As the White House contemplated its next move in the Syrian conflict, United States stocks fell, while crude oil prices hit a six-month high.
Benchmark stock indexes-stocks used as standards to measure performance of a given investment-tumbled on Tuesday, while costs of crude oil soared to 108.85 a barrel, up 3.8 percent.
The price of Brent crude oil also went up, surpassing $111 a barrel.
The Middle East pumps one third of the world's oil, Reuters reported. Syria itself is only a third-tier oil producing country.
But speculation that all-out warfare between the U.S. and Damascus fueled the drop in prices.
On Tuesday, four American Navy destroyer ships lined up near the Eastern Mediterranean, ready to execute a strike.
Again Capital correspondent John Kilduff told NBC that Syria's location renders it a doorway to oil, despite the fact that the country is not a major producer.
"It's clearly become a proxy war for almost the whole region," Kilduff said. "What's happening is you have Egypt and Syria that are not oil producers...You have a tight market and two significant flash points, and it keeps getting undermined by things like the problems with Libyan oil, the lack of Iranian oil."
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Dow Jones industrial average fell .8 percent-around 115 points. The Standard & Poor's 500 index dropped 1 percent, or 17.5 points. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq also went down around 1.5 percent, lowering 54 points.
These changes in the market came directly after the White House announced that it was "ready" to perform a strike on Syria, according to U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
Reuters reported that European stocks experienced their largest drop in two months, after British legislators halted their summer recess to consider joining up with France and America to move forward with Syrian intervention.
