It was not a coincidence that the Syrian group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) began its push for the city of Aleppo on the same day that Israel and Hezbollah agreed a ceasefire to end the fighting in Lebanon. The domino effect set in motion by Hamas on 7 October 2023 is still rippling through the Middle East, this weekend resulting in the spectacular downfall of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad.
A country that suffered under a Ba’athist regime for 60 years, as well as 14 years of civil war, is celebrating hard-won freedoms as thousands of disappeared people pour out of Assad’s infamous prisons. What comes next in Syria, which still has to grapple with deep internal and sectarian problems, is uncertain. In Iran, though, the picture is clearer: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can no longer deny that Tehran’s political and military “axis of resistance” has collapsed.
