http://www.theglobalist.com/syria-diplomacy-vienna-paris-attacks-obama-russia-isis/

U.S. and Syria: Focus on the Saudi Factor

How terror attacks in Paris calls for revising U.S. policy in Syria.

By Gareth Porter, November 24, 2015It’s the right time for Obama to rethink the administration’s policy toward both Assad and his jihadist foes.
In the wake of the ISIS terrorist attack on Paris, President Barack Obama declared that his administration has the right strategy on ISIS and will “see it through”. But the administration is already shifting its policy.
This includes cooperating more closely with the Russians on Syria. An influential former senior intelligence official has also suggested that the administration needs to give more weight to the Assad government and the Syrian Army as the main barrier to ISIS and other jihadist forces in Syria.
Obama’s Europeans allies as well as U.S. national security officials have urged the United States to downgrade the official U.S. aim of achieving the departure of Bashar al-Assad from Syria in the international negotiations that begun last month and continued last weekend.
Such a shift in policy, however, would make increasingly clear the contradictions between the U.S. interests and those of the Saudis. The latter continue to support jihadist forces fighting with al-Qaeda’s Syria branch, al-Nusra Front. http://www.theglobalist.com/syria-diplomacy-vienna-paris-attacks-obama-russia-isis/