I still think that the odds are against Assad. But with our failure to vigorously support the rebellion and our bizarre WMD deal that has bought Assad time to kill his people into submission with conventional means by ruling out our air strikes, Assad has a better chance.
But the main factor in his better chance is that Assad is fighting a whole new war as I argued he had to do:
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. ...
So, could Assad hold his rump Alawite homeland plus the territory down to Damascus? Call this one, Minimum Syria. As in the minimum to still be recognized as Syria. ...
Perhaps with a realistic plan to survive, Assad could get Russia to commit a marine regiment to hold a base region on the coast and a parachute division in the north to help deter Turkey and help hold the front south of Aleppo. Call that 10,000 troops. Maybe Iran can toss in half that in irregular plain clothes thugs. Perhaps Hezbollah tosses in a thousand men. Surely, Assad could mobilize 18,000 local defense forces from Alawites and loyal minorities worried about the Sunni majority.
Assad would continue to control chemical weapons depots and missile assets. If Hezbollah and friendly Lebanese Shias can hold the western border of this new Minimum Syria, Assad could prepare for the long haul with Russian, Chinese, and Iranian financial support. ...
Assad could still win this fight. But he has to retreat until the correlation of forces can be swung back in his favor. Assad just can't win the way he is fighting, now.
Assad has largely abandoned Syria outside of the core I described (although I thought Aleppo was too much to hold, Assad still holds in that region but doesn't seem to be making a major effort to secure the region despite some talk in the summer of doing so).
Assad has mobilized way more local defense forces than I thought he could. But he had Iranian support to do this:
The Assad forces are unified, including the many local militias formed in the last year with Iranian help. The Iranians are the key to the improved battlefield success of the Assad forces.
Hezbollah has added more than the minimum, I thought. And that has been very important to the dispirited Syrian troops:
Recent gains by Syrian forces are usually led by Hezbollah gunmen. Hezbollah had withdrawn most of its 10,000 gunmen from Syria over the last month but the 3,600 Hezbollah fighters still in Syria are well trained (often in Iran), experienced, and led by some of the best Hezbollah combat commanders. The Assad forces are still demoralized and the presence of these aggressive and capable Hezbollah gunmen makes a big difference. The Assad troops will move forward, despite rebel fire, if they see the Hezbollah men making progress.
And Iran has funneled in a Shia Foreign Legion to support Assad.
Assad has also gained major Iranian financial support and support from Russia, which is helping with financing, weapons, and ammunition. China isn't taking a lead here, but is sympathetic to Assad.
Russia has not committed troops to Assad, but is keeping a flotilla off of Syria as a show of support.
So Assad is fighting a whole new war.
But with his small population base and the heavy casualties his forces are suffering, I don't think Assad's odds of holding out against the heavy odds he faces are very high.
There are lots of rebels in the field--way more than we faced in Iraq (by a factor of 4 or 5). And the casualties Assad's forces are enduring dwarf Coalition and Iraqi security force casualties in the Iraq War.
I knew Assad wasn't an island of stability amidst the Arab Spring on the eve of the Syrian protests. If only our president followed my advice to support the rebels early and decisively to defeat our avowed enemy in Syria.
We're clearly worse off for not doing that. So Assad can be forgiven for his optimism given that his odds are surely higher now because of our failures to work for his ouster when Assad was reeling.
