The rebel offensive came at a moment of relative weakness for three of Syria’s most important supporters. Iran’s ability to help has been curtailed by its conflict with Israel; Russia’s military has been sapped by its invasion of Ukraine; and Hezbollah, which had previously supplied fighters to aid the Assad government’s fight against the Islamic State, has been battered badly by its own war with Israel.

By pulling out of Syria all of its civilian and military personnel (including two generals who escaped to Iraq just in time to avoid capture or worse), Iran demonstrated to Assad that Iran not be aiding him to remain in power. The wretched performance of the Syrian army in city after city did not instill confidence in others — Iran and Russia — that any help they might have given would be enough. And neither country, even if it had had some residual faith in the Syrian Army, was in a condition to provide such help if it wanted to. Russia had done some minor bombing in Aleppo, but most of its planes in Syria were sent back months ago to help in the war against Ukraine. And Russia could not spare any soldiers to fight on the ground in Syria. Moscow has severe recruitment problems — many young Russians subject to the draft have left the country — and has had to hire at least 12,000 North Korean soldiers as an emergency measure.

Nor was Iran in a position to help out Assad. It has been weakened by recent Israeli attacks that destroyed many of its anti-missile defense systems, reduced to rubble its ballistic missile plants, and devastated as well a secret nuclear research facility at Parchin. Right now Tehran has to wonder whether, and when, Israel will launch an attack on its nuclear program. Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has just announced on December 7 that Iran is “dramatically” accelerating its enrichment of uranium to up to 60% purity, close to the roughly 90% level that is weapons grade. Israel must now be factoring that unsettling news into its own calculations — perhaps it cannot wait until Trump assumes office, but will have to act against Iran’s nuclear program now. And the Iranians, of course, are wondering whether Israel will be prompted to unleash such an attack. In such a threatening environment, Iran was not about to send its own men and weapons to help out Assad’s failing army.

And then there is Hezbollah. In the last few months, Israel has devastated the Lebanese Shi’a group. It has killed 4,000 of its fighters and wounded, by means of the “exploding pagers” and “exploding walkie-talkies,” several thousand more so severely that they can no longer fight. The IDF has decapitated the entire leadership of Hezbollah, including its leader Hassan Nasrallah and his successor Hashem Safieddine. It has killed both the commander and the deputy commander of the Radwan Force, Hezbollah’s most elite unit. It has killed dozens of Hezbollah commanders. It has confiscated 155,000 weapons. It has reduced Hezbollah’s arsenal of weapons to 20% of what it possessed before the war. In short, Hezbollah was in no condition to do more than send a handful of soldiers to Homs to act as what Hezbollah described as “supervising forces” — presumably to advise, and direct, the Syrian soldiers who were in the city but rudderless. Obviously they were ineffective; Homs fell within a day or two, just like Aleppo, Hama, Daraa, and now Damascus. It will be fascinating to see what the Sunni jihadis do to any Hezbollah troops they capture.

Assad is now in flight, with his winsome wife, who once graced the cover of Vogue (how have the mighty fallen), presumably to Iran, the only country where he is likely to be given shelter. One wonders where Assad has stashed the tens of billions of dollars he “earned” from his grand theft of the Syrian treasury, and from the sale of fentanyl made in Syrian factories, the pills the being delivered by Hezbollah members to drug traffickers in Europe and the rich Gulf states of the Gulf.

Now the rebels rule in Damascus. But will these groups continue to cohere, given how various are their views? Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s leader, Mohamed al-Jolani, insists the group has broken with its Islamic jihadist, Al-Qaeda-connected past. We’ll have to see if this is taqiyya or the truth. Another major group in the anti-Assad coalition is the Free Syrian Army, a secular and democratic group. One of its senior commanders just gave an interview to the Times of Israel, claiming that he hoped now for friendly relations with Israel, that he was mindful of, and grateful for, the role Israel had played in weakening both Hezbollah and Iran, Assad’s main allies. If that view of Israel were to prevail among Syria’s new rulers, that could refashion the Middle East.

AUTHOR

Hugh Fitzgerald

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.