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Source: Syrian Rebels Appear To Have Entered Damascus As Assad's Defense Forces Collapse; Video Appears To Show Convoy Of Syrian Soldiers Fleeing For Iraq; Celebrations In The Street After Rebels Capture Homs, Syria. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired December 07, 2024 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[20:02:00]

JESSICA DEAN, CNN ANCHOR: You are in the CNN Newsroom. I'm Jessica Dean in New York and we do have breaking news this hour out of Syria as all eyes are on Damascus. One resident telling CNN rebels appear to have entered the capital.

Another tells CNN President Bashar al-Assad's military defense forces have collapsed. This as the rebels have captured four cities in a day.

CNN's Nic Robertson and Oren Liebermann are joining us now with the latest. Let's go, Nic, first to you. I know you have new reporting on this. What have you been tracking?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, we know now that there are rebels within the city limits, within the capital in suburbs that are less than three miles from the center of the capital. We know that through the day, rebels have been arriving from the south, from the east, and from the north.

And we know as the sun was setting early evening there in Damascus, some of those groupings of rebels had got perhaps within 5 miles of the city center. What has clearly been happening through the hours of darkness, it's now 3:00 a.m. in Damascus, those rebels have been moving in small elements it appears, deeper inside of Damascus.

Also, we know that there were reconnaissance elements of rebels in the capital now for over 24 hours. They were looking for the whereabouts of President Bashar al-Assad. They weren't able to find him. They don't know where the -- we can almost now say, the former president of Syria, they don't know where he is.

Has he left the capital? Is he in hiding there? Is he hiding out somewhere else in the country or has he in fact left the country? That is unknown at the moment.

But what has become very clear through the day and is evidenced by the rebels' relatively free and easy movement so far at least into the capital is that the military defenses there have been collapsing. We've seen more than 2,000 of Assad's Army leave in their military vehicles, some of them big trucks towing heavy guns, leave into neighboring Iraq.

I mean, this is almost unimaginable that Assad's Army, an army that under him and his father has had an iron and bloody grip on Syria for 53 years, that they now would be fleeing to another country. This is unseen in recent history in Syria.

And it really does point to what effectively is amounting to a military collapse of Assad's defenses of Damascus, a disappearance of the president. And the rebels now moving ever closer to the center of that city.

DEAN: It is incredible. A military collapse and a disappearance of a president. Stay with us, Nic.

Oren, I want to go to you. You're at the Reagan National Defense Forum out in California, where a number of U.S. officials have gathered. What have you been hearing from them out there?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Syria was, of course, a question that came up in multiple panels here, came up in a panel. I was moderating it as well as several of the others, and that's because of how fast everything is developing there.

[20:05:08]

It was just earlier this morning that a number of U.S. officials told my colleagues at CNN that the Assad regime might collapse within a matter of days. And now, as we look at what's unfolding, as Nic Robertson tells us what he's hearing and what's happening on the ground in Damascus, it seems that a matter of days' timeline may have been far too long.

The U.S. has been watching this very closely, and the breathtaking speed at which this has unfolded, from its beginning in Aleppo until where we are now, where we're at the point where we're reporting there are rebel forces who have entered the capital of Damascus, which should have been a stronghold of Bashar al-Assad. Especially noteworthy is the fact that nobody seems to know where he is.

The U.S. has been watching this, although the U.S. has also been determined not to get involved in this. This is the Assad regime, with all the horrors of that over the past several years, against a rebel group led by a U.S.-designated terror organization.

For the U.S., there is no good side to pick here, and so the U.S. watches from a distance. And yet, it is of critical national security importance, not only for the wider region and the Middle East, but the U.S. has 900 forces in Syria.

About that, yes, it's in a different part. It's in the eastern part of Syria. But what affects the entire country has the potential to affect the U.S. force posture there. And that's why the U.S. is watching this so closely. Two missions there for the U.S., that is. The first is to protect its own forces, and the second is why they're there in the first place, which is the ongoing defeat of ISIS.

