I am not a specialist but my intuition is that history does play a role in France&#x27;s hostility to Al Assad. France has been traditionally close to Lebanon and the Syrian sponsored violence and terrorism didn&#x27;t go well with the French diplomacy (Chirac in particular was personally outraged by the assassination of Hariri).<p>But I doubt it has anything to do with ISIS. It&#x27;s a relatively recent creation, and mostly a Saudi inspired organisation so I doubt there is much to do with France.<p>I think France is mostly involved because they are the largest western contributor country to ISIS in term of jihadists.