The debris of destruction Bashar al-Assad’s armour and artillery have left across the insurgent cities of Hama and Deir Ezzor in recent days now mixes with the smoke and splinters of the bridges towards his few remaining putative allies – all burnt by a regime whose narrow foundations are crumbling.

It may not look like it, especially to the hundreds of thousands of Syrians confronting the Assads’ “killing machine” with little more than their raw courage, but this regime is entering its twilight. The phrase was used by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, in which he said Riyadh “demands a stop to the killing machine ... and calls for an act of wisdom before it is too late”.

But it is – as the king and rulers across the Middle East surely know – already too late. The Assad clan embarked on a road of no return in April, when it first sent the tanks into Deraa in the south, where the rebellion ignited in mid-March.