Hard to understand what's happening without considering that senior figures in Assad's military may have sold the country out...

I guess you could be referring to Iraq precedent. Meanwhile, that means that both RF and Iranian intelligence were comatose at the wheel.

Noting, it was seriously stupid to leave Idlib head-choppers to metastasise all this time.

I've been listening to Pepe w/Nima on this. Well worth a gander: