Source: Asia Time:
While the army of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is “liberating Aleppo by destroying it” – to paraphrase the words of a general in an earlier civil war, in the former Yugoslavia – even his closest foreign ally, Iran, is preparing for his end at the top. “Syrian society is a beautiful mosaic of ethnicities, faiths and cultures, and it will be smashed to pieces should President Bashar al-Assad abruptly fall,” wrote an opinion piece by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi published by the Washington Post on Wednesday.
The word “abruptly” draws the attention; the article, which embraced the moribund United Nation six-point peace plan, was an advertisement of sorts for a conference on Syria which took place in Iran on Thursday. Reportedly, diplomats from 29
countries attended the meeting, including representatives of Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Venezuela. Although little came out of the conference itself, its symbolic importance is unmistakable: according to most analysts, the six-point plan (nicknamed “the Annan plan” after the UN special envoy for Syria who recently resigned) entails the departure of Assad from power.
After the defection on Monday of Syrian prime minister Riyad Hijab, who Assad replaced on Thursday with another Sunni Muslim, Wael al-Halki – the standing of the regime took another serious blow. Syria’s other close foreign ally, Russia, has kept a relatively low profile for a couple of weeks now, and sources close to the Russian analyst community say this is an effective recognition of Assad’s increasingly untenable position..