The Middle East is undergoing a dramatic change right before our eyes, and it is happening at an astonishing pace.
Sunni militias, funded and trained by Turkey and once constrained by Iran-backed forces, recognized an opportunity to bring down the Syrian regime. After a lightning 10-day offensive, rebel forces captured Syria's capital, Damascus, and toppled the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, who escaped to Moscow with his family.
The Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel group, or HTS, led by Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani, claimed the president was no longer in the capital, writing: "We declare the city of Damascus free of the tyrant Bashar al-Assad."
HTS is the successor organization to former Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and has long held power in much of Idlib province, per the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
The sweeping offensive comes as Assad's former backers in the war became embroiled in other conflicts.
Without Iranian support and with Russia no longer in a position to intervene, given that it is bogged down in its war against Ukraine, the rebels managed to advance with incredible speed.
"For many years the Syrian government has been engaged in this civil war, backed by three main players: Iran, Russia and Hezbollah. All three of those players have been distracted and weakened by conflicts elsewhere," U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday.
The swift collapse of Assad's regime represents a devastating defeat for Iran, the latest in a string of setbacks that have shattered long-held assumptions in the West about Tehran's military capabilities.
In recent months, Iran has proved unable to stop Israel from targeting key figures in the regime, defend itself from damaging Israeli airstrikes, or protect Syria, an ally next door that served as a crucial link in its regional terror proxy network.
Over the past two years, Israel has conducted numerous attacks in Syria against Iranian military assets as well as Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups in the country.
Iran's influence in the region is now severely curtailed. It no longer has the clout it had just several weeks ago. Hamas is decimated. Hezbollah is severely weakened. And now Syria has fallen.
Even Moammar al-Eryani, information minister of Yemen's government, admitted as such when he wrote in a post on X that Iran's "expansionist project, which used sectarian militias as tools to complete the Persian Crescent, sow chaos, undermine the sovereignty of states " is collapsing."
The Middle East is now witnessing a return to Sunni dominance, with the old borders drawn up haphazardly in 1916 by British and French diplomats Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot respectively, now decidedly unraveling.
The old order is crumbling.
The dramatic events taking shape in Syria will have far-reaching implications for the country and for the Middle East region.
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