Fault Lines hosts Garland Nixon and Lee Stranahan met with John Kiriakou, a former CIA analyst who gained celebrity for confirming to the press that the CIA had used waterboarding to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners in 2007. He spent over two years in prison after being convicted for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by providing classified information to the New York Times for a 2008 story on waterboarding.
Stranahan discussed what a challenge it was for Westerners to accept that Assad is here to stay. "When I talk to people who say [Assad is] a monster, who do you want to replace him? Does anyone have an answer to that?"
"These is no answer to that," Kiriakou replied. "The opposition forces are very heavily divided… they agree on almost nothing. This is one of those situations where we haven't crossed a red line yet, we're not beyond the point of no return, we can actually say 'wait a minute, this policy of regime change is a mistake. Bashar al-Assad is the devil we know, which is better than the devil we don't know. He's the least-worst option."
Beyond the concern that there was no good alternative to Assad, Kiriakou said, there were international legal concerns to replacing him. "Regime change as a policy is a violation of international law, whether we like it or not. [Assad] is the internationally-recognized leader of Syria, the United Nations recognizes the Assad government as the government of Syria. Without a UN Security Council resolution supporting regime change, we have no right to go in there and say, 'we don't like this guy, we want to install our own guy."
Kiriakou and Stranahan agreed that, distasteful as Assad might be to the West, his regime wasn't wholly without benefits. "Let's look at what Assad has done now," said Kiriakou. [Assad] isn't a nice guy, not a good guy. He certainly murdered many thousands of his own people, but he is a force for stability."
Stranahan chimed in with what he described as an "oversimplified version" of Middle East politics: "Basically, there's two options: there's military strongmen who are more secular, and [there are] religious Islamists — and I'd rather go with the military strongman every time because you can at least negotiate with them."
"My theory has been if the US and Russia went in and said, 'we're going to not fight you staying in power, but we're watching you … you've got to stop crushing your political enemies. On the other hand, we'll help you if there's a terrorist… ' I think [Assad would accept that]."
Nixon added that US, Russian and Syrian interests lined up neatly if the Americans gave up the increasingly unlikely prospect of replacing Assad. "We have a kind of a unity of needs. if you look at it right now. Everybody knows the Russians have major trouble with terrorism and have for some time — they've had some really nasty terrorist attacks. Certainly, Assad has a major threat coming from [Daesh and other] Islamist terrorist groups, and needless to say the United States and Western Europe feels the same way."
"You can have an alignment where everyone says, 'look, we all have a problem … we can actually be in a position where we have legitimate leverage.' The Russians actually have a lot of leverage with the opposition groups, because the the opposition groups were getting the living daylights bombed out of them every day [by the Russians]. When [the Russians negotiated 'de-escalation zones',] some of the opposition groups have a reason to work with the Russians."
On another Radio Sputnik Show, Loud and Clear, host Brian Becker spoke to Alberto Garcia Watson, former senior Middle East correspondent with HispanTV. Watson said that Assad's opponents were bit by bit figuring out that there were no practical alternatives to replacing him.
"Bashar al-Assad was very clever when in June 2014 he called elections," Watson said. "He even allowed opposition parties and different sectors to participate in the elections. Eighty-eight percent of the votes in favor of Bashar al-Assad actually leveled this whole conflict. You cannot fight against the whole people of Syria, you cannot decide from outside and from abroad what Syria's future should be."
"Little by little, the war is lost [for the rebels]. Not just in the battlefield, it's lost also socially and politically. They don't have any other way out other than to drop their weapons or return to their countries."