Having vowed to retake every inch of his country’s pre-2011 territory, and made clear his disdain for an actual cease-fire, the Syrian president evidently believes he can only benefit from fighting on. After all, opposition forces are suffering from both military defeat and defections to jihadist groups, Islamic State is on the defensive, Russian and Iranian support seems unlimited, and no substantial Western aid is forthcoming for the rebels. Nonetheless, argues Ari Heistein, much is not going in Damascus’ favor:

[T]he Assad regime’s ability to function as a fighting and governing force is being steadily degraded by the grinding civil war and the growing cracks in its bases of support. Therefore, [it] is unlikely to expand its control over Syrian territory dramatically in the near future, [primarily because of] domestic issues such as its declining ability to maintain a centralized and cohesive fighting force and poor governance in areas under regime control.

Because the battered and exhausted Syrian Arab Army is spread so thin, foreign forces and local militias play an outsized role in the civil war. The decentralization of military control throughout the country has accentuated conflicting interests among different pro-regime groups, which has even resulted in clashes among these forces on the battlefield. . . . The Russian and Iranian military interventions have stabilized the Assad regime, but not facilitated its conquest of significant swaths of territory by any measure. . . .

As for governing the civilian population, there has been a growing voice of discontent even among the Alawite backbone of the regime, as evident from protests against corruption and security lapses as well as the Alawite religious establishment’s disavowal of the Assad regime. Since the outbreak of the war, the notorious corruption among Syrian government officials is reported to have become even more severe, as the steep decline in the value of Syrian currency has led state employees to supplement their wages with bribes. . . .

[Even if the regime does win back more territory], controlling a hostile population will present a nearly impossible task, considering that many of the regime’s local networks for control have been destroyed. [In short, it is a] fantasy that [Assad’s] overstretched, fragmented, and corrupt regime can reconquer and hold much more of Syria.

While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.