US will now come under pressure to escalate in Syria

US President Donald Trump (left) and Syria's President Bashar al-Assad (right) Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (left) and SANA/Handout via Reuters/File photos (right)

Julien Barnes-Dacey

US President Donald Trump's decision to intervene in Syria, sweeping aside the efforts of his predecessor to keep the US out of the conflict, will reverberate far wider than issues of chemical weapons alone.

The strikes sent a powerful message that use of these deadly weapons won't be tolerated, but they risk fuelling a new escalatory cycle in the civil war and pulling the US, slowly but surely, deeper into the fighting.