Leni
It’s “maskirovka”, meaning strategic deception.
One problem making this possible is that Bashar Assad looks like a pasty-faced dork with harmless blue eyes. Not the glowering swarthy Saddam Hussein, the nutcrazy narcissist Muammar Gaddafi, or the turbaned shovelbearded Khamenei & Co, but someone who looks like he couldn’t run a Seven Eleven.