Somewhere....probably around 2008 era...the Saudis and the US sat down and had this idea of toppling a number of governments in the Middle East for some positive measure. It was a paper-dream....but President-to-be Obama and his staff bought off on this.
If you sit down and look at the attempted civil war episodes....it really didn’t take much effort.
One should note...it failed totally in Egypt, and by that point....everyone was getting smarter.
I think the ISIS folks were all labeled ‘good’ and part of the episode to overthrow Assad. That gimmick worked for months, then the war stalled, and ISIS flipped to run their own war, under their own terms.
I don’t think either the Saudis or the US have any control over this mess now, and a lot of exterior players (Europeans, Egyptians, Turks, etc)....have all figured out the scheme and have a sour taste in their mouth over what the US/Saudi plan was about. Even the US and Saudi relations are so bad....that the Saudis are actually talking to Israel and Russia...over the US.
The same reason Muammar Gaddafi
who gave up his nuclear program and was fighting terrorist had to go.
Syria is almost exclusively owned by Susan Rice and Samantha Power, who completely misinterpreted the nature of the “Arab Spring.”