Eek!
I bet Bashar al-Assad is terrified.
Nobody's certain who did it, and it's a complicated situation, and I'm on board with the idea that our brave leaders can't tie themselves down to a specific response. Yep. Got all that.
But I find this embarrassing.
Such careful phrasing, all of it slotted very carefully into a calculation of what we can't do.
If this is a chess game, and thus a very finely calibrated escalation of the threat (sic), I'd be tempted to work out how much more I could get away with - before the two chums started threatening something really scary, like a "very serious response".