What Assad's fall means beyond Syria

Russia and Iran scramble to forge new ties with Syrian rebels as Israel seeks to exploit opportunities and Turkey emerges as 'main winner'

Syrians living in Turkey hold a large poster of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after Syrian rebels announced that they have ousted President Bashar al-Assad
The balance of power in the region has shifted with many predicting Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan emerging as a major beneficiary
(Image credit: Tolga Uluturk /ZUMA Press Wire / Shutterstock)

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said the toppling of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was a "humiliation" not just for the deposed president himself, but for the Russian and Iranian regimes who supported him.

No decision has yet been made on whether the UK government will remove Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the rebel group that toppled the old regime, from a list of banned terrorist groups, said the BBC. But with the Middle East facing a moment of reckoning, it is not just Britain that is scrambling to adjust to the new post-Assad era.

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Elliott Goat is a freelance writer at The Week Digital. A winner of The Independent's Wyn Harness Award, he has been a journalist for over a decade with a focus on human rights, disinformation and elections. He is co-founder and director of Brussels-based investigative NGO Unhack Democracy, which works to support electoral integrity across Europe. A Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellow focusing on unions and the Future of Work, Elliott is a founding member of the RSA's Good Work Guild and a contributor to the International State Crime Initiative, an interdisciplinary forum for research, reportage and training on state violence and corruption.