The battles in Hama province are critical for Assad to win yet trying to hold too much over the last year has deprived him of the ground forces needed to hold even a smaller Syria:
Rebels began to push into a strategic town in Syria's central Hama province on Thursday and laid siege to at least one town dominated by President Bashar al-Assad's minority sect, activists said. ...
They were also planning to take the town of Maan, arguing that the army was present there and in al-Tleisia and was hindering their advance on nearby Morek, a town on the highway that runs from Damascus north to Aleppo, Syria's largest city and another battleground in the conflict.
Assad is just buying time with no hope of winning the way he is fighting:
The Syrian rebellion is now in its deathwatch phase. The government is doomed and its forces grow weaker every day. It’s only a matter of time before the government losses control of the entire country and surviving officials flee for sanctuary. Allies (Iran, Russia, China) have been quietly offering refuge to Assad and his senior aides. President Basher Assad keeps making public announcements that he has no intention of leaving. The same can’t be said about the several thousand senior officials he depends on to control the country. Many of these people have committed known criminal acts over the decades and have to fear rebel retribution if they are still in Syria when the rebels win. Many of these officials have already sent their families into exile and when these army and government leaders join their families in large numbers, you’ll know it’s the end. That is expected to happen within the next few months, or weeks.
And worse, the people he needs to keep fighting will soon know that there is no hope of winning the way he is fighting. The question will be whether the ruling class decides it is over before the troops on the ground decide it is over. And the former know they need the latter to come to that conclusion after the elites do if the elites are to have a chance to run. It's the Don't-want-to-be-a-prisoner dilemma.
Assad needs to have a plan to win the war with the army he has that his supporters and his troops can believe will work--even if it takes years:
Assad needs to do something that offers his troops hope of victory by giving them an objective within reach. Assad needs to abandon large parts of Syria to the rebels and prepare to rebuild his forces to retake the country.
Firing off more ballistic missiles isn't going to do the job.
