The Assad Regime May Not Survive the Weekend

By Noah Rothman

Friday, December 06, 2024

 

Twenty-four hours ago, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad’s regime appeared to be teetering. As of this writing, it is unclear if the Baathist despotism in Damascus can survive the weekend.

 

It’s just that regime positions continue to melt away as a combination of rebel advances seize town after town, city after city. It doesn’t seem as though pro-regime forces can mount any fight at all.

 

Now, after seizing the city of Hama in quick succession after the sacking of Aleppo, the most mobile of the anti-Assad insurgent groups — the Turkish-backed Islamist organization Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — is moving on Homs.

 

If Homs were to fall, it would open the road to the Syrian capital, cut Assad’s force off from access to Syria’s ports, and limit regime elements’ capacity to access areas of the country outside Damascus and its surroundings. There are reports that Syrian forces are preparing a strategic withdrawal from Homs in preparation for the coming siege (just as Assad forces have reportedly fled from Deir ez-Zor in the east and Daraa in the south).

 

If Homs collapses, the regime will have all but lost its ability to protect itself against rebel forces. That open secret has led some Middle Eastern states to prepare for a post-Assad future. “Egyptian and Jordanian officials have urged Assad to leave the country and form a government in exile,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. That report maintained that Assad himself continued to monitor the deteriorating situation from the capital, but his family has already escaped to Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

 

The speedy implosion of the Assad regime seems to have caught Western intelligence agencies off guard, but they will have to catch up quickly. A new status quo is emerging rapidly in the region. And while the West can allow itself a moment to celebrate the end of an anti-American regime with U.S. blood on its hands and the failures of his Iranian and Russian backers, Western capitals will have to grapple with the reality of a potentially Islamist-flavored successor regime very soon.