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Workshop participants felt that prolonged conflict was the best descriptor for the situation in Syria as of December 2013, but momentum seemed to be leaning toward regime victory.

• Negotiated settlement was deemed the least likely of the possible scenarios.
• Regime collapse, while not considered a likely outcome, was perceived to be the worst possible outcome for U.S. strategic interests.

Developments in Syria and Iraq through August 2014 occurred with unanticipated speed and revealed initial analysis to be overly cautious.

• Steady gains made by the Assad regime and worsened friction and dysfunction among the opposition groups, but also the shift in ISIS focus from Syria to Iraq, has allowed the regime to make progress against the opposition more rapidly than most of our workshop participants foresaw.
• It is regime victory that now appears to be most likely in the near to mid-term, due to the confluence of military and political factors favoring pro-Assad forces.
• However, regime victory would not be as big of a blow to ISIS as was originally believed, because ISIS's advances in Iraq have given the group a new territorial base from which to operate.
• Similarly, regime victory in Syria will not offer as large a win to Iran as previously thought. ISIS's gains in Iraq worsened Iran's strategic position in the Middle East and established a new threat to Tehran on its western border.

Despite the revised perspective on the plausibility of regime victory in Syria, the situation is still fluid and momentum can shift again.

• Prolonged conflict could become more likely, for example, if the rebels acquired a new capability that helped counter the regime's advantage in firepower, such as man-portable air defense systems or precision rocket systems and/or mortars.
• A major increase in ISIS's battlefield effectiveness could also alter current trends. ISIS's capture of a number of the Iraqi army's weapon stockpiles in June 2014 gave the group access to a large amount of modern weaponry. If ISIS is able to develop the maintenance and logistical infrastructure to operate these weapons reliably over the long term, it is conceivable that they could challenge the Syrian army in maneuver warfare in a way that no other rebel group has been able to.