Hama
\nAs armed rebels have advanced at lightning speed in recent days from the north of Syria toward the capital, Damascus, footage online showed statues of the Assad dynasty \u2014 which has kept the country in its authoritarian grip for over 50 years \u2014 crashing to the ground.
\nBut as the figures of President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s deceased father and brother fell to cries of \u201cGod is Great!\u201d the question looming over the astonishingly rapid resurrection of the torpid civil war into a five-alarm fire is whether the rebels might topple the president himself.
\nThe commander of the rebel alliance, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who depicts himself as a reformed zealot from Al Qaeda, has bluntly made that point.
\n\u201cOur goal is to liberate Syria from this oppressive regime,\u201d he said in a video interview with media.
\nWhether the rebels succeed or not, experts believe that an expected brutal fight to control Damascus, and by extension Syria, would constitute the most important confrontation yet in the struggle to remake the region, one ignited on Oct. 7, 2023, with the Hamas-led attack on Israel.
\nThe main regional players \u2014 Israel, Iran and Turkey \u2014 all have a stake in the outcome, which means that the ripples will affect not just the Middle East, but also global powers like the United States and Russia.
\nIf the war in Gaza is the worst manifestation yet of the seemingly intractable Israel-Palestinian dispute, which drew in the armed Lebanese group Hezbollah, analysts call the fight for Syria a far more important struggle to dominate a regional crossroads that influences the entire Middle East.
\n\u201cSyria is the barometer for how power dynamics in the region are changing,\u201d said Mona Yacoubian, head of the Middle East and North Africa Center at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington. \u201cIt is in for a period of chaos in a region that is already on fire.\u201d
\nIsrael\u2019s strategists refer to Syria as the \u201chub of hubs,\u201d which has served as a supply conduit for men and arms to places like southern Lebanon. There, Hezbollah, Iran\u2019s main regional ally, held sway before Israel decimated the group\u2019s ranks by assassinating its longtime leader and much of his top echelon.
\nIsrael also launched direct attacks on strategic air defenses in Iran.
\nIsrael is determined to prevent Iran, which has propped up the Assad regime, from re-establishing those supply lines. It is also not clear how Israel would react to an Islamic-style government in Syria should Mr. al-Assad\u2019s regime fall, especially a government beholden to Turkey\u2019s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been a harsh critic because of the Gaza war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hama As armed rebels have advanced at lightning speed in recent days from the north of Syria toward the capital, Damascus, footage online showed statues of the Assad dynasty \u2014 which has kept the country in its authoritarian grip for over 50 years \u2014 crashing to the ground. But as the figures of President Bashar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448093,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-448059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n