Hussein Al-Taee, an Iraqi born expert in Middle East politics posted a quick analysis about the missile strike in
his Facebook page. It is obvious that it is typed in a hurry since the grammatical structure in the original Finnish post is much more careless than usually in his writing. I've tried to fix some of that in the translation.
About half of the post is analysis about how it influences the domestic politics in the USA and Trump's image and I have not bothered to translate that. What I find interesting is his analysis about his speciality, the politics in Middle East. The situation is a complex one and Al-Taee himself emphasizes this when he admits in the comments how someone criticizing him and looking at the strike in a positive light might also be right.
By the end of Obama's presidency the arabs started slowly to discuss with Assad with the intention to pacify Syria through the diplomatic mechanisms in the area that have been classified as fragile. The ownership had intentionally grown* and Saudi-Arabia, Tunisia and Egypt all tried to find also a non-violent solution. Obama said once that the best solutions to the global peace are found when USA does not always need to be the world police. This logic made Obama seem weak.
[Discussion about how the strike is good PR for Trump domestically.]
Globally Trump was able to show with this strike that you can achieve the most concrete and immediate results with missiles, also the most attention. This act encouraged specially the authoritarian countries in the Middle East to offer their support to USA's action and might have encouraged them to follow the example when looking for solutions to their domestic politics in the future**. This is a change that Obama was trying to prevent and he failed categorically.
That is why this strike as an individual act made the situation in Syria even more difficult and slowed down the work for peace and stability for years in the future.
There is also hope since Iraq has weakened ISIS without returning to the past and is now planning a role as a balancer of the peace architecture in the area with both USA's and Russia's blessing.
* I think he means that the countries in the area have been taking a more active role. It isn't any more clear in Finnish.
** my interpretation is that the leaders in the area might be more inclined use war to unite people behind them. It's also possible that he means the leaders might be more inclined to use violence towards their own people to oppress them. Anyway, the point is that it is going to increase the probability that the leaders in the area are going to incite more violence.