Fighter jets have returned to the skies of northern Syria and ground troops in Damascus are on the move again.



A nervous night watching the horizon gave way to a business-as-usual feel on Thursday in the Syrian capital. Whether Donald Trump will carry out his threats to bomb Syria or give way to a realpolitik that sees some other sort of compromise thrashed out is a prime debating point before sunset when, according to residents, a countdown to a US barrage could begin.

Even if Trump unleashes the formidable US arsenal on targets across the country in retaliation for the suspected chemical attack on the Syrian town of Douma, there is a feeling in Damascus that the regime will prevail.

Russian news agencies on Thursday reported that Syrian government forces had raised their flag over the central mosque in Douma, at the heart of the formerly rebel-held eastern Ghouta region on the edge of Damascus.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A screengrab from a video aired on Russian media shows a man reportedly waving a Syrian flag from a building in Douma. Photograph: Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/Getty Images

The Syrian capital is a strikingly different place from the city it was when Barack Obama was making his own decisions about whether to bomb in 2013. Then, Damascus was wobbling under the weight of insurgency. The regime’s allies had not arrived in the numbers in which they are now deployed. The defence of the country looked threadbare.



“Iran is here, so is Hezbollah, and the Russians have their air defence missiles,” said Haithem Chams, a resident of the outer Damascus suburbs, who spoke by phone. “The Russians might shoot the American missiles down. Then who’s the strongest?”



Two residents who spoke to the Guardian said military convoys had moved through western Damascus past the Sayeda Zainab shrine and towards the Lebanese border on Thursday morning. Reports elsewhere said Hezbollah, which has been at the arrowhead of the Assad regime’s ground defence, had regrouped west of the capital, away from air force targets that are expected to bear the brunt of any US strike.



Much of what remains of the Syrian air force has been moved to Russian bases in the country. Iraqi and Iranian media speculated that some Syrian jets had been flown to Iran to avoid any attacks, but this could not be independently confirmed. The working assumption in Syria is that Trump’s generals would advise him to target Syrian air bases, from where suspected chemical attacks have been launched.



Any strike this time would probably be more comprehensive than the attack that hit the Shayrat airbase near Homs in April 2017, three days after the sarin strike on the northern town of Khan Sheikhun.

Q&A What are the military options in Syria? Show Hide In theory there are three alternative responses - the first a punitive strike such as the US attack on the Shayrat air base in April 2017 that saw 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles hit the the air base in response to a chemical weapons attack. The second level of attack is to seek to prevent Syria attempting to use chemical weapons again by destroying the relevant facilities, the means of delivery and imposing a punishment. The third level of activity is to seek to weaken the entire Assad military infrastructure or even attack Assad's presidential palace, as well as Syrian military headquarters. But there is no appetite in Western capitals to forcibly dislodge Assad from office, even if there may be an unspoken wish to change the way the Syrian government negotiates at UN peace talks in Geneva.



Helicopters that have dropped barrel bombs on Ghouta have mostly taken off from the Dumair airbase north of the city. The Russian air force maintains a presence there, as it does in many other Syrian military facilities. Its main presence, however, is in the north-west of the country, where its S-400 air defence system, which has never been tested in battle, is poised for action against any US missiles.



“The Americans wouldn’t dare fly planes against us,” said Mohammed al-Rai, a supporter of the Syrian government from Homs. “Look what happened to the Israeli plane. Worse will happen to them. Things were difficult a few years ago, but they’re better now. If the Americans blow up some runways to aid the jihadists, so what? They won’t win.”



What Trump has in mind after any strike is confounding Syrians on both sides of the conflict. “We hope he will take this awful president out,” said Maher Sergie, an opponent of Assad who was exiled from Aleppo to Idlib. “May an American missile chase him to his basement.”

“He hasn’t got a clue what to do,” said a regime supporter who refused to be named. “He doesn’t even want to stay here. The regime knows this, so do the Russians and Iran. If he was smart, he would try to back out of this.”



Damascus residents say the centre of power in Syria remains heavily militarised, with soldiers in combat kit monitoring hundreds of checkpoints, and the crackle of gunfire an ever present soundtrack. Helicopters appeared briefly on Thursday over Ghouta, when Syrian and Russian troops took charge of Douma.

Many who agreed to exile from the town on the edge of the capital arrived in al-Bab, 30 miles north-east of Aleppo in northern Syria – they are safe for now, but strangers in a volatile land. Al-Bab was an opposition stronghold before Isis took control in late 2013. A Turkish-led Arab force recaptured it last year, and since then it has been a home for displaced people, bussed there from elsewhere in the country.



Whether war will follow them is another unknown. For now, the new arrivals want a night without airstrikes or the smell of chemicals. “I was close to the house when it was hit,” said a former Douma resident who called himself Lutfi. “There were people stumbling, holding their mouths. One person fell, another may have died. That was what convinced us to leave. It was the end of the world.



“If the Americans hit the regime, it might scare them for a moment,” he added. “But they’ve already told the world they’re leaving, so what would be the point? We know they don’t want Assad to leave, and we know they won’t fight the Russians. Is it Iran? Might that be their reason for bombing? It sure isn’t for helping us.”

