sensible course of action would be to lay low at this point and let the supposed White House drama play out. Instead, Assad chose this moment to launch a horrific chemical weapons attack on civilians in the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Douma. So headlines about White House disarray were swept aside and replaced with the president tweeting about the “Animal Assad” and the heavy price he and his allies will pay. - USA Today
(The National Interest) The Trump administration will be making a decision on how to respond to an alleged chemical weapons attack in the Syria town of Douma within the next forty-eight hours.
The US is drawing up several options for striking Syria after chemical weapons attack, Pentagon sources say
(Washington Examiner) U.S. military planners have drawn up more than one option for possible military action against Syria, including a strike similar to last year’s attack in which 59 sea-launched cruise missiles inflicted heavy damage on a Syrian Air Force airfield in Homs.