This wasn’t supposed to happen. Even as Turkey, Russia and Iran met in Doha, under the Astana format, Erdoğan was urging Syrian rebels forces onto Damascus to take the Syrian capital. Erdoğan has been waiting for this moment since 2012, since Hillary Clinton as US Secretary of State turned on him and the Syrian opposition he was backing to overthrow the Assad régime.

If myriad elements of the Euroamerican military industrial complex are seeking to pre-empt the Trump presidency by establishing facts on the ground before the Donald takes office, Erdoğan has come from the back to stand head and shoulders above them all.

Trump had previously agreed to take American forces out of Syria, as the Turkish president widened his hold on northern Syria, but the military industrial complex wouldn’t ultimately oblige and American personnel remain backing the Kurdish element in northeast Syria whose long term objective is to create a separate Kurdish state on the Turkish border.

Now 37 different Syrian rebel groups have taken over the main cities of Damascus, Hama, Homs and Aleppo as Assad and his forces retreat to an unknown location. But by far the largest organised armed force on Syrian soil at the moment is the Turkish army, which controls the Syrian National Army (SNA) consisting of the Syrian opposition, many of whose families live in Turkey, which houses a diaspora of some three million Syrians.

This is a crisis of existential proportions somewhat for Iran or Hezbollah who are a process of reorganisation anyway, but more so for Saudi Arabia and the Emirates who welcomed Assad back into the Arab league a year ago as a symbol of the consolidation of the counter-revolution against the Muslim Brotherhood and rise of democratic forces in the Arab world in 2011.

The Emirates leadership has just called for immediate cooperation with Iran on the Syrian question.

Knowing Assad, he is down but not out, and a force will coalesce around him with funding from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates and support from Iran and Iraq. Meanwhile Russia will be unlikely to want to relinquish its bases in northern Syria. The Astana trio having failed around the table, are now gathering their forces on the battlefield. [But see postcript/updates below]

The United States and Israel are in no position to join this battle, although it was they who technically triggered this situation after Israel’s defeat at the hands of Hezbollah in order to draw Hezbollah fighters into a new attritive war in Syria. They are now looking aghast at the results of their actions. The interests of empire in Saudi Arabia have been set back now even more than they previously had been.

Erdoğan had given the green light for the re-supply of HTS by the United States and then ordered his army to allow the ex-al-Qaeda takfiri force out of its imprisonment in Idlib to open the way for the SNA as the Turkish proxy in the coming struggle. This is a geopolitical earthquake and will be a lesson to United States hawks and Israel: be careful what you wish for.

Lead image: by proxy with thanks

P.S. 19.00 GMT Assad is in Moscow and his forces are splitting between the area around Latakia where the Russia bases are and Iraq. Turkish forces, meanwhile, are moving against the Kurds, who are massing their forces in preparation. Israel has taken a slice of Syria along the Golan as a ‘buffer zone.’

‘P.S. 9 Dec. The Syrian opposition flag flying from Syria’s Moscow Embassy means that the Kremlin is not going to rely on the Assad régime any longer in its relations with Syria. Force will not secure Russian bases and personnel there. There has to be a new agreement. Recriminations are flying around Moscow that not enough was done by the Russian forces and air defence systems in Syria to support the Assad régime, in particular by allowing Israel to maintain dominance over the skies. What happens to the Russian bases will then tell us a lot about what is going on politically inside the Syrian opposition. In this regard, much will depend on Erdoğan and his reading of the mood within the Syrian diaspora in Turkey, who mostly all want to return or at least to reclaim property. Within Turkey, Erdoğan’s Syria policy, much criticised over the years, will be seen as being vindicated as Syrian migrants begin to return home.

At the moment there is a drive towards ‘democracy’ in Syria, a time frame of 18 months has been set for elections. As far as Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are concerned this is a return to power of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Sisi régime in Egypt is in a panic. The empire may be claiming victory but the sense of nervousness is clear: when the Arab street has its say the empire and its Israeli cohort pays the price. Last time, democracy was muzzled and a Pinochet figure was put into in power. See this remarkable video of Gerry Connolly (D. Rep Virgina 11^th District) lambasting a State Dept official for supporting the 2013 coup in Cairo. The scene in Syria is different: there is no regime army left …. ….

