President Obama delivered a speech to the nation this past Tuesday explaining the actions he is inclined to take against Syria as commander in chief.

Since the sarin gas attacks outside of Damascus took the lives of over 1,400 people on Aug. 21, the president has been walking a tightrope between diplomacy and armed conflict.

In part due to assurances demanded by Israel and required by American public during the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama has had to abate the tensions of two opposing concerns. On one hand, he had to assure the public another Middle Eastern country would not be invaded. On the other, he had an obligation to defend the human rights of those caught in the crossfire.

He set a “red line” to mark the use of chemical warfare as a cause of action and now stands obligated to fulfill his promise of military intervention as that line has been crossed in the eyes of the international community.

While no substantial evidence has surfaced on the identity of the Aug. 21 assailants, the president made clear in his speech that the U.S. has taken the stance that Bashar Al-Assad, the leader of the Syrian government, ordered the attack and deliberately murdered his own citizens. However, Assad’s mass murder of his own citizens remains to be proven, with international news sources reporting the contrary.

Russian news source RT reports that the chemical attack was a provocation of the Free Syrian Army, the military force supported by the United States in fighting against Syria. Freed hostages of the FSA testified that the attack on neighborhoods outside of Damascus were deliberately staged by rebels in order to trigger Western military intervention. Yet Obama seems intent on solely blaming Assad.

One must ask if Assad’s resignation would allow his regime to persevere. After all, the conflict in Syria is spanning into its third year with no sign of government dissolution.

This also begs the question: why would Assad deliberately cross the Red Line for U.S. intervention now? After all, the regime was forced to ignore an Israeli air strike in July that sabotaged armaments bought from Russia for fear that striking Israel would drive the West to strike.

Obama’s speech, while all in all justifying a limited strike on Assad’s regime, introduced several ultimatums established to call off the airstrike. In reality, the commander in chief realizes the dire repercussions an attack on Syria would have for Syria and the entire Middle East.

Should Syria be weakened enough to fall under control of the rebels, one of the last vestiges of religious tolerance in the world’s most volatile era would be obliterated.

As it stands, more than half of the opposing forces are not even Syrian; the Al-Nustra Front, the Syrian sect of Al Qaeda, represents a majority of the foreign insurgents.

While standing by his precedents and convictions, Obama has side-stepped a final decision, leaving the potential for warfare in the hands of the Syrian government and Congress.