And that is also another focus of the U.S., as they watch how all this plays out and what groups are able to gain power in this vacuum of space, in what looks like it's going to be a vacuum. The U.S. wants to make sure that ISIS does not have the chance to create some sort of resurgence, and that remains a mission.

Here is National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who spoke here at the Reagan National Defense Forum a short time ago.

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JAKE SULLIVAN, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Well, it's important to start by observing why this is happening, and it's really happening for two reasons. First, Assad has been brutal and repressive to his own people and totally intransigent in terms of actually trying to provide a better life or better future for the people of Syria. And so the people of Syria are fed up.

Second, Assad's backers, Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah, have all been weakened and distracted. And so he has not had the support from those three actors that he expected to be able to count on and has been left basically naked. His forces are hollowed out.

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LIEBERMANN: The Biden administration's position, and we heard it from Sullivan here earlier today, as well as a number of others, is that the U.S. should not get involved in the fighting between the Assad regime and the rebels, or what's left of the Assad regime at this point.

And this is an issue on which the Biden administration is in agreement with President-elect Donald Trump, who also said the U.S. should not get involved. From the U.S. perspective, there is no good side or a winner, and yet it is of critical importance to watch how all of this unfolds and certainly to make sure the U.S. forces are there, are protected, as the U.S. keeps an eye on on which way this could go, because it is going so quickly, Jessica.

DEAN: Oren, thank you.

I want to go back to Nic Robertson, who's in London. And Nic, if you can, just walk us through, with Assad gone, and again, we're waiting for confirmation, but let's say that his government does fall, who takes over Syria? What does that look like?

ROBERTSON: Yes, I think we're still very much in the military phase of this at the moment. And as we've seen in Homs today, the rebels arrive on the outskirts, they go in, they clear the streets of any government elements, they set people free from the jail there.

And then, you know, after a period of time, they declare that they have Homs fully under their control. It appears as if this is a similar scenario that awaits Damascus. So I think there's still a period in the cities, at least, where the rebels are going to want to take control and exert authority.

Then I think there's another question about what does happen to Assad and his sect, the Alawite sect. Their sort of traditional base is on the Mediterranean coast, in places like the city of Tartus, in places like Latakia, a little bit further up the coastline from there.

Does he go there? Does he sort of form a rump statelet there? That's unclear. But what is clear there is that Russia has strategic interests. The naval port that it uses on the Mediterranean, vitally important for President Putin, and the airbase at Latakia, also important for Putin as well. So Russia has interests there.

So we're in the military phase still, and we haven't quite seen where Assad goes and what happens next with him. But what the political leadership is going to aim for there, we heard that from the HTS, the main rebel group, from their commander Julani speaking earlier this week with CNN's Jomana Karadsheh and speaking to her.

[20:10:15]

And he told her that what they're going to want is for all those foreign forces to leave. That would be the Iranians. That would be the Russians. That would be the Turkish. And implicitly as well, one can understand he also means U.S. forces.

I've been speaking to another politician this evening. Now we're in this scenario where by -- it seems much closer to the point of the military taking total control. And he's saying, look, what we're going to aim for here is we're going to aim for a situation where the military gets control in the cities, then it leaves the cities.

Leaves the cities under the control of civilian police, that they will then try to sort of keep the government functions going by keeping regular government employees, not associated with the regime, in their jobs to keep the state functioning, pensions paid, all those sorts of things going.

And then they would hope to form a sort of an interim government for six -- that should hold for about six to nine months. It's not clear how that will happen and which faction will have how much of a say, because as we've seen, some of the factions have done better than others on the ground.

And then after that, he says, that period of six to nine months, then the aspiration would be to have free elections for the first time in over half a century for the people of Syria to actually vote for leaders that they want. Right now, I would say all of that is hugely aspirational and far from a certainty. But that's the aim. That's what we're hearing from politicians right now.

