Civil War in Syria

[StateBoiler]

Am I correct in my impression that things are starting to look rather bad for Assad?

On the international/diplomatic level I'm not sure, the situation is complex.

On the military level his troops are over-stretched, the losses in the past four years were too high and he is increasingly running out of recruits. In many Alawite villages one third or so of the male part of the age cohort 18-30 years is dead. Hezbollah is focussing on the Syrian-Lebanese border region (Western Qalamoon, now Zabadani and coming soon Madaya and Wadi Barada). Iraqi voluntaries have gone back to Iraq to fight Daesh there. The Aleppo salient is costly and prevents Daesh and non-Daesh rebels from fighting each other, but giving it up would be a disastrous signal to parts of his middle-class passive support base. The break-down of the Idlib salient was kind of natural, the problem for Assad now is that the rebel offensive continues in the Al-Ghab plain (and soon Northern Latakia province?) and the Alawite core support regions are endangered. The permanent loss of the Palmyra region with its oil and gas resources would be an economic problem.

On the other hand you can compare the situation from 2 years ago to the current situation and see that the non-Daesh rebels have achieved very little since then (conquering the Idlib salient and some territorial gains in the South). They still control at most 15% of Syria and it doesn't depend on counting area or population. The strongest regional rebel alliance is now that in the Idlib region but on the other hand this is exactly the region where the Nusra Front has purged the "moderate" rebels in the last year and the US would probably have difficulties cooperating with what has remained.

So overall Assad is losing, but very slowly.

He'll be fine. If the Iran deal passes Congress, Iran will send small arms over to Syria to shore him up. Iran won't let him fall unless they control the successive leader, at which point it wouldn't matter, nothing would change.

[StateBoiler]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

And what army will be on the ground guaranteed to uphold that?

Putin's action here has exposed American, European, and UN maneuvers in Syria as worthless. So yeah, "provide the Kurds autonomy", because once that is threatened it's not like anyone is coming to help.