In a lightning offensive launched last week, rebel groups led by the militant Islamist faction Hayat Tahrir al-Sham took the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by surprise. They seized control of the city of Aleppo - the first time rebels have controlled the city since 2016 - and pushed further south toward the city of Hama.
"He [Assad] was able to survive the civil war because of all the assistance he got, and that's gone," Joshua Landis, head of the Middle East studies program at the University of Oklahoma, told The New York Times.
"Israel has changed the balance of power in the region by going on this all-out war on the axis of resistance. Now Assad is all alone," he said.
Charles Lister, a senior fellow and director of the Syria and Countering Terrorism and Extremism programs at the Middle East Institute, wrote this month that the "frozen" conflict in Syria was about to erupt.
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