DEAN: All right, Nic Robertson with the latest. Thank you so much. Stay with us. We'll come back to you and check in with you within the hour.

I want to go now to Hagar Chemali, former director for Syria and Lebanon for the National Security Council. Thanks so much for being here with us.

HAGAR CHEMALI, FORMER DIRECTOR FOR SYRIA & LEBANON, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL: Yes, thanks for having me.

DEAN: So we just -- you heard all of Nic and Oren's reporting there. First, I just want to get your thoughts on the fact that sources are telling CNN that rebels appear to have entered Damascus and Assad is nowhere to be found.

CHEMALI: I mean, this is completely stunning. This certainly wasn't on my 2024 bingo card. And it's even hard for me to understand how these rebels could move so quickly, move so successfully. And I question whether they would be able to maintain control because these rebels are somewhat of a ragtag group.

This isn't a group of individuals that is very well trained in governing. They do control a small sliver, or up until this point had controlled a very small sliver of Syria in the northwest. But that's why when Nic talked about their aspirations, while it's nice to hear, I would agree with him that it's completely aspirational.

It's shocking. All of this is shocking because even when they took Aleppo, my analysis at that moment was, well, they were able to take Aleppo because it was a surprise offensive. But my experience when I was in the government handling Syria -- and this is the case, by the way, not just for Assad, but for many dictators all over the world, is that they double down.

They will bulldoze their own people and their own country if it means they can stay in power. And they will make friends with the thuggiest of thugs in order to do that. And we saw Assad do it. And not only did we see Assad do it, but it worked for him.

He maintained power. Not only that, but countries started welcoming him back in the fold again. You saw the Arab League, for example, welcome to the Syrian government back into the Arab League last year. And you saw the United States turn a little bit of a blind eye to that.

And so, nothing to me indicates that Assad wouldn't want to pursue that again, except for the fact that his thugs are very weak right now. Hezbollah has been decapitated. Iran is on the defense. Russia is obviously distracted.

But I wouldn't expect him to go so easily. That's the thing that that's -- so this has been very surprising, stunning. I don't think any foreign policy expert could have seen this coming this year, regardless of how weak his Assad's thugs are. But, again, I just don't think it'll go down that easily.

DEAN: And you mentioned Iran and Russia, of course, have helped Assad hold up his government. They are very much engaged in other conflicts right now. Help connect all those dots for us, how it all connects together. And now we see what's happening, this video that we're watching right here. CHEMALI: Sure. So when the Syria civil war started in 2011, and Assad started cracking down with indiscriminate violence against his own people, this was during the Arab Spring. And when they had mass protests across the country, Iran stepped in pretty quickly to prop up Assad and to give them their playbook of how they used to crack down on protests.

And then Hezbollah sent their top fighters to Syria. And so you're not going to have that right now, because not only do you have top fighters have been killed off, but you don't have really a leadership that's able to do that at the moment.

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But it was in 2014 that really when the tides turned in favor of Assad. And that's because Russia stepped in with manpower, with equipment, with airplanes, and they were really backing the Assad regime in fighting against his own people.

And they claimed that it was in order to fight ISIS, but it was in large part to support Assad in fighting rebels and rebel strongholds. And they did that really with bombardments and mass bombardments. The Syrian government also, as we know, Assad himself has used chemical weapons against his own people.

So he really brutally went against his own people. An estimated half a million people were killed, half a million. Thousands - hundreds of thousands were detained and tortured. And over half of Syria's population of 20 million people, over half are displaced. I mean, this is what happened during -- over the course of 10 years or so with this civil war.

But a ceasefire was declared in 2020 that was brokered by Putin and Turkey. And since then, things have calmed down. Assad was controlling 70 percent of the country. The rebels controlled another small percent. And the Kurds, importantly, a U.S. ally, control the Northeast.

And you have -- and Oren, I believe, said this as well, you have about 900 American troops there who are partnered with the Kurds, who are also there to protect them in the face of Turkey, which has been threatening them.

