Again, the context is important. Mostly that the Tunisian military refused to step in and support Wasalo, eventually forcing him to flee.

Asad on the other hand, is still very popular with his own ethnic group, and draws heavily from them to staff his military. Iran’s help just made things worse.

The start of the Syrian civil war had nothing to do with anyone except the Syrian people being pissed off at living under the most restrictive police state in the Arab world. There were protests after a mass arrest and subsequent torture of 15 teenage boys who had spay-painted some anti-government graffiti on some walls around the city.

Assad cracked down on the protests hard, which led to people saying, “fuck this shit, time for a revolution”.

Iran started helping Assad, and then the US started helping the rebels. And yeah it’s a shit show now. But no, it would have kicked off without outside help.