Assad’s army and Iranian, Hizballah allies suffer defeats

The Syrian army and its Hizballah and Iranian backers suffered a row of serious defeats this week on three Syrian warfronts. After the fall of Idlib in the north Saturday to the Islamist alliance led by the Nusra Front – the largest piece of territory lost to Assad’s forces since the fall of Raqqa to the Islamic State – ISIS went on Wednesday to seize the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, which lies a few kilometers from the presidential palace and central Damascus. Wednesday too, Syrian rebels won the battle for the Nasib crossing to Jordan which commands the main highway link between Damascus and Amman. They are now able to cut off this main land route from Syria to Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries and gained free access to Jordan.