And so Syria fractured ultimately. But since that ceasefire in 2020, Assad has done nothing to support people, to change the situation on the ground for them. And I was a believer, and many people were a believer, that as long as he was in power, Syria was always going to remain unstable, and people were always going to be repressed by him.

And so the rebels really here saw an opportunity. Now, the rebels, understanding these rebels is critical, because they were designated as a U.S. terrorist -- sorry, they were designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization in 2012. And that was because when I was in government, I was in government at that time, they were viewed as al- Qaeda in Iraq, but the Syria branch. They were very closely tied to al-Qaeda. And as the years went on, they disavowed terrorism, they broke their ties with al-Qaeda. But that said, they're still designated because they still have had these shady connections and ties to different terrorist groups.

And they also rule in the area that they control. They don't rule like some kind of democratic government. And so I don't want to, in any way, shape or form imply that this is a better group to have.

Both are bad. Both Assad and this group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, both are bad. The difference with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is that it is a -- it is an Islamist militia. They govern with Islamic rule. They repress minorities. They clamp down on freedom of speech. They extort their own people.

So this is not something to be excited about. I'm not -- I don't think Syria will be stable under them either if they can actually maintain control. But it's very concerning unless I only see further strife with this -- with what's unfolding.

DEAN: Yes. Wow. All right, Hagar Chemali, thank you for that context, for walking us through this. We really appreciate it.

CHEMALI: Thanks.

DEAN: We're going to have more of our breaking news coverage when we come back. A resident in the capital of Syria says rebel forces have entered Damascus as they fight to take over the capital and overthrow the country's president. We are monitoring this very closely. We'll have new details for you here in the CNN Newsroom.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking in Foreign Language)

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DEAN: New video there captures people celebrating in the Syrian city of Homs after rebels claimed to have taken that country's third largest city. Now rebels appear to have entered Syria's capital of Damascus, that's according to a resident there. Sources telling CNN the country's military defense forces have fallen.

Joining me now, CNN Political and National Security Analyst and National Security Correspondent for The New York Times, David Sanger, and CNN Military Analyst, retired Colonel Cedric Leighton. Good to have both of you here as we follow this breaking news.

David, I just want to get your first take on what we're watching, which is that we're hearing from a resident there in Damascus that rebels have entered that city. DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL & NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Pretty remarkable. We don't know. At this point, it's pretty much anecdotal evidence, but certainly all the momentum has been on the side of the rebels. And a point that we were making before the break and that you heard from Hagar Chemali and others is these rebels are no freedom fighters.

They are a designated terrorist group. U.S. is designated, and were al-Qaeda affiliates. In fact, they were considered to be the al-Qaeda group in Syria. They had some split with them.

So, it's not as if the United States is rooting for this group to take over. They are rooting for Assad and the rule of the Assad family, which now goes back more than half a century to be ended. And that may be what we're seeing play out.

Just last night, people in the American Intelligence Community were saying to me they thought it would be five or six days before we knew what would happen to Damascus. It may turn out that that was a much longer time period. And then reality, it kind of reminds you of the fall of Kabul.

DEAN: Yes, it is. It is unbelievable to watch. And, Cedric, to that end, you know, American officials saying they thought it would be days. And now hearing from David, also my colleague, Oren Liebermann, saying the same thing, that now they're thinking, you know, it could be that that is actually too long of a time frame. How is this happening? We're getting these reports that the military defenses of the Assad regime have just totally fallen apart.

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, that's really remarkable, Jessica. And as David was saying, this is one of those moments where you see these dominoes, in essence, fall very rapidly. And, you know, he's right to kind of make the analogy with Kabul.

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You know, you can think of other historical analogies. But one thing that is very characteristic, I think, of not only the Middle East, but specifically the way in which a lot of wars are fought in that region and a little bit beyond, is that the fact that once the dominoes start falling, once the government in power starts realizing that it really doesn't have that grip on power anymore and the people start moving away from it, then things happen very quickly.

