Will Assad use ISIS to get his revenge?

In reaction to the U.S. attack, Assad “could, at a minimum, keep for himself intelligence [about ISIS] that he has, or let Daesh [ISIS] people move out of Syria,” says Claude Moniquet, a Belgian authority on Islamic State operations in Europe. “Or he could even use people that his service controls to organize things. This would be typical and ‘good’ Middle Eastern ‘non-conventional warfared,’ as we saw in Lebanon for 30 years.”

Hafez and Bashar Assad used patience and terror to reduce that neighboring country to the condition of a vassal state, as Nadette De Visser and I have written in some detail. Among the attacks Hafez facilitated: two massive bombings of the American embassy in two different locations, the first of which virtually wiped out the CIA station, and the enormous suicide truck bomb that destroyed the U.S. Marine Battalion Landing Team barracks in 1983, killing 241 American service personnel…

The Russians, too, might benefit from an ISIS attack in France. The country is in the final weeks of a presidential race that could decide the future not only of the nation, but of the European Union and NATO, two institutions Russian President Vladimir Putin would happily see destroyed. The most dynamic French contender, the far-right Marine Le Pen, wants to withdraw or downgrade French participation in both.
Parroting the Russian line, as she is wont to do, Le Pen said on Friday, “I’m a little surprised, because Trump has said many times he didn’t intend to make the United States the world’s policeman, and that’s exactly what he did yesterday. … Is it too much to ask that we see the results of an international investigation before carrying out this kind of strike?”