A week ago Sunday, I chose “Syria to the fore” as the title for the daily mailer.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an umbrella rebel group mostly comprised of, and generally controlled by, the successor organization to al-Qaeda’s Syrian arm, had just recaptured Aleppo in a lightning offensive.

The last time Syria’s largest (or second-largest, depending on how you count) city was in rebel hands was 2015, when the Bashar al-Assad regime was teetering. It took the combined efforts of Qassem Soleimani, Hassan Nasrallah and Vladimir Putin to recapture Aleppo and, ultimately, restore Assad to power. Soleimani’s dead now. So’s Nasrallah. And Putin’s busy.

On Saturday, there were widespread reports of sporadic, apparently ad hoc, uprisings in the suburbs of Damascus, as well as in Daraa and Sweida. The organized rebel advance, spearheaded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, was marching on Homs after capturing Hama without much in the way of resistance. Long story short, the Assad regime looked poised to fall, this time for real and for good, setting up Abu Mohammad al-Jolani to be Syria’s main powerbroker, if not the country’s new head of state.

Al-Jolani, who commands Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, swore off extraterritorial jihad a very long time ago, but it’d be a stretch to suggest he’s not a jihadist. He was around for, and loosely involved in, the founding of ISIS, and he knew Bakr al-Baghdadi. As Sunni extremists go, Al-Jolani may be what counts as a pragmatist, but no one (probably not even al-Jolani) knows whether his nods to multicultural tolerance are real or just a pretense to smooth the path to power in a post-Assad Syria.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham presided over a kind of Turkey-backed statelet in Idlib, where the group attempted to develop the trappings of municipal governance, an experience al-Jolani imagines he can replicate in other areas. If that’s going to work, he’ll need to convince the locals that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is in fact committed to preserving citizens’ right to worship as they fit, and also to staying out of citizens’ personal lives more generally as long as they don’t challenge his authority.

Color me — and everyone else, for that matter — deeply skeptical. For one thing, Aleppo, Damascus and Homs have around five million people between them. That’s a lot of people to administer for — and al-Jolani will forgive me for this alleged mischaracterization — a reformed terror cell.

Damascus isn’t exactly Zurich, but the people do have some baseline expectations when it comes to quality of life. Simply put: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s taking on a rather daunting administerial task, and it’ll prove well nigh impossible without help from elements of the Assad government, which is to say that if al-Jolani’s serious, he’ll need to co-opt some of the regime’s administrative capacity.

I don’t see how it can work, frankly. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has no real experience governing. It’s still designated by the US as a terror organization, which means it won’t have access to international aid, nor to the international banking system and it won’t be able to sell the country’s oil (or anything else) for hard currency. The Assad regime was survived by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham won’t enjoy any of that backing, and they’ll also need to establish some manner of amicable relationship with the Kurds in the country’s east, because as everyone who’s ever picked a fight with those guys (and gals) knows, they’re hard as hell, bordering on the impossible, to kill.

And yet, some kind of victory for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham seemed all but assured. On Friday, Lebanon closed most border crossings with Syria, a rather ironic turn coming as it did just a month and a half after a brutal Israeli air campaign forced Lebanese to flee by the tens of thousands to Syria. On Saturday, reports indicated Tehran evacuated Iranian military personnel, including Quds operatives and IRGC commanders, who fled to Lebanon through what links to Beirut remained open and also to Iraq. That, in turn, appeared to suggest Iran won’t waste any more fighters from al-Nujaba (the second-most powerful of the Quds-loyal Iraqi militias) in the service of propping up the regime in Syria. In the east, the Kurds reportedly stepped into a power vacuum left by fleeing regime forces in Deir al-Zour.

As for the Russians, warplanes were still assisting the Assad regime as of Thursday (or so), but it seems very likely that the Kremlin will try to negotiate, probably through Turkey, for some kind of exit. Moscow will be extremely reluctant to give up Russia’s naval base at Tartus, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to have a choice. That would be a huge strategic loss for Putin.

In a testament to the immediacy of the situation, officials from Russia and Iran held a meeting with Turkey’s foreign ministry in Doha on Saturday. Russia, Sergei Lavrov said, is “trying to do everything possible to prevent terrorists from prevailing even if they claim not to be terrorists.” Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s in driver’s seat at this juncture. I’ve said this again and again over the years: You don’t want to cross him, snub him or otherwise slight him, because it’ll come back to bite you eventually. He’s a ruthlessly savvy operator, and Assad variously refused to engage him unless and until Erdogan stopped insisting on a Turkish military presence in Syria.

Remember: Erdogan’s deeply involved in this conflict. Turkey backs the opposition in western Syria and insists on maintaining a so-called “buffer zone” in the northeast due to Erdogan’s misgivings (and that’s an understatement of epic proportions) about the Kurds, who he considers to be the worst kind of terrorists, not to mention enemies of the Turkish state.

Lavrov warned, ominously, that Syria was on the verge of spiraling into the kind of melee that typified Iraq post-US invasion or, worse, the sort of abject chaos that prevailed (and still persists) in Libya after Muammar Gaddafi was deposed. Norway’s Geir Pedersen, who serves as the UN’s special envoy for Syria, said it’s “urgent” that all concerned parties agree on an “orderly political transition… starting with the formation of inclusive and credible transitional arrangements in Syria.”

This looks very much like the end for Assad. And I’m not sure al-Jolani, having come this far, is going to be especially interested in a power-sharing arrangement. I know Assad won’t agree to any sort of transition, because how’s that going to look? A transition from what to what? From Saddam-style, pseudo-secular authoritarianism to quasi-Salafi (and there’s an oxymoron for the ages), Islamic fundamentalism? That’d make for a fun press release.

I won’t mince words: Syria’s very likely to become even more of a failed state than it already is. That’s certainly not an argument for propping up Assad again, and at this point it’s not even clear that’s possible. It’s just to say that whatever the problem is, the answer’s never (ever, ever) hardline, Islamic fundamentalism.

Al-Jolani can give all the New York Times interviews he wants, but as much as it pains me, I have to agree with Lavrov on this one: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” he said Saturday, describing Russia’s doubts about Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s high-minded reform rhetoric. However things turn out for Assad, Lavrov went on, “it is unacceptable to allow a terrorist group to take control of territories.”

In remarks posted to, ironically in this context, Telegram, al-Jolani promised to spare regime soldiers who surrender. “We are on the doorstep of Homs and Damascus,” he declared. “The toppling of the criminal regime is near.”