MAP UPDATE: The situation in Syria as of 05/12/2024.
Homs also connects Damascus to the western heartland of the Alevis, the Muslim minority to which Assad belongs. For all these reasons, Homs will be hard-fought. It seems that Hama has been given up relatively easily by the government army to better protect Homs. If Iran can deliver substantially more reinforcements to ally Assad. The regime in Tehran has every interest in keeping the Syrian president in power. For example, to enable land supplies from Iran to Lebanon, where the pro-Iranian movement Hezbollah has been weakened by the war with Israel. But the advance is not without risks. On the one hand, just south of Hama, the regime still has the so-called ‘Tiger troops’, an elite unit of the Syrian army that is more loyal and better armed than divisions made up of conscripts. On the other hand, the rebels are at risk from their own success: if they spread their forces over too large an area, they become vulnerable to counterattacks in places they have already captured. The latter risk is now in play east of Aleppo, where the SDF's predominantly Kurdish militants are approaching a rebel-held military airfield. That air base is on a major access road to Aleppo.