Bashar al-Assad’s fate was and still is the main stumbling block. Putin has publicly called for relying on Damascus as a foundation for combatting ISIS, while Obama called the Syrian leader a dictator and once again said that the US expects him to leave power. For many US observers, Obama’s bold statements are not so much an expression of his inflexible will as they are an attempt to masque his qualms on this issue. To fight in Syria against ISIS and the al-Assad regime at the same time, which is now the official approach of the US, would mean bringing about increasingly unmanageable and unpredictable contradictions. Renouncing the demand for the Syrian leader to resign seems impossible, since it puts into question the Syrian policy over the last four and a half years. However frightening the prospect of leaving Syria in total ruin may be, this is the most likely outcome of the contradictory approaches advocated by Russia and the US. This could spell the onset of a different, more catastrophe-prone environment in the Middle East. In any event, by taking Damascus, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi would take his bid to create a caliphate one step closer to reality.