Is Bashar al-Assad Approaching His End?

In recent days, the Egyptian website "Bawabat Al-Ahram" published a detailed report on the willingness of the United States and Russia to end the Syrian crisis, revealing the features of a plan that ultimately leads to the ousting of Bashar al-Assad. The information published on this site indicates that a group of Assad's opponents in Cairo is actively pursuing this plan, which seeks to remove him from power without addressing the future fate of the Damascus ruler. This "secret" plan is based on sidelining Bashar al-Assad and first- and second-tier managers of security and military agencies, after which a transitional government composed of a temporary military council, a temporary government, a temporary parliament, and specific guidelines for the transitional period to guarantee the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, including Alawites, Christians, Druze, Ismailis, Kurds, Turkmen, Syriacs, and Assyrians, will be established. The plan also emphasizes that to prevent chaos in Syria and to prevent extremist groups from gaining power, part of the current government and army must be preserved. It is anticipated that the military council replacing Bashar al-Assad will consist of 15 members representing all religions and ethnicities of Syria. The future Syrian parliament will consist of 101 members distributed as follows: - 25% of the future parliament will be allocated to internal and external opponents of the Assad regime with all their ideological and political diversity. - The second 25% will be dedicated to "coordination" and groups active in anti-Assad protests inside the country. - The third 25% will belong to military and civilian figures of the ruling regime who were not in the first- and second-tier management. - The final 25% will be allocated to Syrian civil society, including merchants, university professors, teachers, clergy, women, workers, farmers, etc., who have no affiliation with the regime on one side and its opponents on the other. With the establishment of such a temporary political structure until new parliamentary elections in Syria, the 1973 constitution, drafted by Bashar al-Assad's father, will be annulled, and the 1950 constitution will be temporarily adopted until a new constitution is drafted. Additionally, during this temporary period, no laws against other parties or prohibiting them from political activity should be issued. However, the Syrian Ba'ath Party will be dissolved, and its assets will be seized by the new government. Furthermore, the current parliament and local councils established by the Assad regime will all be dissolved. The secret plan also proposes that the temporary government, chosen from technocrats, should, as its first step, release all political prisoners and those imprisoned for participating in protests against Bashar al-Assad. The news from the "Bawabat Al-Ahram" website, which is close to the new Egyptian government, whether true or false, indicates that other factors related to events in Syria have emerged, showing that the war-torn country is on the brink of significant changes that may ultimately lead to the ousting of Bashar al-Assad. The most important of these factors is the closeness of Russia to Turkey, the expansion of Saudi Arabia's relations with Russia, the dire economic and military situation of the Syrian regime, and the increasing economic and political pressures on the Islamic Republic. Russia's closeness to Turkey, with the new EU sanctions against Russia, has allowed Turkey, which has not yet fully joined the EU, to avoid being bound by European countries' resolutions. In this situation, Turkey immediately compensated for Russia's food shortages caused by EU sanctions, especially in the dairy sector, and opened new horizons in trade and economic exchanges between the two countries. The trade volume between the two countries reached $34 billion in 2014, but both sides are eager to increase this figure to $100 billion by 2020. On December 1, 2014, Putin's visit to Ankara highlighted Turkey's importance in Russia's economic and regional policies, and with two gifts of a 6% reduction in the price of Russian gas exports to Turkey and changing the route of Russian gas exports to Europe from Bulgaria to the port of Samsun in Turkey by the Black Sea and then transferring it to Ankara, he rushed to meet his Turkish counterpart. This significant concession will soon position Turkey as the eastern gateway for Russian gas exports to Europe. Furthermore, Putin promised to reduce the price of Russian gas exports to Turkey by 15% of its current price in the not-too-distant future. Although the two countries have disagreements over issues such as the Syrian crisis, the Ukraine issue, the coup in Egypt, the situation in Cyprus, Kosovo, Georgia, and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, their mutual need to develop economic cooperation leads them to find common ground on contentious issues. Additionally, the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits, which are the passageways for Russian ships from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and then to Syrian waters, are under Turkey's control, and therefore, the Russians know well that officials in Ankara have never had the desire to change strategic equations to the detriment of Moscow's rulers, neither in the past nor now. However, the continuation of the crisis in Syria could jeopardize their economic cooperation. Currently, an understanding has formed between the two