Syria is on the verge of collapse as rapidly advancing Islamic terrorist rebels from the north have taken over vast swaths of land from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
In just a little over a week, the terrorist rebels have conquered Aleppo in northern Syria and have quickly moved south, capturing Hama and are now moving through Homs as they move toward the country’s capital city of Damascus.
The situation is so dire that Assad has evacuated his family to Russia and Iran has started to withdraw its military personnel from the country.
“Russia doesn’t have a plan to save Assad and doesn’t see one emerging as long as the Syrian president’s army continues to abandon its positions,” a source told The Telegraph.
Experts on the Russian military said that the country would struggle to evacuate its main airbase in Syria before the terrorist rebels capture it. They believe that all the personnel will be evacuated, but much of the hardware, including some of the military planes used to back the Syrian regime, would be left behind.
Fighting in the Syrian civil war had remained largely quiet since 2020 when a ceasefire was struck, but recent events cracked the forces that had kept the current lines frozen.
The two main events that have changed the situation in the country were Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 and Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists launching an unprecedented terrorist attack in Israel on October 7, 2023.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has siphoned away support that it would send to back Assad’s forces in its fight against the rebel terrorists — primarily Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) that evolved out of Al-Qaeda’s former branch in Syria.
HTS’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, is a terrorist who has a $10 million bounty on his head from the U.S. government.
“Amid the excitement surrounding the potential downfall of the brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad, analysts and the media often overlook that it is happening at the hands of jihadist groups,” said Joe Truzman, Senior Research Analyst and Editor at Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal.
“The prospect of a Syrian state dominated by Islamist factions, especially if they gain access to advanced weaponry pilfered from regime arsenals, undoubtedly raises significant concerns in Israel and the surrounding region,” Truzman added.
Hamas’ massacre of 1,200 people in October 2023 sparked war throughout the Middle East between Israel and Iran and all of Iran’s terrorist proxy groups. Israel has decimated the largest and most powerful of the terrorist groups, Lebanon-based Hezbollah, killing thousands of its fighters, wiping out most of its large arsenal of aerial munitions, and killing off its top leaders and nearly all of its senior commanders. Prior to being severely damaged by Israel’s superior military, Hezbollah was backing Assad in Syria and helped him keep power.
Israel was actively monitoring the situation and is believed to have destroyed a Syrian chemical weapons cache to prevent the weapons from falling into the hands of the terrorists.
“The IDF monitors developments and is prepared for all scenarios, offensive and defensive alike,” said Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi. “The IDF will not tolerate threats near the Lebanon-Syria border and will thwart any threat against the State of Israel.”
