Damascus: After a stunning advance by Syrian rebels forced President Bashar al-Assad to flee, the world is now watching to see how the Middle East nation's political landscape shapes up following the overthrow of the Assad family's half-century rule.
The opposition forces have seized power after a 13-year civil war that caused over half a million deaths and displacement and involved international powers and their proxies.
Those with a vested interest in the conflict and the future of the country include, on one side, Russia and Iran, which backed Assad, and on the other, the US and Turkey, which supported different rebel groups, according to a BBC report.
During Syria's civil war, Turkey has supported opposition forces—primarily the Syrian National Army (SNA)—by providing arms, military, and political support.
Turkey also wants the roughly three million Syrian refugees living in its country to return home.
Russia already had a decades-long relationship with the Assad government and had military bases there before the civil war. Russian President Vladimir Putin used his country's presence in Syria, and support of Assad, to challenge the power and dominance of the West in the region, the report said.
A US-led global coalition has carried out air strikes and deployed special forces since 2014 to help the Kurdish-led rebel alliance SDF capture territory once held by IS militants in the north-east.
After the Assad government fell, the US government said it conducted dozens of air strikes against IS camps and operatives in central Syria to ensure IS could not take advantage of the unstable situation.
The US currently has around 900 troops in Syria.
According to reports, Iran and Syria have been allies since Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979. Syria backed Iran during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
During the Syrian civil war, Iran is believed to have deployed hundreds of troops and spent billions of dollars to help Assad.
Thousands of Shia Muslim fighters armed, trained, and financed by Iran - mostly from the Lebanon-based Hezbollah movement, but also from Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen - have also fought alongside the Syrian army.
But similar to Russia, Hezbollah has been weakened by conflict with Israel in Lebanon, likely hastening the downfall of the Syrian military.
Israel shares a border with Syria. Israel has conducted air strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria during the war, although it rarely acknowledges such strikes.
Since rebels overthrew Assad, Israel has carried out hundreds of attacks across Syria.
In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel seized the Golan Heights, about 60km (40 miles) south of Damascus, from Syria, before annexing it in 1981. The annexation is not recognised by the UN and many other countries.
