IISS Date: 12 April 2018
By Emile Hokayem, IISS Senior Fellow for Middle East Security.
What are the West’s military options – and what might the targets be?
Western countries have to decide whether military action in Syria is about punishment and deterrence for the use of chemical weapons, or whether they want to be more ambitious and go after the military infrastructure of the Assad regime, which has enabled his war machine to make very significant advances recently.