Assad regime in Syria may fall in days, US increasingly believes [View all]

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Source: CNN Politics

Updated 2:35 PM EST, Sat December 7, 2024


CNN — Biden administration officials, watching the remarkable speed of the Syrian rebel advance, increasingly see the possibility of the regime of Bashar al-Assad falling within days, five US officials told CNN. If the American analysis proves true, it would represent a spectacularly fast fall from power for the Syrian dictator after a 14-year war, one that had been relatively stagnant until just last week.

Officials cautioned that a formal assessment on Assad’s fate hasn’t emerged and that views vary, saying his demise isn’t a forgone conclusion. “The emerging consensus is that is an increasingly plausible scenario,” one senior US official said. “Probably by next weekend the Assad regime will have lost any semblance of power,” another official said.

“Only thing that would delay a rebel conquest would be a well-organized coup and reorganization, but Assad’s folks have done a good job of stifling any potential competitors,” the official added. Another source familiar with US intelligence about the developments noted that so far, the opposition has made progress because regime forces have largely not stayed in the fight.

But the areas the opposition forces have advanced the most — Aleppo, Idlib and Hama — also are not flush with regime support, so they encountered less resistance, this person said. “The question is whether regime forces actually stand their ground when it comes to Damascus,” they added.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/07/politics/assad-regime-syrian-civil-war/index.html