Bashar al-Assad and his regime have prospered from the sarin gas attack

Syria's president will survive Ghouta crisis as US and western powers are shown to lack political authority to direct events

Simon Tisdall

theguardian.com, Tuesday 17 September 2013

".....
Although the US and Britain have portrayed Syria's untested agreement to give up its chemical weapons stockpile as a great advance, the affair has proved to be largely a sideshow in a conflict in which conventional weapons have killed and maimed vastly more people, and continue to do so. In one sense, Assad has gained the tacit go-ahead to prosecute the war, so long as he eschews nerve gas. In the wake of this dubious deal, the high tide of pressure for direct western action peaked, then subsided. The "killer moment" passed.....

The Syrian leader now knows with a degree of certainty that was lacking before Ghouta that he may do almost anything he wants, while ostensibly observing the new US-Russian framework, free from fear of American military retribution. Since Ghouta was not enough for Obama to win the backing of the American public or congress for the use of force, more routine slaughter of the kind seen in the past two and a half years can hardly be expected to change attitudes.

Assad also knows that the leverage and influence, and therefore the protection afforded him by his main ally, Russia, has been greatly enhanced by the chemical weapons deal. Obama's confusion over his illusory "red lines", exposing his political weakness, gave Moscow an opening it seized with both hands. Russia is now setting the diplomatic pace and can dictate, for example, whether and when a Geneva II peace conference takes place, and what it discusses......"