The Syrian Crisis has now definitively entered a new phase, in which the shifting priorities of external states are driving the creation of an interim set of pre-settlement conditions. Since the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen in March 2015 and Russia’s military intervention in September 2015, the geopolitical dynamic has been evolving in a direction that has undermined the Syrian opposition’s struggle against the Assad regime. Two years later, that anti-Assad struggle has never looked weaker or more vulnerable. Whatever nuanced statements one might hear these days from officials in Washington, London, Paris, Riyadh or Ankara, the reality is that none of those governments now seek the removal of Assad, nor do they even see that as possible.