If someone had said a fortnight ago that more than half a century of Assad family rule would soon end in Syria, they would have been given little credence. The forces of Hizbullah and Israel were still battling it out in Southern Lebanon; the shocking Killing Fields of Gaza still tugged on the world’s conscience, although without any global player taking measures to stop Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians; and Iran stood poised to launch its threatened retaliation for Israel’s most recent airstrike on October 26. West Asia was indeed in an extremely dangerous and unstable situation, but at least we could rely on a degree of continuity in Syria… couldn’t we?

Then came the November 26 ceasefire agreement that quietened the Hizbullah-Israel front in Lebanon. Both combatants claimed it as a victory, predictably, but with varying degrees of credibility. Hizbullah’s new Secretary General Naim Qassem said the denial of Israel’s war aims thanks to the valour of the Resistance was a victory greater than in July/August 2006. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated the decapitation of Hizbullah’s leaders, including Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, as well as killing “thousands of terrorists”, and toppling “dozens of terror high-rises” in Beirut’s southern suburb, which had set the Hizb back “by decades”. The Israeli leader then laid out three areas the ceasefire would allow Israel to focus on: first - Iran, second - military recovery and resupply, third - increasing pressure on Hamas in Gaza.

Obviously, Netanyahu was not going to add: “Oh yes, our friends in rebel-held north-west Syria are going to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, fundamentally transforming the destiny of the region for years to come.” But future historians will have a tough job arguing there was zero coordination between Israel and Türkiye, whose affiliate Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched their lightning assault on Aleppo on the day of the ceasefire, quickly taking control of Hama, Homs, and finally Damascus less than two weeks later.

We can unpack the HTS-led assault and consider the likelihood, or not, of coordination with Israel. This is a massive victory for opponents of the Axis of Resistance, that is the United States and Israel and their allies, with Türkiye irreversibly – it would seem – joining the group after some fiery anti-Israeli rhetoric in the past year from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan but no corresponding action. It is a massive defeat for Axis members Iran, Hizbullah, the Palestinian resistance, and Assad’s international backer Russia, which has been fighting alongside Syrian forces against the Turkish-backed rebels. The fall of Assad, in this light, resounds around the world, not just the region, on a par with the war in Ukraine. Russia may be an inevitable victor against the smaller and more vulnerable Ukraine, despite all its assistance from the US and its Nato allies, but Moscow has patently backed the losing team in West Asia and will suffer accordingly – not least because of the fate of its naval base at Tartus that allowed its projection of power into the Mediterranean.

Iran’s loss is greater and potentially more destabilizing. Syria’s inaction against Israel over the years was quite striking, especially as not only Hizbullah but Houthi-ruled Yemen and armed groups in Iraq have taken up arms to curb Israel’s campaign in Gaza. One might ask why Assad posed such a threat if all that ever seemed to happen is Syria getting frequently attacked by the Israeli air force and never lifting a finger in response. The answer of course is that Syria under Assad was Iran’s bridge (via Iraq) to the “forward operating base” of Lebanon. That bridge has been washed away, taking with it the formidable – although not formidable enough – deterrence that Hizbullah and its conventional missile capability was able to pose on Israel’s northern boundary. Iran’s options just got narrower and may lead to development of a non-conventional deterrent on home soil. A troubling thought indeed, with regime change in Iran at the top of Netanyahu’s hegemonic wish-list!

Was there an Israeli flex towards Syria from an unwinnable quagmire in Lebanon? It would have been a great way to distract from its failure to put Hizbullah to rout. The failure threatened to undermine Israel’s own deterrent capacity. Meanwhile, from the HTS/Turkish side, an opportunity certainly presented itself thanks to the attritional effect Israeli forces had inflicted on the Islamic Resistance.

Since the Syrian revolution erupted against Assad’s rule in 2011, Hizbullah has played a key role in coordination with regular forces as well as other pro-Assad militias. It was instrumental in regaining Syrian territory taken by al-Qaeda offshoots ISIS (known in Arabic as Daesh) and the Nusra Front (the previous name of HTS), and helped finally rid Lebanon of Syrian rebel infiltration in 2017. It’s a different world in 2024, with Hizbullah blooded if unbowed, and Israel making sure some of its last saturation bombing of Lebanon targeted crossing points into Syria, to prevent any assistance in what would prove to be Assad’s last stand.

Still, the downfall of the Assad government was not high on many people’s late-2024 prediction list, at least not until the last few days – and even then, the collapse of Damascus seemed to happen at extraordinary speed. Little did we know Bashar’s rule must have been hanging by a thread. His passing from power will not be missed in the same way as the assassinated Hizbullah leader. The charismatic and eloquent Nasrallah connected with the masses in an extraordinarily compelling fashion that could never be matched by the awkward-mannered ophthalmologist. He was an unlikely choice to take over after the death of his strongman father, Hafez, who ruled Syria from 1971 to 2000. The more glamorous older brother Basil was always a better fit for dynastic succession, but he died in a road accident in 1994.

But the departure of Assad and Baath Party rule in Syria is likely to be a much more seismic event than Nasrallah’s death.

In 2011, now-national security adviser of the US Jake Sullivan notoriously emailed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – it was then leaked by Wikileaks – saying that al-Qaeda, the precursor of today’s HTS,  was “on our side in Syria”. There is every reason to believe it is still on Washington’s side despite the mental gymnastics required to assimilate the information given the events of September 11, 2001 and what followed. Equally strangely, with its hardline Islamist origin story, HTS is no enemy of Israel and is believed to pose no threat, for example by seeking to liberate the occupied Golan Heights. This is the land captured from Syria by Israel in 1967 and unilaterally annexed by it in 1981, with Washington's more recent approval. The US, which is also militarily present on Syrian territory, will doubtless seek to call most of the shots from now on and Syria’s permanent removal from the list of Israel’s implacable enemies will be an American and Israeli priority.

No one can be sure where Syria is heading after the helter-skelter of events that have unfolded since November 26. Some of the precedents around the Arab world are daunting. The region has experienced violent upheaval and externally imposed regime change in waves since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Millions have been killed, impoverished and displaced as a result. Once stable states have been carved up and devoured by outsiders or insurgents. Creating the chaos of another Libya or post-war Iraq would be a horrifying prospect. Few among us who paid close attention to the march of US-Israeli hegemony in West Asia in the twenty first century are optimistic about the future.