WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump, less than 100 days in office, caught the world off guard when he ordered the military to fire 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles in a targeted military strike on a Syrian air base April 6, in retaliation for a suspected chemical weapons attack on civilians in rebel-held Idlib province two days before. 

“Years of previous attempts at changing [President Bashar al-] Assad's behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically,” Trump said April 6 at a news conference in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, announcing that he had ordered what he called a targeted military strike. “As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies.”

Administration officials said the strikes showed Trump was willing to take decisive action, but they were limited to retaliation for using chemical weapons and did not signal a broader shift in US policy toward military intervention to overthrow the Assad regime.

“This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told journalists traveling with Trump for his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping April 6. “The use of prohibited chemical weapons, which violates a number of international norms and violates existing agreements, called for this type of … kinetic military response.”