In an interview with ITV News International Editor Bill Neely, Syrian deputy foreign minister Dr Faisal Mekdad said a delay in US military action "shows that he [President Obama] and his administration are lost." "I hope there should be enough wise people in the Congress to make a decision like the House of Commons in the UK," he added. On the streets of Damascus, soldiers said they were ready for any attack. But many residents now believe America, like Britain, will not strike at all.

Part of President Barack Obama's argument for a military strike against Syria is a threat to broader U.S. security concerns in the Middle East and Asia. Secretary of State John Kerry says acting against Syria's use of chemical weapons matters far beyond its borders. "It is about whether Iran, which itself has been a victim of chemical weapons attacks, will now feel emboldened, in the absence of action, to obtain nuclear weapons," he said.

As ever, the Syrian regime gives with one hand and takes with the other. On Sunday, Damascus allowed UN weapons inspectors to gather evidence at the site of an alleged chemical gas attack in al-Ghouta. Saudi-backed terrorists were responsible for the atrocity, state media told a sceptical world. Yet only days later, a BBC news team reported from the scene of an horrific incendiary attack by government fighter jets against a school playground in Aleppo.

As a freshman US senator with his eye on the White House, Barack Obama said this: “The president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Mr. Obama’s comment (which came in a 2007 interview with The Boston Globe) had to do with Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s new Minister of Foreign Affairs,posted a short piece with six questions about Syria on his Facebook page. 1,100 comments left on the Minister's post until Saturday,30th of August. Some called Zarif on the hypocrisy of criticizing Western intervention as intervention, when Iran has its own presence on the ground.

As an American military strike looms over Syria, Iran is weighing its decades-long alliance with Syria against its own pledges to reengage with the US and the West over its nuclear program and other issues. Tehran's combative rhetoric may appear to have changed little: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei likened a Syria strike to a spark to gunpowder, “whose dimensions and consequences are unknown.” And Revolutionary Guard commander Mohammad Ali Jafari has predicted Syria could become America’s “second Vietnam.”

Digital diplomacy, the hipster cousin of public diplomacy, has been enjoying something of a Golden Age recently, with any (Western) diplomat or minister of any note (and the more forward looking senior officials too) offering digital pronouncements, policy engagement and two-way conversations as a mechanic for gathering support and understanding around often complex areas of foreign affairs.

In Istanbul’s religiously conservative Fatih neighborhood, the four-fingered yellow Rabia signs supporting Egypt’s pro-Morsi protest movement are ubiquitous, as residents unabashedly identify with the Muslim Brotherhood’s struggle against Egypt’s armed forces. But there is no sign of support for the impending Western military conflict with Syria. Given the devastating loss of life experienced by Syria’s Muslims, the silence punctuates increasingly mixed feelings in this country about an intervention that Ankara has long advocated.