Relief in Damascus after Allied strikes

Hundreds of Syrians took to the streets of Damascus in scenes of jubiliation following joint airstrikes by the United States, France and Britain.

Danny Makki, a British-born journalist based in Syria, says there's a sense of relief Trump and his allies didn't cause more damage.

"It's definitely a case of what's the worst that Trump's going to do," he explains. "He's not going to be able to succeed in a policy of regime change because the Russians are here, the Iranians are here."

Makki says the Syrian state has a lot of allies and the Assad-led government is at this moment on a path to victory and what could have struck them and created more havoc and more chaos was the significant targetting of military infrastructure, not the research facilities which they actually targetted.

"The main fear in Damascus was, in the lead up to these attacks, that Trump would take the decision to attack all these highly sensitive military and security locations," he says. "Now what happened in the end was what we all thought would happen - it was a small amount of 'shock and awe' for a period of one hour and they attacked very limited strikes."

The Western allies say there will be no more attacks for the moment. Good news for Syria which doesn't have the stomach for a long-term fight with the West.

"They've taken a few hits and they've dealt with it and turned it in terms of the internal state-wise situation into some sort of small symbolic victory," he says. "They're still here, things are still as normal. But it's definitely not in their interests, nor do I think they want to continue escalating things with Trump, or with any other western states because at the end of the day, they've got a country which is almost completely destroyed."


Makki believes Western states are going to have to come back into Syria at some point in the future.


"How that will happen remains to be seen, but at the moment the Syrians would be very unwise to actually provoke Trump even more," he explains. "I was out yesterday talking to some people and the feeling was what's the worst that's going to happen, no worse than what has actually happened over the previous seven years."