Tobin Harshaw, Columnist

As Syria Crumbles, Only Iran Is a Sure Winner

A Q&A with Andrew Tabler, who spent years living under the Assad regime.

July 23, 2017 at 5:15 PM UTC

Tobin Harshaw is a Bloomberg Opinion senior editor and columnist on national security and military affairs. Previously, he was deputy editor at the op-ed page of the New York Times and the newspaper’s letters editor.

It's complicated.
Photographer: Yasin Akgul/AFP/Getty Images

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Six years. Half a million dead. Many millions displaced. Untold thousands tortured and killed.

The Syrian civil war is the worst humanitarian disaster of our young century, and would have been high on the list of the last one. But unlike the great world wars of the past, this relatively local conflict seems to have no imaginable solution, diplomatic or military. Even with the primary Western concern -- the destruction of the Islamic State -- within sight, we have to acknowledge that the aftermath may be even worse for Syria, the Middle East and the rest of the globe. The only certainty: much more destruction, suffering and death.