Middle East looking messier than ever

Washington

CHAT with any foreign policy maker in Washington or, for that matter, in major European and Middle Eastern capitals, and ask him or her to assess the future of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the IS, and a general consensus emerges: The fight against ISIS is now entering its final stages. The defeat of the radical Islamist group and its so-called caliphate in the parts of the Levant and Mesopotamia it now controls is just a question of time.

After months of preparation and numerous delays, there are rising expectations that the campaign to drive the IS out from its capital in eastern Syria, as well as from an oil-producing area to the south of the city, through military campaigns led by US-backed Kurdish and Syrian groups, has been gaining momentum.