In my weekly column two months ago I claimed that Iran is the real victor in the Syrian civil war Using the war against ISIS as a smokescreen it is taking over large swathes of Syrian territory mainly in the scarcely populated middle and eastern parts of the country In the more fertile and densely populated west of Syria there are Iraqi Afghan and Iranian Shiite militias augmenting Lebanese Hezbollah fighters who were given carte blanche to do whatever Hassan Nasrallah decides to do there 