The Assad regime’s fall voids many of the Middle East’s old certainties

The long battle to topple Bashar al-Assad may have ended this week, but the air-raids did not. The day after Syria’s dictator of 24 years fled, no fewer than three foreign armies bombed targets inside the newly liberated country. America pounded the remnants of Islamic State, a jihadist outfit that once ruled much of Iraq and Syria, lest it take advantage of the chaos to regroup and expand. Turkey sent warplanes to help a proxy force battling a Kurdish-led militia it accuses of aiding terrorists. And Israel bombed anything that might conceivably be used against it in a hypothetical future conflict, from suspected chemical-weapons facilities to the Syrian navy’s handful of decrepit warships.