A great many actors had a hand in the fall of Syria’s dictator, Bashar Assad: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist group that led the offensive; Turkey, which nurtured and supported HTS; the myriad Syrian groups and people who gave a hated tyrant a final push.
But Assad’s fall was also the work of a dead man, Yahya Sinwar.
When Sinwar ordered Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023, he meant to revolutionize the Middle East. Today, the region is being remade, just not as Sinwar intended: An astonishingly successful Israeli offensive has left Hamas and the rest of Iran’s "Axis of Resistance” in ruins and has now claimed Assad as its latest victim.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.