The military advances by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and its coalition of Sunni allies in Iraq and Syria threaten to establish the pre-eminence of ISIS in the heart of the Mashreq and in the process divide Iraq. The Barack Obama administration now faces the cost of its failure to realize that the real prize in the battle for Syria, especially for the Syrian revolt’s paymasters in the Gulf, was Baghdad.

With the Iraqi capital now in the sights of a nascent Sunni army drawing its own map of the contested region reaching from Damascus to Baghdad, the most bitter fruits of supporting the revolt against Damascus cannot be avoided. Today, Washington simply cannot lend its hand to a campaign against ISIS in Iraq, which poses an existential threat to a key US ally, while tolerating if not encouraging policies and alliances in Syria that (whether it likes it or not) are meant to have exactly the opposite effect.

To be true to the presumed American interest in preserving the integrity of Iraq and Syria requires a reconsideration of the rationale for supporting the Syrian opposition and regime change as US policy pivots to a "colorblind" regional strategy based on counterterror. The startling advance of ISIS to the very gates of Baghdad has focused Washington's attention on the contradiction long at the heart of its Syria policy in a way that the mayhem in Syria was never able to accomplish.

True, more than a year ago Washington fine-tuned its strategic interest in Syria — maintaining the demand that Assad had to go, but also acknowledging an interest in assuring the integrity of Syrian institutions. When Washington officials speak of preserving Syrian national institutions, they are not talking about the post office, but about supporting Syrian security institutions, suitably and miraculously reformed by a coalition of Free Syrian Army officers and former colleagues still in the regime’s ranks. In this spirit in recent months, a tentative resumption of intelligence sharing with Damascus on jihadis, cautiously led by some European intelligence services, commenced.