The Intercept: Obama's best hope against ISIS was just killed, so let's make friends with Iran [View all]

[Luminous Animal]

Obama’s non-Iranian options look particularly bleak after yesterday’s shocking assassination of one of Syria’s top anti-ISIS rebel commanders and dozens of his lieutenants. The commander, Hassan Abboud, was killed in an explosion during an underground meeting. So many members of his group, Ahrar al-Sham, were killed in the explosion that it’s now unclear whether it will continue to exist and provide a key counterweight to ISIS. Ahrar al-Sham was one of the best organized Syrian opposition factions aside from ISIS.

The loss of Abboud and his lieutenants only underlines the need for a reset of U.S. policy in the region. While American politicians have cast ISIS as a mortal threat to their country, the group’s primary conflict today is not with the United States — even if ISIS’s horrific beheadings of U.S. citizens served the group’s propaganda goals, and even if America’s catastrophic military adventurism facilitated its creation and ascendance.

No, ISIS’s real focus today is on expanding its territory by combating regional governments — Iraq and Syria at the moment — and by fending off rival militias. And it turns out this has done wonders for relations within the Middle East. For the first time in three years, the interests of Iran, Turkey, Syria, Qatar and Iraq are all aligned towards stifling the existential threat posed by the radical insurgency of ISIS. Even the Iranian and Saudi governments — normally bitter rivals — are seeking to set aside their differences to confront this rising danger.

Within this new political alignment lies Obama’s best hope for the military defeat of ISIS. The future of Abboud’s group is in doubt, the much-vaunted Kurdish Peshmerga has never mounted a successful offensive operation in its history, and the U.S-trained Iraqi Army has demonstrated its combat effectiveness by literally running at the sight of ISIS advances in Mosul. But there’s one party that has demonstrated both a willingness and ability to combat ISIS: Iran.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/10/americas-incomprehensible-isis-policy/