The issue: It’s dangerous to underestimate a dictator like Syria’s Assad

These must be lonely times for Syria’s Bashar Assad.

When he tries to phone Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak or Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, he gets no answer, or if he does, it’s a voice he doesn’t recognize. Likely when he tries to call Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, he gets a recording that says this is no longer a working number.

OF THE DICTATORS in office at the start of the Arab Spring, he is the last one left standing. And the question increasingly becomes: for how long?

Assad has stayed in power despite mass demonstrations, with no discernible central leadership, by the ruthless use of his armed forces. These include the use of tanks and artillery against heavily populated areas; populated, to be sure, by his own people.

These are tactics pioneered by his father, Hafez, who destroyed a rebellious town by artillery fire and then bulldozed it, and its inhabitants, flat.

But the West and many of Assad’s fellow Arabs are increasingly revolted by his violent repression. France has taken the lead in pressing for stronger sanctions, including an arms embargo. The European Union has broadened its no-travel list to include 50 more Syrian government officials and nine government entities.

So far, Assad has been relatively immune to this pressure because of support from a key ally — Iran.

And for the first time, the West has directly targeted Iran in its crackdown. The EU broadened sanctions against the elite Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard for providing money, equipment and technical assistance to the Assad regime in putting down the rebellion.

HOWEVER, SYRIA is rapidly burning through its $17 billion in currency reserves and it’s an open question how long Iran can continue to bankroll Assad. There is the further complication that Iran is Shiite and Syria is overwhelmingly Sunni. Assad himself is from the minority Alawite sect.

No foreign press has been allowed to enter the country in the five months since the protests began. In the beginning, protesters were seeking the implementation of long-promised — but never delivered — social and political reforms. But now the protests have focused on a simpler demand: Assad and his family should step down.

It would seem that Assad should be laying contingency plans to give up power and leave the country, but it’s dangerous to underestimate a dictator willing to kill more than 2,000 of his people, mostly in cold blood, to avoid the fate of the other victims of the Arab Spring.

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