By newsfirstusa 
JERUSALEM — Upcoming Turkey-backed radical Islamist forces seized the pivotal Syrian town of Hama on Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cheered the astonishing army move of his allies.
“I would say we hope for this advance to continue without any issues,” Erdogan mentioned on Friday, in step with a Reuters record.
He added that the capital town of Damascus, the place Syrian dictator Bashar Assad is living, is the target. “The target is Damascus.”
Erdogan persevered, “However, while this resistance there with terrorist organizations is continuing, we had made a call to Assad,” regarding his technique to Assad previous this date to satisfy and normalize ties upcoming greater than a decade of animosity.
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Rebels in northwest Syria seized army cars belonging to the regime alongside the path towards Kweris Airport within the japanese nation-state of Aleppo on Dec. 2, 2024. (Rami Alsayed/NurPhoto by means of APRami Alsayed/NurPhoto by means of AP)
“These problematic advances continuing as a whole in the region are not in a manner we desire, our heart does not want these. Unfortunately, the region is in a bind,” he mentioned, with out elaborating.
Erdogan’s feedback about terrorist entities throughout the ranks of the insurgency are an obvious connection with the U.S.-designated terrorist crew Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the previous Islamist Al-Qaeda associate that is a part of the rise up power.
Turkey is a member of the American-led NATO alliance. Turkey’s reported backup of terrorist teams like Hamas and its purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems has prompted outrage amongst many U.S. lawmakers.
In step with the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which tracks the civil conflict within the fractured Syrian Arab Republic, HTS is now inside hanging distance of the pivotal crossroads town of Homs.
SOHR reported on Friday that HTS and its allies are a trifling one kilometer from the military academy in Homs.
The army coaching facility in Homs is the most important within the war-torn nation.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks to supporters at his birthday party’s Istanbul mayoral candidate Murat Kurum’s marketing campaign rally on March 29, 2024 in Istanbul. (Burak Kara/Getty Pictures)
The great journey of HTS and its coalition companions of their rapid-fire seizure of Syria’s second-largest town, Aleppo, utmost generation and now Hama has upended an already unstable Heart East. Various nations throughout the Productive Crescent area—Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq—are immersed in wars and conflicts spanning numerous ranges of depth.
Israel Protection Forces (IDF) introduced on Friday that it’s “reinforcing aerial and ground forces in the Golan Heights area” that borders Syria.” IDF troops are deployed along the border, monitoring developments and are prepared for all scenarios, offensive and defensive alike. The statement added that, “The IDF won’t withstand warnings akin the Israeli border and can thwart any blackmail towards the Condition of Israel.”
The IDF announced it was reinforcing its border with Syria on the Golan Heights following developments in Syria. (IDF Spokesman’s Unit.)
Another neighboring country, Jordan, reportedly closed its Jabber crossing with Syria as rebel troops closed in on those areas.
Emad Bouzo, a Syrian American physician and a veteran political commentator on Syria, told Fox News Digital, “The pictures now leaking from Homs are completely matching to people who got here out of Hama hours earlier than its liberation, particularly on the subject of the immense convoys of vehicles departure town, the low morale of the regime’s military, and the demographic composition of the villages and cities keeping apart Homs and Hama, that have lengthy historical past of opposing the regime. Subsequently, it’s tough to expect what is going to occur within the coming hours and days, despite the fact that the army stability recently tilts in partiality of the Syrian opposition.”
An anti-government fighter covers his ears as a multi-barrel rocket launcher fires against regime forces in the northern outskirts of Syria’s west-central city of Hama on Dec. 4, 2024. (Bakr al Kassem/AFP via Getty Images)
He continued, “The possibly expectation appears to be that Russia will do what it may possibly to ban town from falling to the opposition, and if it can not achieve this militarily, it’s going to do what it may possibly to drive Turkey for a cease-fire in order that the regime can catch its breath.”
The expected battle of Homs is a high profile military campaign for the HTS. It will pit the U.S.-classified sponsors of terrorism, Iran’s regime and its ally Hezbollah, against the HTS coalition.
The U.S. also considers Syria’s regime a state-sponsor of terrorism.
