WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is considering military action against Syria that is intended to “deter and degrade” President Bashar Assad’s government’s ability to launch chemical weapons, but is not aimed at ousting Assad from power or forcing him to the negotiating table, administration officials said Tuesday.

A wide range of officials characterized the action under consideration as “limited,” perhaps lasting no more than one or two days. The attacks, which are expected to involve Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from U.S. destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, would not be focused on chemical weapons storage sites, which would risk an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe and could open up the sites to raids by militants, officials said.

The strikes would instead be aimed at military units that have carried out chemical attacks, the headquarters overseeing the effort and the rockets and artillery that have launched the attacks, according to the options being reviewed within the administration.

The goal of the operation is “not about regime change,” a State Department spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said Tuesday. Seeking to reassure the public that the United States would not be drawn into a civil war in the Middle East, and perhaps to lower expectations of what the attack might accomplish, Obama administration officials acknowledged that their action would not accomplish Obama’s repeated demand that Assad step down.

Frederic Hof, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who previously worked for the State and Defense departments, has urged that the Obama administration consider a broader military mission: destroying or significantly degrading the ability of the Assad government to carry out intensive artillery, aircraft and rocket attacks on the civilian population.

“Something that is significantly less than that, something that is seen as symbolic, I think would just enable Bashar al-Assad to say, ‘I have stood up to the world’s only superpower and faced it down,’” he said.