The United States-led coalition marshalled to confront the Islamic State, the brutal jihadist group that controls a large swathe of Syria and Iraq, has launched systematic air strikes against IS positions and targets in Syria as well as Iraq. They comprise besides the US, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Jordan as well as Qatar in a supportive role.

Before the air strikes began, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif charged most of the alliance’s members, whom he dubbed a “coalition of repenters”, with contributing to the Islamic State’s rise by supporting armed opposition to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. While not far off the mark the Iranian minister would have hit the nail squarely on the head had he included Russia, a member of the coalition, as well as his own country, though it had not been invited to the alliance’s founding meeting in Paris earlier this month.

…James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, co-director of the Institute of Fan Culture of the University of Wurzburg and the author of a blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a forthcoming book with the same title.