The Middle East never loses its capacity to surprise. This week the surprises are from Syria, where the embers of the long-smoldering rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime have burst into flames. With Mr. Assad’s Hezbollah allies decimated, his Russian backers stretched in Ukraine, and his Iranian paymasters reeling under Israel’s hammer blows, the rebel forces smelled weakness, and they came down from the hills.
The collapse of Mr. Assad’s poorly trained army of sullen conscripts humiliated the regime. The loss of Aleppo has wounded it. Before civil war wrecked the Syrian economy, Aleppo was the country’s commercial capital. It’s where Mr. Assad kicked the rebels to the curb in four years of bitter warfare starting in 2012. The regime’s 2016 victory in Aleppo signaled to the world that Mr. Assad was here to stay.
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