The Assad regime is wobbly, but is it about to fall over altogether?

The Syrian regime is wobbling, but will Bashar Al Assad's traditional allies catch his fall? Martin Jay asks

In recent weeks Bashar Al Assad has appeared like a man struggling to keep control. Reuters

It's been a moment when war analysts have gazed into the kaleidoscope of the Syrian war and, enchanted by a number of events that don't look good from Bashar Al Assad's point of view, have jumped to the conclusion that we're looking at a tipping point.

Certainly the indicators seem to be adding up. In recent weeks Mr Al Assad has appeared like a man struggling to keep control.

It’s as though the country is simply too big for his under-resourced army, which is spread over such a large area that it cannot cope with the sheer number of attacks on key towns and border posts.

His strategy now is to form a new eastern front in a bid to hold off any advances towards Damascus because the north has been mostly taken over by Kurdish fighters and ISIL, while the south and most of the west is held by Jabhat Al Nusra.

If the Americans are not already funding Jabhat Al Nusra, they might as well be. Israel has made little effort to hide the fact that it supports the group by taking in its wounded fighters in its Golan Heights military hospitals. Jabhat Al Nusra is also strengthening as its fighters benefit from being supplied by other groups on the so-called “list of moderate fighters”.

Many have argued that the group is being indirectly supported by Washington although US-made anti-tank weapons were not technically supposed to be supplied to them. But who’s going to complain when their battle victories are often against the Assad regime?

And the Syrian army’s low morale is also being noted more by military pundits. Much was reported recently of how despondent the army has become as its top brass have to play second fiddle to militias.

The euphoria of the summer of 2013 has long gone. Now soldiers post YouTube clips of themselves throwing barrel bombs out of the back of rickety helicopters as a blatant act of defiance.

Yet those same young men perhaps don’t realise they are becoming the new target in the war against ISIL.

Just this month a Pentagon official admitted that it was increasingly difficult to find Syrian moderates to train who were ready to fight ISIL.

Increasingly though in the complex chess board of the Syrian war, it’s the Assad regime that looks the most vulnerable.

Mr Al Assad also can’t get minorities to sign up for the army, despite a recent poster campaign – the recent killing of 20 Druze by Jabhat Al Nusra is not helping either.

The blowback from those killings is immense as it emphasises how Mr Al Assad has not protected his minorities.

Traditionally this sect was always loyal to his father and to the regime. But Mr Al Assad has failed to protect them.

Recent talks in Beirut with Druze leaders played down the incident. Walid Jumblatt, who chaired the talks, is worried about the offer from Israel to arm the Syrian Druze as it would be seen by Hizbollah as a challenge to their fighters on the ground in Syria.

And, as Mr Jumblatt knows only too well, the implications might be catastrophic for his own people in Lebanon, who so far have not felt any spill over from the conflict.

All of this points to the fact that the Assad regime itself is wobbly.

There can be no doubt about that, not only from a military standpoint but also a political one as changes need to be made, which is why Vladimir Putin’s recent comments about “pushing” the Syrian president on reforms were particularly poignant. But was that bad translation? Didn’t he mean “push out”?

Martin Jay is the English language editor of An Nahar in Lebanon

On Twitter: @MartinRJay