Just Who Exactly Would Take Down Assad?

In another WaPo article, we learn:

The brother is an impetuous officer, who wields control over the praetorian Republican Guard. The sister is nicknamed "the Iron Lady." Her husband is a burly general who rose methodically through the ranks of Syria's feared intelligence services. Presiding over them is Bashar Assad, the Syrian president who runs what some have called "a dictatorship without a dictator."

Diplomats and analysts say that together, the four represent the corporate leadership of Syria, a country facing its greatest crisis in decades following the release of a U.N. investigation that implicates senior officials in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. In this crisis, they say, the Assad family circle is a source of the president's strength. It may also be his weakness. If his relatives are directly linked to the killing, the scandal could bring down his government.

Why are we calling this group a corporate leadership? Aren't their words and deeds more in step with the Gang of Four that dominated China? There's nothing corporate about the way the Syrians operate. They run the country as a glorified gang, and use threats, intimidation, and violence to coerce opponents into giving up (or killing those who don't).

That's what happened to Rafik Harari, who was assassinated by the Syrians because he dared to speak back to the Syrians who had dominated Lebanon for a generation.

But the real question is who exactly would take down Assad and his cronies. Surely it isn't going to be the UN. Russia may come to its aid once again, although France has realized that its interests are more in line with the US. And it isn't likely to be a spontaneous revolt by the Syrian people. The military has too strong a grip, especially through the intelligence services.

So, that means that Assad may be taken out via a coup. And that would mean the military being in charge of things and that's not all that different than the current situation. Only the names will have changed, but the attitude, means, and actions will not have changed one bit. It is possible that those who depose the current regime will make conciliatory gestures towards Lebanon, or even Israel, but the Assad regime is so strongly entrenched that it is unlikely that someone is going to stick their neck out at this juncture.