This passage : "As the conflict has gone on, more and more foreign powers have supplied their side of choice with aid, both tacit and direct. Whether it be Hizbollah joining the side of the Syrian regime via Lebanon, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran delivering the regime military, political and financial support"

is complete BS. Syria is an historical ally of Iran. It dates way before the protests, and the proof of that is in its control over Lebanon via the Hezbollah (which has been financed by Iran for more than 20 years).

If you want to understand arabs war in general, look at who's Shia and who is Sunni (and from time to time, when sunnis and shias don't fight each other, look at who is a jew).

Now for a quick sum up on the situation : Iran is trying to become a nuclear power. It's a shia country. Sunni don't want that (mainly saudi arabia and qatar). Syria is ruled by shias but the population is mostly sunni, so the ruling party is allied with Iran. Rebels are sunnis and mostly financed by saudi arabia and qatar.

Until there was chemical weapons involved, most occidental countries were quite happy to see iran fight saudi arabia using a proxy war in Syria. They sell weapons (Russia sells to Syria, US sells to Saudi Arabia), and enjoy seeing radical islamists and dictatorial regime kill each other instead of joining forces against Israel or bomb european cities.

But since Mr Obama said there was a "red line" and now that that "red line" has been crossed, US is forced to take side.

On a sidenote, the US has helped islamists gain power recently in Egypt, against dictatorial regimes, hoping for a middle term transition to democracy (a bit like what is hoped for Turkey), but that failed very recently with egyptians wanting islamist party out. So the whole US strategy in the middle east right now is a bit of a mess anyway.