If it does succeed, Syria could provide a powerful lesson in how a rebel movement gains national legitimacy.

Much time and effort will be spent on examining why the Assad father and son dynasty crashed after 54 years of unbending rule. Was it the weakness of his backers that proved the tipping point?

Hezbollah had just had its political and military leadership in Beirut wiped out by an Israeli bombing campaign. Iran is bracing itself for a second attack by Israel.

Has Russian aerial power, so devastating in the month-long bombardment of Aleppo in 2016, become fatally overstretched in Ukraine?

Was it the refusal of the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMU) to come to the rescue that proved the final straw?

Had all of the above actors become fed up with Assad’s refusal to countenance talks, let alone a political settlement, with the rebels?

Had the axis of resistance, so strategically constructed by Iran, become a mirage, a Potemkin Village? Why had Aleppo, Syria’s second city, fallen without so much as a bullet being fired?

Only about 910 have died so far as the regime collapsed. These are relatively small numbers in a country where half a million had perished in the civil war and millions were displaced.

Was it just good timing?

There were strong internal factors that could explain the sudden collapse of Assad’s army.

After the rebel force had taken Aleppo and Hama, the dying regime raised the salaries of soldiers by half - a sign of poor pay and low moral. Syrian soldiers were heeding the rebel calls to defect.

An economy that was crashing, low moral, and a leader who refused to bend were the ingredients of the revolt that spread like wildfire around the Arab world 13 years ago.

So are we witnessing the Arab Spring bursting again into flame from the embers of a fire that had never been fully stamped out?

Arab Spring reborn

Books have been written, and careers forged, on the premise that this foolishly optimistic yearning for democracy is dead.

About how, even now, the rents that tore Tahrir Square apart refuse to heal; how Tunisia’s revolutionaries, who considered themselves to be so much more sophisticated than their Egyptian brothers, had meekly followed their neighbour into the same hole eight years later; how the Gulf princes had poured their obscene wealth into making sure that spring was followed by winter.

Throughout this prolonged funeral, Syria was held as the object lesson that the Arab world was told to avoid. The message every government from Bahrain to Morocco told its people was: "We don't want to end up like Syria."

And yet, it is here in Syria that the revolution could be starting up again over 13 years later.

The scenes taking place in Damascus hark back to a forgotten age: the toppling of statues; the joy of people climbing on tanks, or simply realising there is no one watching them any more.

The horror of the pictures emerging from Sednaya prison where survivors have been held so long they think that the late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad (who died in 2000) is in power and that they are being liberated by Saddam Hussein.

As these clips were playing mesmerically on everyone’s iPhones, you could sense the tectonic plates of the region shifting in Doha, where its annual forum was taking place.

The foreign ministers who strode into the conference hall on Saturday walked out of it on Sunday changed men.

The blood seemed to visibly drain from the face of the conference’s seasoned star, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Within 10 hours of Lavrov telling his audience that Russia would not talk to terrorists, his country was using the Turks to seek security assurances from Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) about their naval and air bases.

This is a strange turnaround for the rebel movement which had been at the mercy of Russian bombs.

Lavrov became intensely uncomfortable answering questions on Syria, and soon demanded to be asked about Ukraine instead.

Meanwhile, an ashen-faced Iranian delegation rushed in a huddle through the corridors of the hotel from one meeting to the next.

Conversely, the Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who had spent the last 14 months of the war on Gaza being sidelined by the Arab Contact Group that he had strived to create, was back at centre stage.

Almost overnight, the Syrian revolution had turned Turkey from a distressed observer into a player in the Middle East once more.

Not a foot wrong

And so far Abu Mohamed al-Jolani, the HTS leader, designated as a terrorist by the US and the UN, has been pitch perfect, whatever you think his real intentions are.

HTS reassured the Christians of Aleppo. It handed over governance to policemen as soon as rebel troops could. They left the Sayyida Zeinab shrine in south Damascus untouched and did not confront Iraqi paramilitary groups.

The rebels kept the road to Latakia open for retreating Syrian army generals to flee. Learning the lessons of Iraq, they stopped looting and told the cheering crowds to respect government buildings.

And he gave his victory speech in the historic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, which is adjacent to the resting place of Saladin.

Speaking in the mosque in uniform, Jolani said this victory was not just for Syria but for the entire region and signified a new chapter in history. Absolutely no-one in the Muslim world would have lost the significance of these symbols.

The losers of this revolution are clear for all to see. But it's a harder job to identify the winners.

Clearly, Israel has seized this moment to mount a major military operation to demilitarise Syria.

Israel's gift

Overnight on Tuesday, Israeli army bombed 300 Syrian military targets - airfields and ports across the land. It occupied the highest peak on Mount Hermon, a mountain range that dominates that part of Syria’s border with Lebanon. It has bombed Syria's navy in Latakia.

Israeli tanks have rolled into Syria. Initially, the army claimed it would only operate in the demilitarised border zone, but there are multiple reports of Israeli tanks in Qatana, 10 km into Syrian territory and 25km from the capital Damascus.

Clearly, a government that knows only how to open fresh military fronts is seeking to do to a sovereign country what it has done to Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Israel’s gift to a Syrian people freed from a dictator is to attempt to rob it of any ability to defend itself professionally.