The greatest dangers are (i) a Libyan scenario developing egged on by Israeli airstrikes and a desire on the part of Arab regimes to undermine democratic developments and (ii) conflict between Turkish and American/Israeli interests in Syria. Taking HTS off the terror list in London and Washington means that the Takfiri group will become a direct tool for American/Israeli interests in that potential conflict. Let’s keep watching… ….

P.S. 9 Dec 15.00 GMT Damascus: Fire and rescue crews are digging in Assad’s gruesome Sednaya prison to open up underground cells which according to waiting families outside the prison gates, contain an estimated 1500 of their missing relatives. This is reminder that the end of the Assad dynasty is the end of a depraved and ruthless political family. Bashar al-Assad ‘s father massacred 38,000 people in the city of Hama in 1982.

P.S. 18.00 GMT Mohamed al-Bashir from Idlib has been appointed Prime Minister of the Syrian transitional government.

P.S. 19.00 GMT Israel has essentially launched a war against Syria, even as the new state just begins life. Israel has taken control of the Syrian town of Quneitra, along with Al-Qahtaniyah and Al-Hamidiyah and the area around Mount Hermon. This military advance and the bombing campaigns as far away as Latakia to destroy all legacy military installations overshadows everything that is happening otherwise in Syria that the al-Bashir government is trying to achieve peacefully. Meanwhile, as Turkey occupies the north and the US the east of Syria, Iran is extending a friendly hand to the Syrian government*.

P.S. 21.00 GMT *An important point needs to be made about Iran’s approach to the Syrian government because of its previous experience with building relations with countries around it that suffered American invasion and occupation. Both Afghanistan and Iraq had historically been enemies of Iran. Today and after years of intensive relationship -building, America having left (or in Iraq’s case almost completely left), these countries have become allies of Iran. It looks like this same experience might well recur in the case of the new Syrian government.

P.S. 10 Dec 08.00 GMT Returning to the point above (21.00 GMT) about Iran contacting the new Syrian government to offer unconditional help in its time of dire need, has to be seen in the context of how historically it has expanded its influence in the Middle East region. Note for instance all the articles that have been written about ‘how Iran won the Iraq War.’ In a few years’ time we will be reading about ‘how Iran won Syrian independence,’

P.S. 08.40 GMT Scott Ritter agrees with my “Joker” take on the Syrian situation. It was only supposed to be a localised attack on Aleppo. No-one was prepared for how it unfolded.

P.S. 2020 GMT I have listened to endless Arabic TV stations and alternate media podcasts on Syria and haven’t heard anything that makes sense. The one thing that is clear to me is that this invasion of Syria is a stratospheric case of overreach on the part of Israel. It has an air force and endless bombs supplied by the US. But it has no army, it cannot occupy. It couldn’t occupy and hold Lebanon in the 1990s and 2000s when its army was still strong. Netanyahu has climbed up the tree, but how is he going to come down? The Arabic TV stations also keep on saying that the US is behind this and that it is agreeing with everything that Israel is doing. But as we said, it was the Joker ‘wot did it.’ The US had absolutely no idea this was going happen. Netanyahu doesn’t care what the US thinks anyway. The US is just staring into space, trying to look the game, like they planned it all. Also the alternate media podcasts, even the really good ones are stuck in the past: Sunnis, Shi’a, Wahhabis, Kurds, this that and the other, are all melting away as irrelevant under the white heat of overreach. The Emiratis are beside themselves. They wanted to organise the return of Assad from Iraq with Iranian and Russian backing. They are not going to get that, and Iran told them as much. Also Russia as per P.S. 9 Dec is flying the opposition flag on the Syrian Embassy rooftop.

The bodies that are coming out of the underground cells in Sednaya prison especially that of the activist Mazen Hamada have condemned the Assad name to Hell for eternity. The fall of Assad had to come and even Ex-Iranian Parliamentary speaker Mohamed Ghalibaf is saying he had to go. Many are mourning the death of the Axis of Resistance, but the Axis is being re-created, re-configured, as we speak, and Israel is the main contributor. What is happening with Israel is that its madness has created a supernova, and a supernova is the explosion of a dying star. When it is all over, whenever it is over: watch out for the blowback.

P.S. Dec 13 Ref the comment above about the “supernova” character of Israel’s aggression against Syria: supernovas are huge. Israel will take a big chunk of Syria. But the blowback will eventually be equally huge. And it will come from a most unexpected quarter. As yet the Joker’s hand isn’t fully played out. There is more to come.