Robin Wright
The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, was ashen-faced in Doha, on December 7th, as he met with envoys from Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, and Qatar to confer about Syria. Rebels were on the doorstep of Damascus just ten days after they had launched a sweeping offensive. By midnight, the representatives of the nations—with disparate political systems and conflicting regional goals—had concurred that the government of President Bashar al-Assad could not survive. They called for an urgent political transition. By dawn, Assad had departed Damascus for Russia, without a word to the people his family had ruled—and gassed, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered—for a half century. “No one believed it could happen,” Araghchi later told Iranian television. “What was surprising was, first, the Syrian Army’s inability to confront the situation, and, second, the rapid pace of developments.” Syria, a geostrategic centerpiece in the Middle East, was abruptly upended. So, too, was the region.
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