It might seem like an all-too familiar story: With its economy cratered by civil war, and new pockets of anti-regime resistance, Syria is on the verge of state collapse. President Bashar al-Assad isn’t just on the back foot; he is weaker than ever. Is he about to fall?
You might have read this before—back in 2015, perhaps, before Russia intervened to save Assad. Indeed, in May 2015, I wrote about just that, as Syria’s army showed more signs of fracturing and the economy sank further. The value of Syria’s currency that month had hit a record low against the U.S. dollar: 315 pounds, and worth even less on the black market. It was about 47 pounds before the war. I noted that the collapsing currency “was the latest sign of the Assad regime’s growing troubles, as a string of rebel victories and rumors of internal discord exposed more weaknesses in the regime.”
As Joshua Landis, the director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, told me of Assad then: “His situation is deteriorating. He looked triumphant six months ago, but today he looks weak.” Assad had recently granted a few careful interviews to Western outlets, including Foreign Affairs, in which he parroted all his regime’s talking points about the war, in an effort to project strength.