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.