By concentrated his power (including lots of newly mobilized loyal militias) in a smaller area where the largely static rebels could not follow and by getting substantial Russian and Iranian help, Assad has made gains in the west. I've doubted whether Assad's faction could hold these gains given the heavy casualties his side has suffered clearing these gains.
This article questions whether Assad is really winning the war as the recent press consensus has held:
Almost everywhere in Syria – with the exception of the human tragedy that is Homs – the rebels are making surprisingly steady progress. On Monday, armed groups in Idlib bombed a key checkpoint, an action that paves the way for anti-Assad forces to push through Wadi al Dhaif, one of the regime’s largest military bases in the north of the country. Regime-controlled areas in Aleppo, Idlib, Deraa, Rif Dimashq have also come under pressure.
Assad has claimed the rebellion is on its last legs and that the war would be over by the end of this year. But that is an extension of the victory date made when he gained the protection of the Kerry-Lavrov deal back in September 2013. These predictions seem far more like efforts to hold his staggering faction together despite the heavy casualties and economic crisis that the war has inflicted on Assad's small base of support.
The article notes that the rebels are now getting more arms (including from America) and that the rebels (under our pressure, I assume) are finally whipping themselves into some organization that we can get behind.
This article notes the upgrade in rebel status:
With the leadership of Syria’s moderate opposition in the United States this week, the State Department has granted the group’s Washington and New York offices official “foreign mission” status.
The diplomatic promotion is not exactly the more sophisticated arms the Syrian opposition would like the US to provide to moderate rebel fighters, and it’s a far cry from recognition of the coalition as Syria’s legitimate government.
But the designation, which the US says is an upgrade in the coalition’s “status,” does offer the troubled opposition new cachet – even as it hints at the uneasy relationship the US continues to have with the opposition it has supported during the three years of the Syrian conflict.
Assad's gains in Homs may yet allow Assad to survive in power. But this would be a matter of a post-Syria Assad in a Core Syria rather than the early rebellion predictions of a post-Assad Syria. But our assumption that Assad was doomed faltered as we hoped for a cost-free victory without helping the rebels while Russia and Iran went all in to support their side.
And 150,000+ casualties later, we finally decide that we should take a hand in making sure Assad must go. Hopefully, we don't let Assad survive in a Core Syria and instead seek the defeat of Assad in whatever shrunken realm he is "reelected" as president to rule.
I'll give the administration credit for at least reversing an early decision to avoid "militarizing" the conflict (as Hillary bizarrely spun our refusal to send arms to rebels) and attempting to defeat Assad. President Obama was operating on mistaken "lessons" from Iraq that lots of his people and supporters believed, too. I won't expect a reversal on their judgment on Iraq itself, but at least they are reversing their decisions on Syria based on those false lessons.
The promise of hope and change is not dead yet.