You know, just a few hours ago, I was looking at reports that of the 14 provinces in Iraq, 11 of them were already being controlled by rebel forces. So that left only three provinces, the one in Damascus, the one in Latakia, and the one in Tartus.

The Latakia and Tartus provinces are the ones where the Russians have their bases, or at least the large-width bases, and Damascus, of course, being the capital. And now that that is being impacted by the rebel movements, it's pretty clear that there is really no place for the government of Bashar al-Assad, whatever is left of it, to turn. And it is only, I think, a matter of hours, if that, before the final collapse of that government occurs, at least in Damascus.

DEAN: Yes. And David, I just -- I want to go back to you for a second to talk about what's at stake for the U.S. here, because you were talking about these are not freedom fighters. This isn't the U.S. so excited to see this group of rebels come to power.

It seems to be -- we heard from Jake Sullivan earlier today, that their main concern is making sure there's not a resurgence of ISIS in that country, and protecting that -- making sure that doesn't happen. We also need to note that there are some troops, American troops there in Syria, though they are not in the area where this activity is happening right now.

SANGER: That's right. There are American troops there, and they're there for one specific reason, and that is they have congressional authority to go hunt down ISIS forces there. I think that's why you've heard President Biden and you heard Jake Sullivan earlier today out of the Reagan Defense Forum talk about how cautious the U.S. is going to be about not getting involved in this.

Another reason to be cautious is the United States does not want to be charged with being behind the overthrow here. So, you know, that's a secondary factor. But if you just back up for a moment, what we're seeing happen is that all of Syria's defenders are either weakened or busy someplace else.

Iran, obviously, you know, was unable to go score against the Israelis in their most recent missile attacks. They've suffered a good number of losses. They've suffered from Hezbollah and Hamas's destruction or near destruction on the part of the Israelis. And so, all of the forces that would normally come in to go bolster Assad are gone, which is what made the rebels realize that they had an opportunity here.

DEAN: I want to bring in another voice to our conversation, Steven Cook, who's the senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Steven, thanks so much for being here with us. And I want to pick up where David just left off, which is the Iran and Russia piece of all of this.

Of course, they had supported the Assad regime for years. And they are suddenly very occupied in other places and really decimated in terms of how much firepower and attention they can give Syria.

STEVEN COOK, SENIOR FELLOW FOR MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, what we're seeing in real time is the complete collapse of the Iranian position in the Middle East. I think the lesson here is, don't allow your proxies to start a war with Israel. Clearly, HTS and the Syrian National Army have taken advantage of the fact that Hezbollah has been greatly weakened by Israel and would never be able to muster the types of forces necessary to defend the Assad regime.

Add that rebel advance to the fact that the Syrian people in a variety of these cities have taken advantage of the weakness of the regime to rise up once again like they did in 2011. So this is not just two rebel groups. This is the population returning to where they were in 2011 and 2012, demanding the end of the Assad regime.

DEAN: Yes, and it is fascinating to hear you say like that is the lesson for Iran. Don't let your proxy start a war with Israel. Because if we rewind it back and take us from October 7th of last year to where we are now, the Middle East does look quite different.

COOK: Indeed, and you don't even have to go back as far as October 7th. You can go back to mid-September of this year with the beeper attacks on Hezbollah, which was the beginning of Israel's Operation Northern Swords, which is a conflict that the Israelis had been preparing for for 20 years.

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And have rather unexpectedly done tremendous amount of damage to Hezbollah, such that it's not really a factor any longer, either in the conflict between Israel and the Iranian proxies, or can it be mustered as an expeditionary force to defend the Assad regime.

DEAN: Yes. All right, everyone stay with us. We're going to take a quick break. We're continuing to follow this breaking news out of Syria tonight. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

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DEAN: Welcome back to our breaking news coverage as rebel forces appear to have entered the Syrian capital of Damascus, that's according to one resident who spoke to CNN. They also tell us clashes are taking place in one neighborhood. Electricity has been cut off.

