Washington, DC – Absent an unforeseen event, experts say Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad is not going to lose his grip on power any time soon – something that is moving many Arab countries to normalise relations with the government in Damascus.Thousands of kilometres away in Washington, DC, United States policy on Syria has become a balancing act between maintaining a rejection of Assad while pursuing “realistic” goals in the region.
“The Biden administration, I think, finds itself having to navigate between the realities on the ground across the region and its own principled posture with respect to Assad himself,” said Mona Yacoubian, a senior adviser on Syria at the United States Institute of Peace, a US government-funded think-tank. …
