The United States is keeping a cautious but optimistic eye on the situation on the ground after rebel forces forced now-former President Bashar al-Assad to flee Syria, putting an end to a half century of despotic rule over Syria.

President Joe Biden, speaking from the White House on Sunday, said Assad’s downfall simultaneously marks an end to 13 years of brutal civil war and the start of a hopeful but uncharted future for the Syrian people.

“At long last, the Assad regime has fallen,” Biden said. “This regime brutalized, and tortured, and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians. The fall of the regime is a fundamental act of justice. It’s a moment of historic opportunity for the long-suffering people of Syria to build a better future for their proud country.”

Assad, who sought and received political asylum from Russia, was forced from power over the weekend by a collection of armed rebel groups seemingly sprung to action by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing distraction over Ukraine and a weakened hand reaching out from Tehran, after Iranian-backed terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah were decimated in their attempts to assault Israel.

“There’s a lot happening in the middle east,” Biden noted.

Iran, its proxies, and Russia, Biden said, are “far weaker today than when I took office” as a result of their aggression toward Israel and Ukraine and following U.S. led sanctions and ongoing military support from allies.

Because of U.S. sanctions, and while Ukraine and Israel were fighting “upon their own self defense with unflagging support of the United States,” Biden said, “for the first time ever, neither Russia, nor Iran, nor Hezbollah could defend this abhorrent regime in Syria.”

What happens next is an open question, Biden said.

“It’s also a question of risk and uncertainty. As we all turn to the question of what comes next, the United States will work with our partners and the stakeholders in Syria to help them seize an opportunity to manage the risk,” he said.

Syria has been locked in a brutal civil war for more than 13 years. The conflict started in 2011 during the “Arab Spring” protests across the Middle East.

Assad, who came to power following his father’s death in 2000, responded to widespread calls for him to step down with a brutal police and military crackdown. In 2013, he used chemical weapons against Syrians living in the Ghouta district of Damascus, killing more than 1,400 people.

Syrians responded with revolt. After making gains against Assad’s forces for several years, including the capture of Raqqa in 2013 and Idlib in 2015, Russian and Iranian intervention helped to push rebel groups out of most major cities and by 2020 fighting had drawn to a standstill.

Rebel forces launched a sudden offensive in November, and took the Syrian capital city of Damascus on Sunday after a swift and essentially uncontested 10-day march through the cities of Aleppo, Hama, and Homs.

However, among the collection of would-be revolutionaries are several that identify as members of groups which the United States has labelled terrorist organizations.

Speaking to the press after Biden’s address, a senior administration official said the U.S. will be closely monitoring the developing situation, and that they are aware some of the leaders in the fight to oust Assad are not necessarily our allies, but there are plenty of people in Syria who the U.S. can work alongside to make sure that the “historic, momentous, welcome” end to Assad’s rule isn’t followed by another tyrant’s ascendancy.

“We will be engaging with the broad spectrum of Syrian society — opposition groups, groups on the ground in Syria, exile groups — we have broad contacts that we’ve developed over the course of the past decade and beyond, and that effort will be ongoing,” the official said.

Leading rebel group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (“Organization for the Liberation of the Levant”) or HTS, is an off-shoot of Al-Qaeda and was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department in 2018, the official acknowledged. They would not say whether the U.S. has engaged with the group, which has been operating a shadow “salvation government” in northwest Syria since 2017, either before or after Assad’s ouster.

“It’s safe to say that there is contact with all Syrian groups,” they said. “I think I’ll leave it at that.”

The U.S. did not receive any outreach from Assad before he fled from Syria, the official said, nor would the Biden Administration have considered such outreach “serious” if it had occurred.

The “complete collapse of the regime” and the “speed at which it transpired” surprise the Biden administration or catch them off-guard, the official said, but it has really highlighted the “brittle” nature of Assad’s grip on power and Iran’s shrinking regional influence.

The official made sure to emphasize that the future of Syria will not be dictated by the United States, but will be “written by Syrians.”

“We are not coming up with a blueprint from Washington for the future of Syria,” they said.

Herald wire services contributed.

President Joe Biden speaks about the sudden collapse of the Syrian government under Bashar Assad from the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, Sunday. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Syrian President Bashar Assad reviews the presidential guard during the welcoming ceremony in Athens, Dec. 15, 2003. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris, File)
Syrians celebrate the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government in the town of Bar Elias, Lebanon, near the border with Syria, Sunday. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)