At the same time, CNN is also getting reports Syrian regime troops have been escaping Syria into Iraq. I want to show you brand new video of Syrian army soldiers fleeing from their country into Iraq through a border crossing there. Again, these were Assad regime military moving into Iraq.

Joining us now, Ambassador James Jeffrey, former U.S. envoy for Syria and former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Turkey. Thank you so much for being here on this Saturday night. As we're watching this video, I just want to get your reaction to seeing those troops leaving Syria and crossing into Iraq.

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JAMES JEFFREY, CHAIR, WILSON CENTER'S MIDDLE EAST PROGRAM : Well, first, thanks for having me on. Above all else, this is a great day for the Syrian people. But it is also a great day for American policy and the policy of our partners and allies, including our Kurdish and other allies within Syria and Turkey and Israel, for having kept pressure on the Assad regime.

But through the Assad regime, the entire Iranian network in the region, as Steve Cook just explained, it is collapsing before our eyes. This is a whole new day in the Middle East, and it is to be much welcomed despite the chaos, despite the problems we have with the various people that might take over. We can deal with those a lot better than we've been able to deal with the Iranian network over the last 20 years.

DEAN: Are you surprised, just in -- you know, as Steven was saying, you don't even have to go all the way back to -- and it's not even that far away to October 7th, but really just in the last several months, the decimation of Hezbollah by Israel, what that's mean for Iran and undercutting its power. And to your point now, so much of the Middle East looks different.

JEFFREY: It does. It raises the question of why we didn't push back harder over the past four administrations. With a limited exception in the Trump administration, we never pushed back hard against these guys, and the result was, step by step, they gained a tremendous amount of power. That is all dissolving before our eyes, and that is good.

DEAN: Now, just to rewind for everyone, as one of our earlier guests was explaining, the civil war, it was over a decade. Syrian refugees flowed into Lebanon, to Turkey. Is there any impact of the Syrian regime troops now going into Iraq? What does this all mean? Put those pieces together for us.

JEFFREY: Sure. Iraq is a semi-member, underlying semi-member, of the Iranian Shia crescent, or axis of resistance. It slowly has fallen into Iran's hands. This will change things. First of all, the Iraqis are not going to want these people.

They do not want to have, and they -- but they realize they'll have to deal with, a potentially unfriendly Sunni Arab-led regime on their west flank, because Syria is primarily a Sunni Arab country. So they're going to have to deal with that, and that is good as well. Once again, this is all moving in the right direction, however, chaotic it looks to all of us on our screens.

DEAN: And so help kind of make the circle here for everyone because we've heard from other guests, too, that, listen, the rebel forces are not, as David Sanger said, some sort of freedom fighters. But you keep saying this is all very good for the Syrian people, this is good for the U.S. Help people understand why you think that.

JEFFREY: The reason is, as David knows as well as I, he's been out in the region, there are no Scandinavian-style leaders anywhere that I know in the Middle East. It's not a very, if you will, modern place. What you want is people who don't keep dragging their countries into war, as Hamas did with the Gazans, as Hezbollah did with the Lebanese people, and as Assad did, waging war on his own people, as you heard earlier.

Half the population displaced, over half a million killed. So we will deal with what's called Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, which is the main element under a fellow named al-Golani. We have dealt with him indirectly through the Turks for years as we froze the conflict. I won't say it'll be totally successful.

It's much better. What we need to do now, other than protect our own troops and people there, is to work with the people on the scene. Those are our Kurdish allies in the northeast, Turkey and Israel, all of whom are engaged in various ways.

Work with the U.N. that has a way forward, Resolution 2254, calling for ceasefires, reconciliation, new elections. That's the way that we should engage. We don't want a new Afghanistan, but -- and both President Biden and Donald Trump made that point today.

