When God Plays Dice with the Universe

Hof — The fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 didn’t just end a brutal era in Syria’s history.
It ended the Syrian Arab Republic itself.

The last thread holding the country together — the Syrian Arab Army — unraveled. Or was pulled apart. Assad didn’t go out in flames or defiance. He slipped quietly into Moscow’s shadow, carrying nothing but the weight of a broken nation.

What remains is a hollow frame: a name without a state, a map without sovereignty. Syria’s borders are no longer drawn in Damascus, but in Ankara, Tel Aviv, Baghdad, and Amman. They haven’t been formally redrawn — but they’re enforced by power, not by law.

Of all its neighbors, Israel has pushed furthest. The old red lines are gone. Operations now reach well beyond the limits it once accepted. And behind this shift stands the central figure in the region’s new chapter: Benjamin Netanyahu.

He’s been called many things — political survivor, architect of chaos, security hawk, populist, war criminal, national savior.
But if I had to choose one word?
Gambler.

Not just with tactics, but with destiny.

For two years, Netanyahu has wagered his legacy, his government, his alliances — and, most dangerously, his own country and the stability of the entire region. He has pushed Israel into open-ended confrontations on multiple fronts, shattered long-standing red lines, and deepened regional rivalries. And the world has watched in uneasy silence, reluctant to disturb the game.

His biggest gamble came when he finally allowed Assad to fall.

No invasion. No coup. No bullet.
Instead: relentless airstrikes, suffocating sanctions, the slow erosion of Syrian institutions. Until one final blow — a rain of missiles that wiped out Syria’s air defenses, command hubs, and the army’s last fortified positions.

Netanyahu didn’t just topple a dictator. He dismantled the system that made Syria governable.

Now Syria has returned to its “ungovernable years” — the late 1950s and ’60s — when coups, foreign plots, and collapse were constants. Back then, order came only with Hafez al-Assad: ruthless, calculating, unyielding, but capable of holding the country together.

That order is gone. And the chaos that follows is different.

Today’s Syria is drained. It’s not dreaming of another strongman. It’s drifting — fragmented, uncertain — and that uncertainty is dangerous. Not just for Syria, but for everyone around it.

Netanyahu may believe a fractured Middle East secures Israel’s dominance. But fragmentation spreads. It infects the strong as easily as the weak. What begins in Damascus can end in Tel Aviv.

Once, perhaps, Netanyahu could have been reined in — his ambition tempered by outside powers. But Syria’s collapse marked a point of no return. He isn’t playing his last hand. Unable to contain Gaza’s “collateral damage” — not only to the Palestinian civilian population, but also to Israel’s reputation, credibility, and legitimacy — he now sends troops to Qatana, just 15 kilometers from Damascus.

He is one miscalculation away from a breach by the countless Islamist factions that have carved up Syria for over 14 years. What happens if an IDF patrol is ambushed, its soldiers killed — or worse, taken into the underground beneath an overcrowded Damascus? Will he level the city as he did Gaza and southern Beirut?

He keeps playing, and the global order keeps funding his seat at the table, eager to see how the game ends. But by now, we are all too deep in it to walk away.

Maybe he wins. Maybe he doesn’t.
But even if Netanyahu leaves the table, we’ll still be sitting at it — trapped in the game he set in motion. Whoever comes next will inherit the hand he dealt, just as we all will, with nothing ahead but the uncertainty of where the next roll will land.

Einstein said God doesn’t play dice with the universe.
Look around — borders shift, orders collapse, and the dice roll in plain sight.
The good news? Once the rules are broken, no one — not even the one who broke them — controls the game.
And in chaos, the odds belong to everyone.