Considering that his ultimate aim is to survive and maintain his rule in Syria, he is very much the winner. Assad before the Arab spring was potentially a workable partner for the west, if not exactly an ally, however, if the west was going to go the way of ‘Assad must go’ they needed to follow through on that rhetoric, instead of being half assad (couldn’t resist) about it and allowing him to stay in place. America and the west need to decide whether they are interventionist or not, if we are going to intefere and intervene, do it properly or not at all instead of doing just enough to fk things up and then leave a power vacuum to be filled by enemies of the west.
Assad is paying dearly for this “rule”. He rules sht. He is just a puppet figure with Iran using his people and his land to get it bombed by Israel. Iranians are there to tell him what to do and Russians are there to tell him what not to do, putting a veto on it. Syria and Assad are a joke # fake news # fake nation # fake leader