Anyone claiming to know exactly what’s going to happen in Syria is either guessing or grandstanding. And neither is helpful. Ignore them.
After nearly a decade and a half, Syria is back in the headlines. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a rebel group long confined to the northwest, has stunned observers by seizing Aleppo and now advancing toward Hama.
For years, it appeared that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had clawed back most of the territory lost to rebels since the uprising erupted in 2011, when peaceful protests in Deraa spiraled into a brutal civil war.
The last few years offered a mirage of stability, with Assad consolidating power thanks to the military and political backing of Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and Iran-linked militias like Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi. But this supposed calm masked the reality: Syria was never truly whole again. The country splintered into zones of influence. HTS controlled the northwest. Turkey-backed rebels (once the Free Syrian Army) held a sliver of the nor…
