Kerry to Meet ISIS Sponsors to Plan Next Phase of Offensive

This is the last paragraph of "Iran Secretly Sending Drones and Supplies Into Iraq, U.S. Officials Say," by Michael Gordon and Eric Scmitt:

On Thursday, Mr. Kerry plans to meet in Paris with the Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, as well as with Saad Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister. But a major reason for the stop is to discuss Syria and the “grave security situation” in Iraq with his counterparts from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a senior State Department official said.

And this from Alissa Rubin and Rod Nordland, "Sunni Militants Advance Toward Large Iraqi Dam":

Mr. Kerry also told reporters that he had been asked by President Obama to travel to Saudi Arabia on Friday to confer with King Abdullah on the best ways to counter the ISIS advance.

This is usually the way it goes on official trips to the Kingdom: front load the high-publicity stuff at the beginning of the junket and then back-end the visit to the Saudis at the end of the week when people are preparing for the weekend. There is usually very little reporting done from Saudi soil.

My sense is that the ISIS offensive has stalled. Granted, all the Iraq border crossings are in the possession of either the Kurds or the Salafis, and the behemoth Haditha Dam is now at risk, but Samarra is secure and the large refinery in Baiji is back under the control of the Iraq Army.

More importantly, the response of Iraq's allies, Syria and Iran, appears to be robust. Syrian planes are reported to have struck ISIS staging areas in western Iraq, and Iran is rushing weapons, munitions and advisers to its neighbor, as well as massing ten divisions of Quds Force troops on the Iran-Iraq border.

This is troubling the Obama administration. Kerry said in Brussels yesterday that he was worried about the war being widened, which means that he is worried about Syria, Iran and Iraq acting in concert with their Russian benefactor to successfully beat back the ISIS blitz.

ISIS has to be overextended at this point. Losses will begin to mount. U.S. duplicity is already beginning to sink in. Citizens in the homeland are either completely confused and therefore upset or are hip to the game the administration is playing and are upset. That is why Obama's approval and disapproval ratings are edging into dangerous territory. This game of pretending to be concerned about the jihadi assault on Iraq all while doing nothing to counter it, choosing instead to complain about Syria, Iran and Iraqi Shiites has a short half-life.

So expect a game-changer shortly after Kerry huddles with the exporters of Wahhabi terrorism. Some sort of Vesuvius of provocation, like an incident in the skies over Iraq where one of those U.S. P-3 surveillance planes will be said to be shot down by a Syrian MiG. This will allow reprisal attacks by the U.S., probably with a NATO assist, allowing ISIS to establish an expanded front in Syria.