EDITORIAL: Dictator falls victim to Hamas’ grave miscalculation

Thank Israel’s resolve for helping to topple Syria’s dictatorship.

Over the weekend, rebel forces succeeded in running strongman Bashar al-Assad out of Damascus. After his father ruled for 30 years, Assad took over in 2000 and ran Syria “with an iron fist that crushed all dissent and relied heavily on the country’s feared security forces,” NPR observed.

With help from Russia and Iran, he managed to stay in power despite a civil war that has lasted more than a decade. Assad is infamous for using chemical weapons on his own people and for leaving thousands of bodies in his wake. He has now found safe haven in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The rebels took advantage of the vacuum created by Putin’s preoccupation with Ukraine and Iran’s evisceration at the hands of Israel in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre. In the ensuing 14 months, the Jewish state’s military response has left Hamas in shambles and put Hezbollah in retreat. Israel has eliminated several terrorist leaders and carried out attacks that have exposed Iran’s weakness.

“By removing the Assad regime, the insurgents — known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — have cut off Tehran’s main proxy militia, Hezbelloh, from its supply lines,” Jonathan Spyer, an analyst for the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis, wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “This was possible because Israel’s mauling of Hezbollah in November, prompting the terror group to accept a cease fire.”

He goes on to note that Israel’s response to Oct. 7 “laid bare the profound inferiority of the Iranians and their allies in direct confrontation.”

It’s important to note that all of this happened in spite of the Biden administration, not because of it. At every turn, President Joe Biden and his foreign policy team sought to restrain Israel rather than encourage its defensive military actions. At the same time, the White House offered a mix of appeasement and hesitation in the face of Iran’s belligerence and its efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

Assad might very well still be in power, and Iran’s mullahs in a state of comfort, had Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acceded to the constant hectoring about “restraint” coming from Mr. Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

How the unrest in Syria ends is the larger question. The United States has designated Hayat Tahrir al-Sham a terrorist organization, but the group’s leaders have disavowed a previous association with al-Qaida and “have tried to gain international legitimacy by eschewing global jihadist ambitions and focusing on organized governance in Syria.” It will now be up to the incoming administration of Donald Trump to keep them on the latter path, creating a more democratic and stable Syria.