Assad's offensive against the last rebel/terrorist stronghold in Idlib is kind of flailing:
Two months of intensive airstrikes by Syrian government forces and their Russian allies, coupled with a fierce ground assault on rebel-controlled Idlib province, have killed hundreds of people and caused massive displacement while achieving little to no gain for President Bashar Assad.
Why?
Crucially, Iran-backed fighters, including members of Lebanon's Hezbollah group whose participation has been key in previous battles, have not joined fight for Idlib[.] ...
Spearheading the offensive on Idlib and northern parts of the central province of Hama is the government's elite Tiger Force led by Brig. Gen. Suheil al-Hassan, a Russian-backed Syrian officer who took credit for some of the biggest government victories in the eight-year conflict.
But he has not succeeded in breaking Idlib's defenses and remains deadlocked. According to opposition activists, elite forces from the Republican Guards and the Fourth Division led by Assad's younger brother, Maher, have recently started taking part in the offensive.
Iran is not allowing its shock troops--Hezbollah and the Shia foreign legion--to participate. And without them, Assad has to rely on his few remaining mobile forces.
As I've noted, the central state in Syria has eroded under pressure of waging the war, and Assad's ground forces are mostly strategically immobile and only useful for defending their own areas. As I noted in this post:
This reflects my comments that the bulk of Syria's forces are strategically static local defense forces. That is why the Tiger Force (as well as other select conventional units--from the very beginning--of what is really a zombie army) and the relatively small force of Hezbollah and Shia foreign legion fighters brought in by Iran are key offensive forces.
So the defeat of rebels around the country does not free up that many troops to concentrate on the remaining rebels.
This is not to say that Assad has lost his war. Of course Assad won. Losing would have been him hanging dead from a lamp post. Or maybe sitting in exile in Russian-occupied Crimea. All these arguments are just about why the price paid for Assad's win was high and why Assad's problems aren't over. I said that. That's valid. But yeah, Assad won.
