'If Homs Falls, I Don't See How the Regime Can Survive'

Rebel forces in Syria continue to win so much territory that it's posing a genuine threat to the regime of Bashar al-Assad. First, the nation's largest city, Aleppo, fell last week. Then came another major city, Hama. Now rebels led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) are continuing their advance south toward Homs, reports the BBC. Homs is the last major city that would separate the rebels from the capital of Damascus further south. And the stakes are enormous:

• "If Homs falls, I don't see how the regime can survive," Jerome Drevon, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, tells the Wall Street Journal.

• Homs is vital "because it lies at the heart of a critical land corridor that runs from Lebanon to Iran, which serves as a pipeline used by Tehran to send weapons, supplies and people to Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese group that is Syria's most important regional ally," per the New York Times.
• Losing the city would also cut Damascus off from Russian military bases on the Mediterranean coast, per the Journal, as well as to what the BBC describes as the "Alawite heartland." Alawites, it explains, make up a sect of Shia Muslims who are loyal to Assad because his family hails from there.
• One key unknown is how willing Russia and Iran will be to intervene, notes the Journal.