Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is like a hunter who shoots animals for the purpose of stuffing them and nailing them to his wall. Today Beirut, Damascus, Sanaa and Baghdad are the dying trophies on display above Khamenei’s fireplace.

A contact of mine with senior Moscow connections has spent the past nine years vigorously reminding me that “(Bashar) Assad isn’t going anywhere.” Last week, she phoned me to say: “Guess what? Assad is going.”