We don't want to get directly involved, but we have huge interests here. We need to work through our friends and partners to stabilize this situation and build on the great gains that we've made.

DEAN: And we talked about the Iran piece of this. I also, before I let you go, want to talk about the Russia piece of this, because Vladimir Putin and Russia had provided so much backing for Assad, for his regime for years, and now are all caught up in their war on Ukraine and unable to support him in the same way.

JEFFREY: Right. The big loser is Iran, but Russia is the runner-up in the loser category, and that's not a bad thing.

[20:40:01]

Nonetheless, the United States never had the goal of driving Russia out of Syria. They have two bases there. Rather, we focused on Iran. So it'll be interesting to see if the Russians can negotiate some kind of deal, probably through Turkey, to keep their bases there.

But once again, it wasn't the Russian presence that was such a problem of power projection out of Syria, it was the Iranian threat. The Russians wanted Bashar al-Assad to compromise with us. It was the Iranians who blocked it. His intransigence is largely in part due to them, and they're gone now.

DEAN: All right. Ambassador James Jeffrey, we really appreciate you. Thank you so much.

JEFFREY: Thank you.

DEAN: We are going to have a report from the White House, which we're told is closely monitoring this situation tonight when we come back from a break.

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DEAN: Breaking news this hour, Syrian rebels appear to have broken through into the capital of Damascus. CNN's Nic Robertson is joining us now from London. We have Julia Benbrook at the White House. I want to go first to Julia. Julia, I'm told the White House is following this very closely tonight.

JULIA BENBROOK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They are. And watching the remarkable speed of the Syrian rebel advance, Biden administration officials increasingly saw the possibility the regime could fall within days. That's according to five U.S. officials who spoke with our team prior to these most recent advancements.

[20:45:06] And if that American analysis proves to be true, or if that happens, even earlier, this would be a spectacularly fall fast -- fast fall, excuse me, for the Syrian dictator after a 14-year war, one that has remained relatively stagnant until this last week.

Now the U.S. officials who spoke with our team emphasized that there's no formal assessment being shared and that opinions vary. But one U.S. official said this, quote, "The emerging consensus is that is an increasingly plausible scenario. Leading the rebel advance in Syria is a group designated as a terrorist group by the United States."

And National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, speaking with CNN last weekend, detailed just how complicated this situation is.

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SULLIVAN: So we have real concerns about the designs and objectives of that organization. At the same time, of course, we don't cry over the fact that the Assad government, backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, you know, are facing certain kinds of pressure. So it's a complicated situation. It's one we're monitoring closely and we're staying in close touch with regional partners about it.

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BENBROOK: And he reiterated that they are monitoring this closely during an event today as well. One U.S. official says that the Pentagon, which has about 900 troops in Syria, is taking additional force protection measures, but is not changing force posture. Jessica?

DEAN: All right, Julia, thank you so much.

I want to go to Nic Robertson now, who, of course, has been monitoring this and reporting on it all evening. Nic, you're now -- we're watching rebel activity enter Damascus. And this is happening in real time. What are you tracking right now?

ROBERTSON: It really is. We're seeing videos emerging now showing rebels on the streets very clearly, very visibly in the sort of highly lit, highly built up the center areas of Damascus. It's not quite clear what's happening there yet.

But what is clear is that the rebels who were on the outskirts in the early evening a couple of hours ago, we were getting reports of them moving through some of the suburbs a couple of miles from the city center and now getting close to the city center.

And the rebels group themselves, HTS, is reporting that they have been to Sednaya prison. That is the main political jail, if you will, in Damascus. And they say that they've released all the prisoners there.

We don't have we don't have a way of verifying if that is true, but it's certainly indicative of what we've seen the rebels do in other cities. Homs, for example, we've seen pictures of prisoners released from there. And Sednaya would be a jail where the Assad regime would put their most feared and loathed political prisoners, people languishing in there for years upon years upon years.

