The US is moving close to direct military intervention in Syria once again, but this time focusing on ISIS, not on the Assad government. Having long cynically armed the Syrian rebels against Assad, with a lot of those arms going to ISIS, they’ve changed their allies of convenience.

Now, reports have the US providing targeting intelligence to the Assad government against ISIS, in particular giving them intel on the location of ISIS leaders.

The reports say the US is funneling the intelligence to Syria, still officially an “enemy,” by way of Germany’s BND. The changing narrative is likely to go public eventually as well, however, with Syria hoping for a long-term rapprochement.

The great thing, from the Syrian perspective, is that they don’t actually have to change their behavior, and they can go from a nation the US is angrily condemning for its brutality to a US partner in the war against the newest enemy, in the newest US adventure.

With talks of US military intervention in Syria growing, the US would no doubt prefer to have Assad on board, since then they can claim to be operating “at the request” of an ally, even if it’s a enemy-turned-ally for the sake of war.

The wild-card in all of this is Israel, which has for awhile been touting ISIS as preferrable to Assad, on the notion that Assad, as a Shi’ite, is closer to Iran than ISIS would be. It’s only in the past few months they’ve really even started acknowledging ISIS as a problem for them.

US officials are also touting the Assad military’s airstrikes having killed Abu Mosa, an ISIS press official. It wasn’t so long ago the US was griping about every Syria airstrike, regardless of the target.