Michael Young

While the calls for President Bashar Assad to step down continue, in many respects the Syrian president has already lost power. Assad has become a figurehead as Iran has taken control of Syria’s regime and its praetorian military units, and is even manipulating sectarian dynamics in parts of the country.

That’s why the death of Mohammad Nassif last weekend had symbolic importance. Early on Nassif had been the link between the Islamic Republic and Syria, but it was a different Syria then. No less a criminal enterprise than today, Hafez Assad’s regime was yet more selfish about its sovereignty. For a time Bashar replicated this attitude, which, for instance, shaped Syria’s approach to Ayad Allawi after the Iraqi elections of 2010. Whereas Syria wanted Allawi to form a government, Iran successfully backed his rival, Nouri al-Maliki. This led to momentary tensions in the Iranian-Syrian alliance.

As the Assad regime lost ground in the aftermath of Syria’s 2011 uprising, however, political survival took precedence over principles of political affirmation. Syrian-Iranian interaction reverted completely to a relationship of dependency and domination, with Bashar Assad finding himself on the bottom.

As was their way in Iraq, the Iranians built up their power in Syria on two pillars: the effective partitioning of the country and the deployment of pro-Iranian militias. Partition weakened the credibility of the Assad regime, while virtually ensuring that the Alawite community would pursue a sectarian agenda in defense of its core zones of control, which only benefited Iran. The proliferation of militias allowed Tehran to create an alternative power structure to that of Syria’s regime, giving it the latitude to circumvent the Syrian authorities when needed.

According to unconfirmed media reports, the Russians have expressed concern to Syrian officials about this situation and the way it has spread sectarianism. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Russian and Iranian strategies in Syria are different. Russia always seemed more concerned about ensuring that the Syrian security hierarchy remained intact to stabilize the country, whatever happened to Assad himself. Iran’s aim has been to undermine this security network and replace it with one entirely under its own sway, even if it means that Syria is broken up into sectarian entities and becomes debilitated.

At the heart of these different paths are considerations of power. And here someone like Mohammad Nassif could have been useful. Hafez Assad’s cronies had an instinctual sense of power and how to retain it. While their state was based on brutality, the old regime was less prone than Bashar and his entourage to resort to violence when alternatives existed. That’s not to say that Nassif disagreed over how to address the 2011 uprising, but that in his day Syria was in better health in the sense of crime, to borrow from the writer Leonardo Sciascia.

As someone astutely remarked, Bashar probably does not realize how superfluous he has become; he imagines that he will be able to reassert his influence in the future. He doesn’t seem to see that in wanting so desperately to preserve his power, he created a situation virtually guaranteeing he would be unable to do so.

This message should have been obvious a decade ago, when the Syrians either ordered or signed off on the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister. This had followed their systematic efforts to weaken Hariri through the services of President Emile Lahoud. But what the Assad regime didn’t grasp was that in marginalizing then eliminating Hariri, it also undermined the foundation of Syrian rule over Lebanon, namely the Syrian-Saudi understanding that came after the Taif Accord and that had earned American approval.

Things were little different in Deraa in 2011. The incident that sparked the Syrian uprising, namely the arrest and torture of school children who had written anti-government slogans, could have been managed in a more subtle way, without humiliating the families and immediately reaching for a gun. But to Bashar Assad power means violence, when his father shrewdly sensed that the essence of power was ensuring that violence only remained latent. He knew that once force was employed, it could unleash unpredictable dynamics.

What does Bashar’s future hold? Nothing that should reassure him. At best he may remain the nominal leader of a rump Syrian state, his survival determined by a foreign power playing the role of puppet master. His Alawite minority, meanwhile, will have lost everything thanks to the hubris and blunders of their president. They will continue to play second fiddle to Iran and the Shiites after decades of dominating Syria, their main purpose to ensure that Iran’s ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah, enjoys geographical and strategic depth in any conflict with Israel.

No wonder Assad has no intention of falling back on the Alawite heartland. If he does the mirage of his power will dissipate, so that the Alawites themselves may do him in. But the price to pay for remaining in Damascus is that the Iranians are reportedly changing the sectarian physiognomy of the capital, installing imported Shiites on the southern edges of the city to act as a barrier against a possible rebel offensive.

Assad has become an afterthought, so the insistence on removing him from power may be overdone. No one will regret his departure, but can Syrians accept what replaces him? That’s unlikely in the long term. Syria may have been ravaged by decades of Assad rule, but it is a country with an honorable past. To be Iran’s pawn is not a destiny Syrians will readily accept.