Iranian regime loses if Assad falls

Boston Herald

It seems like only yesterday that Bashar al-Assad was being courted by progressive Western politicians even as he conspired with Iranian jihadists and Kremlin strongmen. And it was less than two years ago that Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue and comandante of the fashionistas, was celebrating First Lady Asma al-Assad as “a rose in the desert,” whose “style is not the couture-and-bling dazzle of Middle Eastern power but a deliberate lack of adornment ... a thin, long-limbed beauty with a trained analytic mind who dresses with cunning understatement.”

The Syrian dictator has yet to be pried from power, but with the Kremlin sending warships for a possible evacuation of Russian citizens, it may not be long before the Assads are passe. That’s good news, isn’t it?

We can say this: Assad’s downfall would be strategically preferable to Assad’s survival. As U.S. Central Command chief Gen. James N. Mattis told Congress last March, regime change in Syria would represent “the biggest strategic setback for Iran in 25 years.”

Western-educated, English-speaking, outwardly secular/socialist Assad decided some time ago to serve as the ayatollahs’ satrap, helping them extend their power into the Arab and Sunni worlds, and facilitating their plans for hegemony over the Middle East.

The collapse of the Assad regime would represent a serious setback for this project and a body blow as well to Hezbollah, Iran’s foreign legion and the best-armed — and therefore strongest — faction in Lebanon.

It was not until eight months after the anti-Assad protests broke out in January 2011 that President Obama called for the dictator to step down. Obama willed the ends but not the means. Today, the administration is assisting some rebel groups with communications but other responsibilities — the provision of weapons for example — have been outsourced to Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Those three nations agree that Assad must go. But they want him replaced by Islamists of some stripe, and so it is Islamist groups that they have been backing with what amounts to Washington’s tacit approval. As a result, Islamists have become dominant on the battlefield and within the newly established Syrian National Coalition of Revolution and Opposition Forces (SNCROF) that Obama recently said he will recognize.

Meanwhile, lacking money and weapons, moderate groups have been left in the lurch.

Even after Assad’s departure, peace is unlikely to break out in Syria. Instead, expect revenge killings and sectarian fighting with Iran covertly fueling fires. Different groups and factions hold sway in different parts of the country. Many will not relinquish their power easily — and it’s not obvious that they should.

Syria’s most important ethno-religious minorities — Kurds, Druze, Christians, Alawites (Assad’s people), Shiites and tribal groups with long and strong traditions — will not want to be ruled by Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, the two Salafi/jihadists groups that have played an increasingly effective role in the fighting over recent months.

One post-Assad outcome seems clear and positive: It will be a long time before Syria is again a threat to Lebanon or Israel — assuming, of course, that Assad’s chemical weapons can be eliminated from the equation. That those weapons of mass destruction have been allowed to stay in the dictator’s hands all these years represents yet one more failure of the so-called international community.

Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on national security.