In a secure room at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, President Donald Trump's top military advisers presented him with three options for punishing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a poison gas attack that killed dozens of civilians.
It was Thursday afternoon, just hours before 59 US cruise missiles would rain down on a Syrian military airfield in response to what Trump had called "a disgrace to humanity."
Trump was at his Florida estate for his first summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. But that summit took a backseat to the top-secret briefing by US National Security Adviser H R McMaster, and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, an official familiar with the briefing told Reuters.
They presented Trump with three options, which were quickly narrowed to two: bomb multiple airfields or just the Shayrat airfield near the city of Homs, where the military jet carrying the poison gas had taken off.
At least 70 people, including 20 children, were killed in the gas attack in northern Syria. Russia and Syria deny the attack.
After listening to an argument that it was best to minimise both Russian and Arab casualties, the official said, Trump chose the minimum option and ordered the hit on the Shayrat air field.
Mattis and McMaster argued that choosing that target would draw the clearest line between Assad's use of nerve gas and the retaliatory strike, the official said.
Another official privy to the discussions said the administration has contingency plans for possible additional strikes as early as Friday night, depending on how Assad responds to the first attack.
Confronting his first foreign policy crisis, Trump relied largely on seasoned military officers -- Mattis, a former Marine general, and McMaster, a US Army lieutenant general -- rather than the political operatives who had dominated his policy decisions in the first weeks of his presidency, said three officials involved in the deliberations.
After news of the gas attack first surfaced on Tuesday, Trump immediately requested a list of options to punish Assad.
The most aggressive option on the shelf, one of the officials said, called for a "decapitation" strike on Assad's presidential palace, which sits alone on a hill west of downtown Damascus.
On Wednesday afternoon, Trump appeared in the White House Rose Garden and said the "unspeakable" attack against "even beautiful little babies" had changed his attitude toward Assad.
Asked then whether he was formulating a new policy on Syria, Trump replied: "You'll see."
