Assad's moves in Syria

The Syrian Government, spearheaded by the Syrian Arab Army, have largely played a clever game.

Earlier in the war, the enormous city Homs was the priority, which was captured by the Syrian Arab Army in May 2014. Since then, the even larger Aleppo has been the priority, which was captured by the Syrian Arab Army in January 2017.

Now Assad's forces are moving from strength to strength, getting stronger and stronger against their plethora of enemies. Just recently the Syrian Arab Army moved into rebel-held districts of Damascus after the rebels rejected an offer to move to Idlib.

Against the rebels, Idlib is likely to be the last area of advance for the Syrian Arab Army. Until then, Assad's forces are going to mop up all other smaller areas in which the rebels are holed up. These include the provinces of Aleppo, Damascus, Latakia, Hama, Homs and Dera'a. Once these areas are cleared by the Syrian Arab Army, they will then turn to deal with rebels in Idlib.

Against ISIS, Assad is playing a clever game. For a while, Assad has prioritized other rebels over ISIS (as America under Obama was attacking ISIS), but now that Trump has shown an openness to work with Assad, Assad is more than happy to give ISIS a thumping.

Also, with the rebels no longer holding major cities or major areas - with the exception of the province and small city of Idlib - Assad is freer to attack ISIS more forcefully.

With help from Russian and American airstrikes, the Syrian Arab Army retook Palmyra again. This was a great victory for Assad's forces. As well as this, Assad has been pushing ISIS back from Aleppo province, with great results. Now Turkish-backed rebels, holding a northern section of the Turkish-Syrian border - from Dabiq in the west to Jarabulus in the east to Al-Bab in the south - are unable to advance south without crossing fire with Syria and Russia. The only way the Turkish forces may advance to Raqqa is through the Kurds, which are backed by America. All in all, Turkish forces are hemmed in northern Syria, which is very clever for Assad.

However it is unlikely that Assad will push on into Raqqa province to take it back from ISIS. The reason for this is 1, Trump's Kurdish force are already putting enough pressure on Raqqa; 2, the Government-held city of Deir Ez-Zor is besieged by ISIS' forces. Rather than pushing into Raqqa, it is rather likely that the Syrian Arab Army will move sizeable amounts of its forces into (southern) Homs and Deir Ez-Zor provinces, to push ISIS out of the Syrian oilfields and connect the city of Deir Ez-Zor with the rest of Syria. This would create sizable results for the Syrian Government and reestablish Assad's Government as controlling the majority of Syria.

All in all, Assad's victory in the Syrian Civil War is all but certain. The likely next steps are ISIS defeat in Deir Ez-Zor and rebel defeat in every province but Idlib.