While U.S.-led strikes on chemical weapon facilities in Syria over the weekend marked a rare direct confrontation with the Assad regime, the U.S. and its allies have conducted more than 14,000 strikes inside Syria since January, 2015.
The bigger picture: The vast majority of strikes charted above targeted ISIS, with the big spike in mid-2017 coming during the coalition's campaign to re-take Raqqa. But Micah Zenko, foreign policy and national security analyst at Chatham House, told Axios strikes in Yemen and Somalia have also spiked since President Trump took office: "Basically, Trump expanded U.S. military presence and/or airstrikes in every combat theater he inherited from Obama."