Washington's plans for what it calls limited strikes in Syria comes months after the administration of President Barack Obama failed to sell an offensive missile campaign against Syria to America’s war-weary public. The U.S. president was pushing for military strikes against Syria last summer following reports of a chemical weapons attack that Washington blamed on the Syrian government.
The U.S. Congress also refused to give the green light to Obama for military intervention in Syria and Obama put on hold his planned military strike against the Arab country after Russia helped broker a deal under which Damascus agreed to eliminate its chemical weapons arsenal.
CIA Director John Brennan has warned U.S. lawmakers about the possibility of attacks on the U.S., saying “with the increasing diversity of the threats and with the growth, as you pointed out, of terrorist elements in places like Syria and Yemen, we have a number of fronts that we need to confront simultaneously.”
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Washington is now reconsidering “military, diplomatic and intelligence options” which were abandoned in favor of talks between representatives of the Syrian government and the foreign-backed opposition in Geneva, which have broken off without any results.