Dousing Iran’s Ring of Fire

By: Ilse Strauss, News Bureau Chief

Thirteen years after the opening shots of the Syrian Civil War rang out on March 15, 2011, the devastating conflict came to an abrupt finale—against all odds and all in just over a week. Damascus fell to a coalition of rebels led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on December 8, 2024, ending Bashar al-Assad’s 24-year rule and more than 50 years of Assad family dominance.

Few in Syria seemed to mourn the end of the Butcher of Damascus or his family’s legacy. Al Jazeera all but fondly described Assad senior, Hafez, as “a sociopath in a well-tailored suit” who slaughtered Syrians by the thousands, crushing any seed of opposition before it could sprout into resistance. When Assad junior took the helm in 2000, hopes were initially high that he would do better. Yet Assad junior one-upped his father on mass incarceration, torture, extra-judicial killings and atrocities against his own people. History will remember him as the dictator who governed Syria as a totalitarian police state and repressed peaceful protests against his regime, ultimately sparking a civil war in which half a million people were killed and six million became refugees. And then, when Assad saw the writing on the wall, he covertly fled to Moscow, leaving those who did his bidding to face the music.