sides regarding resolving the Syrian crisis, but there may still be disagreements over the formulas for ending it. In recent days, Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister, held meetings with a group of members of the National Coalition opposing Bashar al-Assad in the Turkish cities of Istanbul and Gaziantep, and according to news published on the Bawabat Al-Ahram website, the Russians, after gaining the approval of Assad's opponents, will seek to attract the attention of UN Security Council members regarding their plan and the issuance of a resolution in this regard. Here, the significance of Russia's closeness to Turkey becomes more evident in its impact on the Syrian crisis. Points of agreement between Russia and Saudi Arabia, after Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power in Egypt, Saudi Arabia fully aligned with Russia regarding support for the new situation in the land of the Pharaohs and adopted a unified policy with the Kremlin in defense of Sisi. This action opened the way for cooperation with Russia on other important Middle Eastern issues, and the Russian Foreign Minister traveled to the region several times, while Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal visited Moscow. Another point of commonality between Russia and Saudi Arabia is the defense of Syria's territorial integrity and opposition to the fragmentation of the country, which has been widely discussed after the potential disintegration of the Levant due to conflicting groups. The new plan revealed by a website affiliated with the Al-Ahram institution linked to the Egyptian government indicates that the new rulers in Cairo have played a significant role in creating and crystallizing this plan, and soon Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will travel to Moscow to carefully discuss the situation in Syria with his Russian counterpart alongside other issues of mutual interest. In this matter, Saudi Arabia is fully coordinated with Egypt and Russia that the Syrian crisis must end without the disintegration of the army and government institutions. They unanimously agree that the dissolution of the army and government institutions in the experience of Iraq after 2003 should not be repeated in Syria. The dire economic and military situation of Bashar al-Assad, with Hassan Rouhani's arrival, the Islamic Republic's economic aid to the Syrian government has slowed down compared to the past, and with the drop in oil prices, Iran's economic priorities have shifted regarding Syria. In the past two months, the Syrian pound has experienced a historic fall against the dollar, and fuel shortages in all cities controlled by Bashar al-Assad have turned into a new crisis for the Damascus ruler. In July 2013, Qadri Jamil, the then Deputy Minister of Economy in Syria, revealed in an interview with the Financial Times about a monthly aid of $500 million from Iran and Russia, but now no Syrian official can confidently speak about the arrival of such aid. Alongside the Islamic Republic, Russia has also been negatively impacted by the drop in oil prices and Western sanctions and cannot assist Bashar al-Assad as it did in the past. Another misfortune for the Damascus ruler is that the new Prime Minister of Iraq, unlike Nouri al-Maliki, the former head of the Iraqi government, is not willing to continue Iraq's assistance to Bashar al-Assad, and this change in policy negatively affects the already shattered Syrian economy. Alongside economic problems, news from the war fronts is not very favorable for Bashar al-Assad and his supporters. Recently, two areas, Wadi al-Daif and Hamidiya, which had resisted against the opponents for three years and repelled five of their attacks, fell. Additionally, in recent months, armed opponents have managed to place most of Bashar al-Assad's military airports within their reach, which has had a direct impact on the number of airstrikes by the Syrian regime. Airstrikes in the ongoing Syrian war are Bashar al-Assad's most important tool, and any disruption in them could have significant effects on the entire war equation. On the other hand, the outskirts of Daraa have completely fallen into the hands of the opponents, and in the Aleppo front, despite their bloody attacks in the two fronts of Handarat and Mallah, Bashar al-Assad's forces have been unable to change their situation. In the Damascus front, Assad's forces' attacks on the Jobar area, despite heavy casualties, yielded no results for the Damascus ruler. On the other side, the Islamic Republic, which was trying to eliminate opponents of Bashar al-Assad from the Arsal region through military assistance to the Lebanese army and reduce pressure on Hezbollah forces in the Qalamoun mountains, faced opposition from the Lebanese government, and the rejection of "Iran's gift" has kept pressure on Hezbollah in the Qalamoun region. This pressure could strengthen the idea of retreat within Hezbollah's ranks from Syria, which has been raised several times in the past. In such circumstances, the news published on the Egyptian website seems reasonable, and for the first time, with the cooperation of Saudi Arabia and Russia on one side and Turkey's closeness to Moscow on the other, there is a possibility of its implementation, especially as the Islamic Republic, by extending its front from Yemen to Syria, does not have the economic and political capacity to maintain such a wide front, and it seems unlikely that the rulers in Tehran will oppose what is taking shape and referenced by Bawabat Al-Ahram.