Not really. First off, ISIS is an offshoot of AQ in Iraq, but the other AQ franchise in Syria has been supported by the U.S. since the war began because they were anti-ISIS and anti-Assad. Those “moderate rebels” everyone has been talking about: just Al Qaeda with a different name. In fact, the White Helmets are also linked to them so much that some people call them Al Qaeda’s firefighters. They’re scum, and the people who bought the propaganda and the Oscar-winning movie were suckered into believing they are the good guys when their biggest contribution has only been to promote debunked claims of Assad using Sarin. Trump was actually the one who stopped supporting them and he’s content to let them twist in the wind, although others (the “Deep State,” aka the CIA) doesn’t want to let go because they have a hard-on to get rid of Assad no matter what (and that even means someone much worse or outright genocidal civil war for generations. They don’t care.) and there’s been a lot of pushback and dragging of feet since his announcement, when, honestly, there is no good reason for us to be in Afghanistan or Syria or Iraq.

Anyway, AQ of the Arabian Peninsula (aka the franchise that did 9/11, the Cole bombing, and the Khobar Towers bombing) is being supported by the U.S. indirectly and probably by Special Forces operating inside Yemen because they’re Sunni hardliners and there are lots of non-Sunni in Yemen that they want to kill, the Saudis want to kill, and the UAE wants to kill; and so we have given them free rein to do it because the Saudi/UAE forces, which are really just their air forces and Colombian and other mercenaries because the Saudi military and national guard exists to control the domestic population as skull-crackers and are otherwise useless, have been getting their asses kicked even though the U.S. and U.K. and Israel have been doing everything short of fighting this war for them.

Blackwater is busy trying to get into the Chinese market because Erik Prince is an evangelical fundamentalist who thinks he’s waging a holy war, but on the other hand, money is money and China has a shitload of money and their crackdown on Uighurs is still violence against Muslims, which is good enough for him.

I think the administration has no idea what they’re doing and are just getting led around by the last people to talk to Trump. Further down, there are plenty of different factions with their own agendas. But there are two or three multinational factions in the region that are more likely playing the U.S. off each other rather than being played. The Saudis, UAE, and Israel are on one side and basically see Iran as existential threats to all three, and so they’ve worked together in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. Saudi has apparently been pressuring the Palestinians to accept a peace deal because it wants to be seen as a moderating influence and power broker in the region, but the problem is that Saudi is now run by MbS, who is even dumber than Trump, and he and Jared Kushner have been working together, but two idiots working together never elevates the intelligence in the room. On the other side are Qatar and Turkey, since Qatar and KSA have always hated each other and Turkey sees itself as the successor to the Ottoman Empire and its predecessors and that it should dominate the Middle East. It was supporting ISIS and Qatar has always backed the Muslim Brotherhood, and Syria has been more of a proxy war between these two sides than it has been a genuine civil war. But once Russia got involved, that changed everything, and Turkey has a much deeper relationship with Russia than anyone else, both out of necessity of trade and diplomacy but also they hate each other. But they can’t go to war with each other, not least of which is because Turkey is in NATO and NATO (i.e., the U.S.) won’t let them. So Russia and Turkey have mostly made peace, Russia crushed ISIS, and now the question is who gets what. We already fucked over the Kurds, but they had the foresight to see it coming (because we’ve used and then abandoned them numerous times over the last 30-40 years) and sided with the Russians, so basically we let Russia into the Middle East and now they’re not going anywhere. Of course, anything involving Russia brings up the #Russiagate shit, but I am willing to bet any amount of money that the administration and CIA and military are just too stupid have to expected it, or worse, they saw it coming and were incapable of the simple act of not fucking up. Because Turkey wants to wipe out the Kurds and they could also force our hand to decide which is more important: Turkey or the Kurds. The Kurds always lose. That’s just the way it goes. And then finally, there’s Iran. Israel has claimed that they’ve been killing Iranians whenever it bombs Syria or sends in special forces, but it’s hard to know for sure. Syria and Iran have a relationship, but the Israeli claims that Iran wants a Shia crescent from Iran across Iraq into Syria and Lebanon presumes Iran has a lot more power than it does.

So, yeah, I doubt it. Kushner is really the one responsible for everything involving the Middle East, aside from whatever megalomaniacal kill-everything shit Bolton talks Trump into, and that crew is too stupid to start a bar fight in Mos Eisley, let alone strategize a way to cause trouble in the region that wouldn’t immediately blow up in their faces.