Mr Kerry, in an op-ed for the New York Times wrote that military action was not enough to defeat Isil: 'What's needed to confront its nihilistic vision and genocidal agenda is a global coalition using political, humanitarian, economic, law enforcement and intelligence tools to support military force.'
The US is to put forward an action plan at a summit meeting of the UN Security Council in September, when Washington will hold the group's rotating presidency.
Meanwhile Mr Kerry and US secretary of defence Chuck Hagel will rally support for an anti-Isil 'coalition', first with European leaders, on the sidelines of the Nato summit meeting Wales, and then in the Middle East.
Such a coalition will likely have to include Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) countries, who, as countries plagued by diplomatic rivalries with each other, make unlikely bedfellows.
The rise to power by Isil however, is reshaping regional politics in the Middle East, as countries who at been at loggerheads for decades, with seemingly inimical values, find themselves confronted with a common, and unprecedented, enemy.
Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia has long seen Iran, a Shia Muslim nation whose government has long sought dominance in the region, as its mortal rival.
But with both now confronted with an extremist power, who could one day compete for the position of chief power in the Muslim world, the two nations appear to be seeking to settle their differences.
Hossein Amir Abdollahian, Iran's deputy foreign minister, this week travelled to Riyadh to meet with Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, media from both countries reported.
John Kerry meets with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah in 2013 (AFP)
It was the highest level encounter between the two nations - who have backed opposing sides in conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen - since the election of Iranian president Hassan Rouhani last year.
On Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia both backed Haider al-Abadi, a Shia politician to replace Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister.
The six nation GCC which has also been the stage for bitter internal rivalries, particularly between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, presented a rare united front on Saturday in 'vehemently denouncing' Isil.
Kuwaiti foreign minister, Sabah Khaled Al-Sabah, said the GCC nations backed a UN Security Council resolution earlier this month aimed at weakening the jihadists.
Creating a coalition from such an array of conflicting nations may be impossible, or at best too slow a process in the face of Isil's advance, Mr Kerry's critics, including US Senator John McCain, have said.
Taking advantage of the chaos, politically and on the ground, jihadists linked to al-Qaeda in Syria attacked a camp for UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights on Saturday.
Whilst 35 Filipino peacekeepers were said to have escaped, a further 40 UN workers remained trapped in a nearby camp, Filipino defence minister Voltaire Gazmin said.
The UN workers reportedly engaged in a gun battle to fend the rebels off.
Earlier this week Jabhat al-Nusra overran the Quneitra crossing - located on the frontier between Syrian and Israeli controlled parts of the Golan Heights - and kidnapped 44 Fijian peacekeepers.
Before the United States and allied countries can begin to target Isil and other extremist groups inside Syria, they need to 'build up partners on the ground', western diplomats have said.
If the US were to conduct airstrikes in Syria, for them to have success against Isil, they would need to be backed by a ground force.
The White House has rejected the possibility of partnering with Bashar al-Assad to attack Isil.
However, attacking Isil, a common enemy of the Syrian regime, without directly aiding Assad, will take some delicate manoeuvring.
A western diplomatic source said Britain and the US were keen to boost assistance to non-extremist rebel groups in Syria, who have, throughout the three year conflict against Assad failed to secure serious military hardware from western nations.
In Iraq, the US has so far pinned its hopes on a political solution, with the Iraqi minister offering political and economic concessions to Sunni tribal leaders, in order to turn them against Isil.
Military intervention alone cannot root out an organisation that has succeeded in Iraq by winning the backing of many Sunni tribal leaders, and communities in the country.
However, some western diplomats have privately agreed it may be impossible for Mr Abadi, a Shia Muslim, to provide the type of assurances that would significantly swing Sunni opinion in Iraq.
For now, however, there appears to be no other viable option.
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