The train is leaving the station and Barack Obama wants to know if Kevin Rudd is aboard.  The US President reached out to the Prime Minister in a phone call early Tuesday morning.

“We've discussed how to chart a way forward,” the Prime Minister told an audience at the Lowy Institute in Sydney.

Getting Australia’s backing usually isn’t a problem for the US, but it’s especially key to any potential attack on Syria because Australia will take over the Presidency of the United Nations Security Council on Sunday, 1 September.  Rudd signaled that support is there, saying that ignoring Syria would be akin to the international communities failures in taking seriously the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica and the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

“Without doubt, Syria is now the world's greatest political crisis and unfolding humanitarian disaster,” said Rudd, “This is a crisis of historic proportions. It is not just one of these crises that happen.”

Meanwhile, warplanes and military transporters have been seen arriving at the UK's Akrotiri airbase on Cyprus, less than 160 kilometers from Syria's coastline.