After Hafez’s passing in the summer of 2000, we clung to the hope that the torch he left behind would fall into more compassionate hands. After all, his heir, Bashar al-Assad, was a doctor trained in ophthalmology in London — the birthplace of the Spice Girls! How bad could he be?

Syria’s iron-fisted leader Bashar al-Assad is the second generation of an autocratic family dynasty that held power for more than five decades and his disappearance amid a lighting rebel advance cap an astonishing reordering of power in a strategically vital Middle Eastern nation.

The Russian president intervened decisively in the Syrian civil war in 2015, propping up the Assad regime, after then US president Barack Obama shied away from taking tough action against it for crossing a “red line” with the use of chemical weapons on rebel-held areas of the country.