With Assad gone, Middle East battle lines are redrawn

Israeli soldiers stand guard on a security fence gate near the so-called Alpha Line that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria, in the town of Majdal Shams, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024.

It took just 11 days for Syrian opposition groups to force Bashar al-Assad to flee the country and impose a new revision of the strategic map in the Middle East.

The Syrian strongman had for nearly 14 years held off an uprising that many believed had been exhausted. But his downfall followed a series of battlefield convulsions for other allies of Iran.

Israel has all but decapitated the Hezbollah leadership in Lebanon since September, while the killing of Hamas figureheads has dealt major blows to Assad's key backer Tehran.

Andreas Krieg, a security specialist at King's College London, said that Iran and other "Axis of Resistance" members would now have to concentrate on their "home turf."

"And so the axis will lose its transnational flavour and its regional strategic depth."

The lightning speed at which the rebels, dominated by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, took Aleppo and then the country stunned the whole world.

No one in Syria, or in the capitals that opposed or supported Assad, had expected Damascus to fall so quickly. Attention had been focused on the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas and Israel's strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The 59-year-old Syrian leader long seemed secure with the backing of his Iranian, Russian and Hezbollah allies.

Some Arab neighbours had even started moves to normalize relations, strained since the civil war started with the repression of anti-government protests in 2011.

But HTS, which originated from Al-Qaeda before severing ties, smashed that outlook in just a...