So, people being released from there. Again, this just informs us about how much the rebels are beginning to take control of the capital. Assad's whereabouts, the President Assad whereabouts unknown and the former regime's defenses of the capital melted away.

DEAN: All right, just remarkable. Nic Robertson, thank you for your latest reporting. We'll be right back.

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[20:52:23]

DEAN: Breaking news this hour as rebel forces appear to have entered Damascus, Syria, according to a resident speaking to CNN. For more on all of this, we are joined by the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO General Wesley Clark.

General, thanks so much for being here with us.

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK, FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER, EUROPE: Thank You.

DEAN: I just want to start first. We have this video of some of the Assad regime's military members abandoning their post. They are going into Iraq, escaping the country. It's pretty significant to see that happening.

CLARK: Well, you're seeing the demoralization of the collapse of an army. And that's what happens when forces know they're going to lose. This is what happened to the Afghans when the U.S. pulled out and they realized there was no backstop. The forces melt away.

And that's exactly what's going to happen here. President Assad, as far as I know, is still missing. He left, apparently deserted his command post. And if that's the case, yes, the people underneath him, there's nothing worth fighting and dying for in that case.

DEAN: And when you describe it that way, I mean, it is -- first of all, we heard from U.S. officials, they thought that Syria could fall within days. That timeline appears like it could even be compressed to a shorter timeframe beyond that if it keeps up at this rate.

And when you explain it the way you just explained it, it kind of does start to make sense that rebels, these rebel forces were able to take control of this moment. Yet it is just still shocking to see how quickly and effectively they've been able to do this.

CLARK: Yes, but I don't think that the rebel force just emerged from nowhere. You know, things like this take planning, they take preparation, they take organization. And what happened is when Israel struck Hezbollah and after Iran failed to retaliate from the last set of Israeli strikes, they -- people saw weakness.

And in this region, if you're weak, the sharks will take you. And Assad looked weak, Hezbollah looked weak, Iran looked weak, and people made their move. And the principal mover, of course, has been Turkey, which has long sought a larger role in the region.

DEAN: Yes. And so what does this mean, General, for the Syrian people? And what is the U.S. position here? And I understand those are two kind of different questions.

CLARK: Well, there's -- the U.S. position first is we've got troops here, we're going to protect our troops. I think for the Syrian people, it's just more misery. It's another million people displaced, fearful, no food, no shelter. It's wintertime.

[20:55:09]

And it just another engine generating migrants, really, and people who want to escape. And where can they escape to? Where is safe? And so, is this going to spread to the region? Is the Iraqi government in danger? Is the Iraqi government's mobilized forces?

They're on the border right now with Syria. What are they doing? Are they going to prevent, or are they going to collapse? And so hopefully they don't collapse. Hopefully, this can be contained in Syria.

The other issue that's very interesting is the position of the Kurds in Kurdistan. Of course, if Turkey gets a larger role in the region, they consider that most of the Kurdish groups are enemies.

DEAN: Right.

CLARK: 25 percent of Turkey was Kurdish. And so it's been a decades- long struggle for some recognition for Kurdistan and so forth. And so they're going to be -- they're on the sidelines right now. They're expanding their area of control where they can, as are the Syrian democratic forces that we've supported.

And this will have to get shaken out at some point based on --

DEAN: Yes.

CLARK: -- relative strength.

DEAN: Yes.

CLARK: And what eventually the U.S. says to Turkey.

DEAN: General, I'm so sorry. I have to interrupt you. We're just -- we're running out of time here. And I am so sorry to do that to you. But we really do appreciate you being here tonight and giving us that analysis. Thank you.

CLARK: Thank you.

DEAN: Thank you so much.

And I want to thank you for joining me this evening for this special hour of breaking news coverage. I'm Jessica Dean. I'm going to see you again tomorrow night starting at 5:00 Eastern. "Giuliani: What happened to America's Mayor" is up next. Have a good night. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)