Regarding political support: UAE (emirates) backs Assad these days hard. Economical reasons, they have had a thaw for years and reallignment. As does Iraq of course. Saudi Arabia has had a reallignment with Assad too. Written much about this. Even Turkey have done this, but Assad slapped their wrist not long ago (unwise).
To make it more complicated, UAE and KSA (Saudis) used to support the jihadist factions to the hilt previously. Now they don’t. At least not officially, maybe some intel officers does.
Jordan: Supports FSA in the south, but has re-alligned with Assad.
Taliban (yes, the Taliban, way more powerful than most people are aware in the Jihadist world landscape) backs HTS. HTS, while not really Al Qaida proper, is backed by everyone who likes Al Qaida. The ideological differences are…slim. When I said above somewhere that HTS has had an influx of more than 10 000 jihadists in latter months, I was not exaggerating. From Afghanistan, Pakistan, China +++, they have come, heeding al-Jolanis call. Turkey cooperates because this faction is by far, the strongest and most dangeorus in war (it’s not exactly convenient for Turkey to fight agains them).
Turkey: SNA-anti Kurds and Assad.
The West:
France: Cautious reallignment with Assad, same with the Brits. Still anti assad, but no longer involved. Assad was winning after all.
The Americans: On their way out, does little to support anyone. They are supposed to protect the Kurds.
Russia: You know that. Assad, sometimes Kurds in the north like the Americans because they counter Turkey.
Israel: Anti-Assad and Iran: Bombs Iran and Hezbollah as well as SAA (Syrian Arab Army) regularly when they feel they need to. Unclear how israel reacts to this. They are a bit busy anyway. It’s not a dream scenario for Israel that Syria is overtaken by sunni jihadists that are pro-Hamas, but at the same time, Assad = Iran.
And much more. The mistake most do, however, is to remove the agency from, and underestimate the brain power of al-Jolani and his global jihadist allies. They are not dumb, they know war. And yes, they know how to fight conventional war. But I know, popular to always blame the orchestrations of a major “colonial state”, more convenient that. Primary actors behind this is however the Jihadist spider web, led by al-Jolani in Syria and Turkey, respectively.
It’s complicate and not easy street-level conspi-theory of “USA-NATO is behind this” or “Israel is behind this and planned it all in 3 weeks and magically controls the Taliban and Al Qaida”; yes ?
But of course, the Lebanon war (and Ukraine obviously, which plays a larger role since Russian support more critical than Hezbollah) role plays a large role, people are very right about that, just not for the reasons they think. Why ? Well, Hezbollah has withdrawn from Syria to counter Israel, as has mostly Iran. So has Russia.
Obviously this makes starting a large scale offensive significantly more timely and fruitful. It is extremely unlikely that all of this would have happened if Russia was not stuck in Ukraine, iran was not busy, Hezbollah had not withdrawn. Those are the most powerful military forces of the Assad state, after all, and they are gone. Why then, if you have ambitions, not kick of the war big time again ? The Timing is perfect. You could ask for no better scenario, you could dream of no better scenario realistically, if you were a wardlord with nation builing ambitions (jolani) or if you wanted a good time window for crushing the Kurds (Turkey). It’s amazing for them. USA almost gone, Russia almost gone, Iran almost gone, Hezbollah almost gone.
So if you have significant forces, well trained (jihadists) available and have spent a fair few months planning the pros and cons and making a good battle plan as well as recieving thousands of reinforcements from abroad , taking into the considerations the geopolitical events the last few years, making under the table deals with states and tribes and preparing. Then maybe you have what is called “Opportunity”.