Obama Administration Hoped Islamic State Would Bring Syrian Regime Change

by | Jan 12, 2017

According to a leaked taped conversation between Secretary of State John Kerry and Syrian opponents of President Bashar al-Assad, the Obama administration watched the Islamic State grow in the hope that its presence in Syria would force Assad to negotiate and, presumably, resign.

“And we know that this [the Islamic State, or Daesh] was growing,” Kerry tells the Syrian opponents. “We were watching. We saw that Daesh was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened. We thought, however, we could probably manage, that Assad might then negotiate. Instead of negotiating, he got Putin to support him.” (Emphasis added.)

In other words, while US allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others were funding and arming Daesh and while the Obama administration was aiding anti-Assad groups close to Syria’s al-Qaeda affiliate (Nusra), the administration saw hope in the rise of Daesh because it served the administration’s (and let’s not forget Israel’s) chief objective, driving Assad from the power, just as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi were driven from power.

Philip Weiss has the story and the audio at MondoWeiss.

About Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com. He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies; former editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education; and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation. His latest books are Coming to Palestine and What Social Animals Owe to Each Other.

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