I can speak a little more freely now as to what actually happened. While the response from Russia and Iran was not ideal… the coup de grâce was that Mossad-CIA and Turkey had backdoored the SAA in senior and key positions to stand down and withdraw. In essence for Iranian or Russian help to mobilise on the ground, a front has to be stabilised where troops can actively deploy and start counter operations. The SAA fell with such speed that it’s no question in my mind that Western Intel calculated this scenario. It is possibly the reason why Iraq to told Hashd Al-Shaabi to not engage. Foreign intel played on the sectarian strife in the SAA and also with huge payments and bribes.
Everyone from the Sunni head of the Ministry of Defence to key ground commanders either were shaping the battle space to benefit HTS or taking bribes to withdraw when they had no reason. Russian air power overwhelmingly supported the SAA… but the rate at which they withdrew despite taking little to no casualties showed both the Kremlin and Tehran that the coup d’état against Assad inside the military was planned some time ago and was virtually unstoppable in real time and deals were struck at the last minute to preserve multiple collapsing fronts that Baghdad, Moscow and Tehran would have found absolutely unfeasible to deploy troops to.
The US-Israeli victory was not by HTS savages in the back of a few Toyota pickup trucks who were getting slaughtered en masse but their victory was by a surgical strike at the heart of the SAA itself with bribes, sectarianism and promises ensuring that regardless of the battlefield the front would collapse one way or another. Multiple Russian and Iranian advisors from the 4+1 operations in Damascus kept telling them to hold position in Aleppo and Hama… Hama for the Kremlin and Tehran and how it collapsed was the sign that for us, we knew that the SAA’s senior command had been compromised.
The withdrawal from Hama was the point of no return. Make no mistake Iran and Russia would have deployed troops but it is not easy to mobilise 200,000 men in separate corps and tell them to deploy to a front that will be gone in mere hours. Baghdad, Moscow and Tehran all came to the same conclusion. This is the most accurate description within permission that I can I possibly tell you as to what happened in the time span it happened.