Bouzo said Homs is the “the primary transportation hub for Iranian militias.” He noted that Hezbollah controls entire areas, like Talbisehm a town in the Homs province.
“Homs may be a hall for the Syrian regime to the Syrian coast, the place Russian army bases are concentrated. It additionally methods the human reservoir for the Alawite sect, on which the Assad people’s rule is predicated, along the Syrian capital, Damascus. Therefore, it’s anticipated that the regime, Hezbollah, and Russia will do the entirety they are able to to secure this town underneath their keep an eye on.”
A picture taken at the entrance of the Kweyris military airfield in the eastern part of Aleppo province on Dec. 3, 2024 shows a portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a national flag in the garbage dumpster following the take-over of the area by rebel groups. (Photo by RAMI AL SAYED/AFP via Getty Images)
The power politics of Syria largely pits two Islamist Mideast nations against each other: the Sunni Turkey government versus the Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran. Tehran has backed Assad’s regime since he launched a massive violent crackdown on the growing pro-democracy Syrian movement in 2011.
Former Israeli Ambassador to Jordan Jacob Rosen, who has expertise in Syria’s complex demographics, told Fox News Digital that Iran and Turkey “are the obese gamers who’re ex-empires who need to progress again to the respect” of their rule over large swathes of the Mideast.”
“If Turkey controls Syria, it can encircle the Kurds,” mentioned Rosen, a fluent Arabic speaker. Turkey has introduced assaults over the years towards pro-U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish forces in northern Syria.
Rosen perspectives Erdogan’s include of the HTS offensive on Friday as a blackmail from Turkey to Iran’s regime. “Don’t do stupid things,” is the message Erdogan is sending Tehran, famous Rosen.
The obese query for the U.S., the Ecu Union and Israel is, “Who is going to save Assad?”, Rosen requested.
Russia, the Lebanese terrorist motion, Hezbollah and Iran in the past rescued Assad from defeat. Then again, Russia is ate up with a prolonged conflict in Ukraine.
Rosen mentioned the re-kindled Syrian rebel towards Assad has unfold to the southern Syrian province of Daraa—the birthplace of the 2011 revolt. He termed the fast-moving occasions in Darra as “mini-rebellions” and mentioned some Syrian regime forces defected.
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Combatants input the Rashidin district at the outskirts of Aleppo on their motorbikes with smoke billowing within the background all over combating on November 29, 2024, as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadists and allied factions proceed their offensive within the Aleppo province towards executive forces. (Photograph by means of BAKR ALKASEM/AFP by means of Getty Pictures)
The stakes are top in Syria and for the heartland of the Mideast. Rosen referenced the past due British journalist, Patrick Seale, who authored books on Syria. “The hegemony of the Middle East depends on who will rule Syria,” mentioned Rosen with admire to Seale’s core concept in regards to the significance of Syria for the area.
Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the Islamist chief of HTS, who has a $10 million bounty on his head from the U.S., lately gave an interview to CNN, when he mentioned, “The seeds of the regime’s defeat have always been within it… the Iranians attempted to revive the regime, buying it time, and later the Russians also tried to prop it up. But the truth remains: this regime is dead.”
Rosen summarized al-Golani’s interview as “He wants to appeal to the West. The former ambassador added al-Golani “is aware of everybody in Syria isn’t Islamist. For the moment being, he’s taking part in it very average.”
Bouzo said the media’s focus “on the concept the opposition combating the regime are Islamic does now not alternate the truth that the alternative facet may be Islamic militias, however Shiite ones supported by means of each Iran underneath [Ali] Khamenei and Russia underneath [Vladimir] Putin. The Syrian regime itself is accused of committing conflict crimes towards its personal folk, together with the usefulness of chemical guns.”
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The United States has some 900 troops in Syria as part of a coalition effort to defeat the Islamic State terrorist movement. The U.S. government said it is not involved in the Syrian civil war.
With a view toward the future of Syria, Bouzo said “In fact that the new occasions give the US, underneath its pristine incoming management, a possibility to crack the impasse at the Syrian record by means of pressuring all events to push towards enforcing a political answer thru Solution 2254 and founding a transitional governing frame to lead this nation, which has suffered plethora within the pace years.”
Reuters contributed to this report.