The Western Europeans like France and the UK were hot to overthrow Assad like they were Qaddafi - and dragged Obama into it to be fair - because they also want that Gulf pipepline through Syria because of Russia using oil and gas as leverage against them. That still to me is the theory that makes most sense.
Your theory makes a lot of sense. Now carry it out further. Where has all the new natgas been found? In the southeastern Med, off the coast of Israel, Syria, Egypt, Cyprus. Israel and Cyprus are going online with the first well next year I think. So rather convenient that the Russians who as you know are basically the sole provider of gas to Europe at this moment show up to defend their warm water port. We basically gave Syria to them! We had no defensive measures in place, and we had already ostracized ourselves by supporting the “overthrow assad forces” (who are also probably ISIS but if not we are in no place to refute it if the Russian say they are), and even if we tried to reassure Assad we could not be trusted by Assad after Qaddafi fell. Assad had no choice and really I am surprised he held out this long.
This president of ours has really made a mess. We spent decades and fortunes to bring the entire hemisphere under western influence in the post war era, and with Sadat we finally did. How did Obama get outplayed in, like a weekend? Either his moronic view of “unilateralism” and he was duped, or he was plain not watching his flank but after Iraq and Libya you would think he would have learned to try to defend some modicum of political stability.