The rebels originally planned to take control of the “King’s Road” north of Damascus and reach the outskirts of Aleppo, while continuously bombarding the regime. However, the disintegration of the 25th division of the Syrian army in the Aleppo area opened up an opportunity for them to make significant progress. “They did not intend to overthrow the regime and occupy Damascus,” emphasizes Yaari.
The rebels, some of whom were active in the rebellion movements in the region a decade ago, completed the takeover of the areas that the Syrian army had cleared. They are now about 20 kilometers west of Damascus, on the road connecting Lebanon to the Syrian capital, after a successful encircling movement along the axis. At the same time, the Kurdish forces crossed the Euphrates in the east of the country.
“The most important thing is to get Syria out of the system the Iranians built,” says Yaari. The senior Iranian commentator, Mehdi Rahmati, was quoted as saying “Assad is gone, Hezbollah is lost.” According to Yaari, “These rebels, with all their Islamism and their jihadism, do not pose the same danger as the one coming from Iran.”
Yaari notes that some of the rebel groups received aid from Israel until the Russians entered in September 2015. The forces that attacked from Idlib under the leadership of Muhammad ad-Din, according to his estimates, numbered no more than 30 thousand fighters. “It is not enough to conquer Damascus,” he explains, but points out that they are faced with a limited defense of Syrian armored units and the Syrian Air Force.