John Metzler

The Assad family dictatorship which has run Syria for 53 years and has withstood 13 years of bitter civil war, has now collapsed in just over a week. A sweeping series of Islamic rebel attacks starting in late November, captured key cities from Aleppo in the north to Homs and Hama which fell like dominoes creating an unstoppable military momentum on the road to Damascus.

The recent round of dizzying Mideast events confronts the current lame-duck Biden Administration with complex policy challenges amid a looming power vacuum.

Assad’s regime was both brutal and brittle. In the early stages of the so-called “Arab Spring” in 2011, it appeared it would crumble quickly. It almost did. But contrary to the rosy-eyed expectations of foreigners viewing the Middle East, the core of the Assad security state held, with Russian and Iranian support to roll back or at least freeze rebel gains. Bashar al-Assad never won, but neither did the gaggle of Islamic fighters opposing him. Until now.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres in a passionate plea to the Security Council stated, “Syria is a crossroads of civilization. It is painful to see its progressive fragmentation.”

The civil war has raged for 13 years with hundreds of thousands killed on all sides and creating one of the........

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