ALEPPO, Syria — “I have to be honest. It is not looking good,” Aleppan Liwa al-Tawhid commander Abu Hammoud told Al-Monitor when asked about the rebels’ preparedness for assaults on Aleppo by the Syrian regime and the Islamic State (IS, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham).

“Our fear now is without reinforcements and more weapons we will lose Aleppo [city] to the regime, and the [countryside] to the Islamic State,” he said.

Like a helpless lamb fought over by wolves, Aleppo is the major prize of north Syria, and any side that manages to capture the former industrial hub will almost certainly guarantee eventual victory in this long and bloody conflict. The regime and the opposition know this well, as does IS, which also has its eyes on the prize as it plots to expand the territory of its new caliphate and diversify it economically, bolstering it with large population centers. IS has been in Aleppo before and had a fleeting, tantalizing taste of what lucrative gains can be made by controlling it.

The regime’s forces, backed by various local and foreign militias, have made dramatic gains in the last 10 days, taking the strategic Sheikh Najjar industrial zone to the northeast and planning an imminent push into the infantry school and the Handarat camp. Controlling them would mean that rebel-held parts of Aleppo city would be completely besieged and cut off from their main supply routes in the countryside. It is a strategy previously used successfully by the regime in Homs and Damascus, where it yielded results in the form of localized cease-fires and settlements. At the moment, it seems that unless something dramatic changes on the ground, the regime will manage to accomplish this feat and the rebels are quite helpless to stop it. This point was driven home by the opposition Syrian National Coalition as it met recently in Istanbul to elect a new president and warn of the impending fall of Aleppo to regime forces.