For those who, for other excellent reasons, support leaving Assad in place: Read this excerpt from the article twice.:
President Bashar al-Assad and his allies Iran and the militant group Hezbollah.
President Bashar al-Assad and his allies Iran and the militant group Hezbollah.
If Trump really wants to make a deal with Russia to oust Assad he is going to have to offer Russia that Syrian port. Nothing else will do. Perhaps he could extract a reversal of Russian support for Iran in the the process. But that is a long shot.
Also this would be turning over leadership of Syria to the Sunnis. To do that you need to find a Syrian General Sisi (President of Egypt.) I suspect that it is not an easy task to find him and guide the Syrian people in that direction. We might end up with another Muslim Brotherhood Syrian ruler. Or a ruler who is unable to control his country.
The Syrian officers who are not Assad loyalists already deserted. There is no good replacement for Assad... or we would know a name, wouldn’t we?
The Assads are part of Syrian nationalism. Now the good news should be that the son is not the father. He has a western education, has lived and worked as an optometrist in England, married a British-raised Syrian wife,
Assad’s last reelection had multiple candidates on the ballot for the first time in Assad ruling history. A small start. But a start. Or could have been.
Of course his country being torn apart by a Western calculated and engineered arab spring “civil war” - joined by tens of thousands of non Syrian islamist fighters -made it impossible for Syria to hold true nationwide election in “rebel held” areas (where our ally ISIS was crucifying Christians for example) .
It is interesting that with the large numbers of Syrian expats abroad (the very people the West needs to go back in a rebuild Syria) there were a number of countries that permitted them to vote at Syrian Embassies
But 10 countries (complaining about the inability OF ALL Syrians to vote) did NOT permit millions of Syrian expats to cast ballots abroad in 2014 at their embassies... Guess who?
US UK Germany France Qatar (free elections anyone) Saudi Arabia (that bastion of free elections) Turkey (another real free election state) et al
THE ONES WHO DID NOT WANT THE RESULTS