In the wake of President Obama’s speech yesterday at the U.N. General Assembly, there were reports of another chemical weapons attack near Damascus launched by Bashar al-Assad’s regime. If true, Assad is just drawing the logical conclusion from the president’s speech and the administration’s actions over the last several weeks. The policy of the Obama White House is to target Sunni extremism. That means that Assad and his partners in the Iranian resistance axis are virtually untouchable. Indeed, the administration advised Tehran before launching strikes on ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra Monday that the strikes would do no damage to the Assad regime assets.

Therefore, Assad sees not only that he’s in the clear, but also an opportunity to press his advantage: with a chemical weapons attack on rebel fighters, or civilians, he is saying that he, too, has joined the U.S.-led coalition against Sunni extremists. After all, as Assad sees it, what’s the difference between the missiles and rockets fired by the U.S. Air Force on ISIS and the barrel bombs that the Syrian Air Force drops on the Sunni opposition? As the Syrian media report, the Damascus regime and the Obama administration share the same enemy: terrorism—of the Sunni variety.