The world today is waiting and worrying. The UN Security Council is waiting for the French draft resolution, which builds on the Russian offer to put Syrian chemical weapons under international control. US President Barack Obama is waiting anxiously, too. He wants to know whether this offer is more than a political maneuver and could be a reliable mechanism to avoid the tough test of Congress — which may weigh heavily on his legacy — and avoid a war he never wanted. And Lebanon, the tiny country, is waiting for its destiny and worrying about it also.

Despite the clarity of the international stance toward the Assad regime and the use of chemical weapons, despite the international and Arab support for the strike that US Secretary of State John Kerry has managed to cobble together in the past few days, and despite the fact that the US military is in standby mode to strike Syria without a UN umbrella — whether in terms of legitimate reasons, especially those related to using chemical weapons, or other reasons associated with the United States’ credibility and its role in the Middle East — it remains uncertain whether Congress will endorse the president’s decision to punish Syria.

The reason for the uncertainty is that the US electorate is against war. The other reason is ideological. Both the far-right Tea Party and the far-left are against the United States getting involved in the world’s affairs. This is the new US isolationism.

Congress’ mood will not change without pressure from Middle East lobbies, especially the pro-Israel lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Will pressure groups be able to make the undecided Congress take a decisive decision, as happened in 1991, when, despite the hesitancy of some congressmen, Congress voted to punish the Iraqi regime for possessing weapons of mass destruction?