The first crisis of the rebel movement is upon it before it has even formed a functioning government. Israel’s military offensive in Syria could well be part of the pro-western plan to tame the rebels from day one. But what the Merkava tanks are doing will determine the foreign policy of Jolani before he has even begun ruling.

No Syria of any hue, let alone an Islamist one, will tolerate what Israel is doing to its ability to defend its own territory.

Hamas, for one, were confident which way a rebel Syria will turn on the liberation of occupied Palestine, even before the new regime had fresh territory of its own to liberate.

As the name signifies, Jolani’s family is from the occupied Golan Heights which Donald Trump allowed Israel to annex in his first term of office.

A statement from Hamas issued on Monday read: "Syria will continue its historic and pivotal role in supporting the Palestinian people and their resistance to achieve the goals of their just cause, while consolidating Syria's leadership role within the Arab and Islamic nations, as well as on the regional and international levels."

A senior Palestinian source, who knows the thinking of the movement, told me: "Every free person in the world should be happy about what has happened in Syria, whether they are Christian, or Jewish or Muslim, because the situation in Syria was very very clear.

"This was the worst example of genocidal attacks towards a people whose only crime was to call for reform, freedom and social justice."

He said Hamas did not just support the Syrian rebels. It was "delighted" that the people showed how they could topple a regime and that the Arab Spring and the Palestinian cause was one and the same fight against dictatorship and occupation.

He conceded that Iran’s presence would be limited as a result and its communications with Hezbollah disrupted, if not cut. But he insisted the relationship between Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas would remain unchanged "even if they say something else".

Hamas’s statement pivots on the distinction between an act of resistance shown and supported by a whole people, and the national interest of a foreign power - Iran. The two should not be confused.

"Change is driven by people. It's not driven by foreign forces. Therefore it's not a foreign force that will drive this. The Syrian people are with the Palestinians and even the refugees in the camps were chanting for Palestine. So this will not have an effect on the concept of resistance. It will have an effect on the key players in the region like Iran or even others, but what benefits them does not necessarily benefit the people of other countries," the source said.

Besides, he recalled how Assad played no role in the confrontation with Israel whose planes hit Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) targets in Syria at will and without any fear of a response.

These seismic events are happening while Iran is attempting to conduct three different counterintelligence operations to stop the leaking of real-time intelligence to Israel: an operation in Iran to discover how the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in an IRGC guest house; how Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah and his intended successor were assassinated; and how numerous hits were organised in Syria and Iraq.

This surely is correct. Israel has been so effective in degrading Iran’s military assets in Syria that there were strong concerns in the Revolutionary Guards that their movements were being betrayed by Israeli moles in Syrian security and intelligence forces.

There is no arguing that the the collapse of Assad is a major strategic loss for Iran, however, it is far from dismantling the axis of resistance - because Hezbollah and the Iraqi armed groups like Kataib Hezbollah, and Ansar Allah (the Houthis) in Yemen are still functioning fighting forces.

The Palestinian resistance groups are confident that Syria is not lost to the Palestinian cause. In fact, Syria has just been given its own national interest to kick the Israelis out of its own territory.

But what would be a greater threat to Israel’s messianic plans to impose its hegemony on its neighbours, will be the emergence of a successful, militarily strong, Islamist neighbour, showing to the rest of the Arab world how a weak people can topple the strong.

With his background in al-Qaeda, Jolani will not be an easy leader for Israeli tanks to intimidate, unless of course he is next on their list of list of targets to assassinate.

Lessons learnt

For if this does indeed turn out to be the start of a new chapter in the Arab Spring, at least one essential lesson will have been learned.

The revolutionaries in Egypt and Tunisia were not revolutionary enough. Armed revolt is not in the Muslim Brotherhood’s DNA. Quite the contrary, the Brotherhood kept being seduced by assurances from the Egyptian military intelligence - and then Defence Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in particular - that the army would allow a freely elected government to rule.

By the time late President Mohamed Morsi realised he was a captive of Sisi - and that was a long time before his arrest - it was too late. The revolution in Egypt and Tunisia paid dearly for keeping its existential enemies in business.

Their tools were political only. They attempted to assemble this flat-pack kit called democracy, by dutifully reading the instructions and putting it together bolt by bolt. First, a constitutional assembly, then a new constitution, then free elections.

Meanwhile the generals laughed and kicked this flimsy construction down with hobnail boots.

The Syrian revolution, if it indeed continues as it has started, toppled the army, the deep state, the secret police by force of arms.

If it does succeed, Syria could provide a powerful lesson in how a rebel movement gains national legitimacy. And success in this brittle region where rulers lack legitimacy is contagious.

That is why right now there must be more than one despot in the region who is quietly plotting how to derail this experiment as they did so successfully a decade ago. Or is their counter-revolutionary tool kit out of date?

To a large extent that depends on the Syrian people themselves. And it is well past the time Egyptians, Jordanians and Iraqis rethink their understanding of powerful revolutions. They wax and wane, but they don't die.

David Hearst is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He is a commentator and speaker on the region and analyst on Saudi Arabia. He was the Guardian's foreign leader writer, and was correspondent in Russia, Europe, and Belfast. He joined the Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.

The article was originally published at MEE and can be accessed here.