Business Insider quotes Rafik Hariri Center Resident Senior Fellow Frederic C. Hof on Assad’s role in facilitating the advance assisting ISIS in Syria and what this means in terms of a US policy response:
The president and his advisers “are intellectually accepting of the proposition that the Assad regime’s mass murder is a recruiting tool for [ISIS],” Frederic Hof, a former State Department policy planner on Syria who is now a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, told Business Insider in June.
“People in the administration are not lacking in intelligence — they can connect the dots on these things,” he said.
The Obama administration, then, must choose between cooperating with Russia in Syria — and supporting Assad by default — or committing to help the rebels fight ISIS and the regime.