Two interesting developments have taken place in Syria over the last couple of days. First, the Bashar Assad regime has included strict media censorship laws as part of its so-called “reforms” in Syria. CNN can no longer report from Syria, and now has to report on the story from Istanbul. This has been greeted with alarm in the region — so much so that CNN’s Ivan Watson reports that Assad has been told that he needs to listen to his people and conduct real reform by … Iran and Hezbollah?
The tenor of the protests has changed as well. People in the streets have begun calling for international intervention against the Assad regime, referring back to the principle of civilian protection and the precedent of UN Resolution 1973. And on its face, it’s hard to distinguish between Libya in March and Syria almost ever since. The regime has used military forces to massacre civilian protesters and to threaten entire towns. NATO cited the threat of widespread massacres as the reason it intervened in Libya; they’re actually taking place in Syria, even to the point where Assad’s allies are disturbed at the spectacle.
Will the Syrian protesters get international intervention? I’d call it unlikely in the extreme. NATO could go after Qaddafi because he didn’t have strong ties to a military power in the region; he managed to alienate everyone around him. Assad’s ties to Iran would almost guarantee that any Western or even Arab-only intervention would provoke Tehran into joining the fight. They have no intention of allowing their most critical alliance to disappear, and with it their pipeline to Hezbollah and Lebanon. They might even consider threatening a strike on Israel as a way to sideline the Arab nations and force NATO back to the sidelines. If the Syrians are to be rescued from Assad, they’ll have to do the rescuing themselves.
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