ABSTRACT
Ever since popular protests erupted against the Baathist regime in Syria in March 2011, foreign leaders, as well as international political analysts, have made several predictions about the eventual fall of President Bashar al-Assad. The geopolitical importance of Syria, especially in a region where rivalries run deep, has transformed the Syrian crisis into a regional crisis. Salim Idriss has been the point man of the Gulf-Atlantic project in Syria. If Assad is taken out of power, the tri-party alliance would collapse, exposing Hezbollah to future attacks. A proxy war between the communist and the Western-Islamist blocs plunged the country into a deadly civil war from which the Taliban emerged as the most potent force. In April 2013, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi's Islamic State of Iraq formally announced the expansion of its operations from Iraq to Syria by changing its name to Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham, or ISIS.
