THE fall of the Assad regime in Syria cannot be disassociated from the changed political and military geometry in the region. To a very considerable extent, imperialism is conditioning the outcomes of this series of interrelated crises.

Israel’s assault on the very existence of the Palestinian people — unchecked by the “international community,” sanctioned and armed by the US, with the active participation of the EU and Britain, with a massive US naval and airforce presence and with the RAF flying unnumbered missions in support of the Israeli war effort — has changed the balance of power.

The relative weakness of the so-called “axis of resistance” has left imperialism with the initiative. Just five days ago, the US carried out air strikes against Syrian military targets it described as a “threat to US and coalition forces in Syria.”

This campaign has been long in the preparation. Israel’s assault on Hezbollah’s human and material infrastructure and the increased military pressure has degraded Iran’s air defence capacity.

This is now supplemented by a decisive assault on the Syrian state, which, notwithstanding a whole raft of legitimate criticisms that can be levelled against the Assad regime, has been a secular obstacle to both imperial manoeuvres and jihadi assaults.

The Ba’athist regime in Syria, originally a nationalist bid to assert national and Arab sovereignty against British, French and US imperial power, has maintained its rule against a host of opposing forces not only because it had the support, sometimes reluctant, of a wide range of forces — Alawite, Christian, Shia, Kurdish and especially the Sunni commercial classes — but because it stood for the unity and coherence of the secular state.

The main force behind the assault from the north-west of the country is the hastily rebranded (by the Western media) Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), better known under its former al-Qaida nomenclature of al-Nusra.

Its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, after a period in US custody, was released just in time to join in the 2011 rising against Assad. He appears unfazed by a nominal $10 million bounty on his head.

The reactivation of jihadi elements in opposition to Assad’s rule and their forced subordination to HTS, the increased activity of Turkey’s proxies in the region, as well as Kurdish elements, and the related activity of US-sanctioned elements in the parts of Syria over which the Syrian government had lost control and where US troops are stationed fit exactly into imperialism’s plan for the region.

The advance of the British-sponsored forces onto Damascus is part of this multi-state imperialist project, the pivot of which is the assault on the Palestinian nation and the assertion of an Israeli hegemony guaranteed by the Western states.

Thus, when Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy told last Wednesday’s Nato meeting in Brussels that the world was “living in dangerous times” and then pointed the finger at Iran for the conflicts that the region was undergoing, he demonstrated either a mendacious cynicism or the limits of his understanding.

Iran’s foreign affairs spokesman showed greater acuity when he responded last Friday: “While we acknowledge the British Foreign Secretary’s remarks that the world is currently in a fairly dangerous period and is plagued with wars, the question is which actors have a fundamental role in the creation of this situation.”

With the Labour government signed up to the full-spectrum imperial strategy for the region, albeit with Britain’s own proxies in place, the question is: how does the left, the solidarity movements and the progressive elements in the trade union movement give expression to the growing anti-imperialist sentiment stirred into action in solidarity with the Palestinians — but yet not fully engaged in opposition to imperialism’s wider strategy?