Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Sarah Isger. Oh, look, it's Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg. Hey, guys. Morning. Hey there. I want to start on the world stage

because some things have been going on. Obviously, we have France having the shortest tenured

prime minister in their history, something that we've been seeing more and more of across the

world stage. And even when we've talked about Donald Trump's victory over Harris, we've mentioned

that internationally, these sort of change-fueled elections where the party in power has

lost confidence seem to be picking up pace. Also, South Korea declaring martial law,

then undeclaring martial law. Steve, you're going to have to explain that one to me. But I want to

start in Syria, and I want to read here from foreign policy article, after nearly five years of

being written off as a frozen conflict, a new and unprecedented chapter

was written over the weekend in Syria's 13 years civil war. On Wednesday, rebels in the north

of the country launched a lightning round ground offensive against regime forces and managed

within 72 hours to take over the major metropolis of Aleppo. A day later, rebels captured Talrafat, the last

major stronghold in northwest Syria that had been held by a third group, the Kurdish-dominated

and U.S.-backed Syrian democratic forces. The significance and speed of the rebel victory in

Aleppo cannot be overstated. From 2012 to 2016, thousands of rebel and regime soldiers died in the city, then divided

between government and opposition enclaves in grueling house-to-house battles with fighters

from both sides dying in droves to capture individual streets and move the front line forward

meters at a time. Steve, I'll start with you, but this conflict is not really about Syria, if it ever was. It certainly

isn't anymore. You have questions about whether Russia, which has largely propped up the Assad regime

intentionally withdrew to force Assad to do more of the things that they wanted, sort of showing him what the world would

look like if he didn't have the entire Russian political and military force behind him. You have obviously

the U.S. backed rebels losing ground. You have Turkey as a major player against Assad. You have Israel.

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