President Obama and his administration are looking closely at the civil war in Syria in order to determine how the United States will respond.

In a sit-down interview with CNN's Chris Cuomo, Obama called the situation in Syria "clearly a big event of grave concern" and said he hopes the Syrian government will allow a deeper investigation into the recent alleged chemical weapon attack in Damascus that killed more than 1,300 people.

The president, who was in the middle of a bus tour around upstate New York and Pennsylvania, said the U.S. is looking to make sure weapons of mass destruction are "not proliferating." He also said the nation is looking out for the interests of its allies in the region as well as the American bases stationed in the area. 

"We have to think through strategically what's going to be in our long term national interests," he said.

Obama is looking to work with the United Nations in hopes of stabilizing the situation. The UN, which has called for the international community to help, reported on Friday that over 1 million Syrian children have become refugees as a result of the Civil War conflict in Syria. It is said that over 700,000 of the children are under the age of 11.

"We should stop and ask ourselves how, in all conscience, we can continue to fail the children of Syria," said Anthony Lake, Executive Director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF)

The UN said over half of the Syrian refugees are children. Thousands of children that are in Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon crossed over Syrian borders unaccompanied.