The demise of the dictatorship in Syria this weekend that brought to an end 50 years of brutal rule by the Assad family — Bashir al-Assad had succeeded his father, Hafez al-Assad — was startling to most observers. The Assad regime had successfully fought off a rebel army more than a decade ago, and though Syria had been divided into areas of control by various rebel groups and the government, the Assad regime, bolstered by the Russians and the Iranians, seemed secure.

However, the denigration of Iran’s military capabilities by Israel this past year and Russia’s weakened position because of its war in Ukraine left the Assad regime vulnerable to the rebel factions who never had gone away over the past decade.

What caught everyone by surprise, including Bashir al-Assad himself, was the rapidity of the rebels’ advance from their stronghold in a tiny portion of northwestern Syria in the city of Idlib to the capital of Damascus, hundreds of miles away.

The images of Syrians rejoicing in the streets amidst the toppled statues of Hafez al-Assad were reminiscent of what happened in the immediate aftermath of the fall of so many other Middle East dictators, including Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar al-Gaddafi in Libya.

The quick end to the al-Assad regime brought to mind a phrase by a character in the novel, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, about how bankruptcy befalls someone: “Gradually and then suddenly.”

We join with the Syrian people in their joy and pray that their future, whatever path it may take, will be peaceful.