Who will fall first, Assad or al-Julani!

Two events express the troubled Syrian reality:
The first, which is the most important, is the leaked news about Saudi Arabia’s request at a meeting where its Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with Bashar al-Assad regarding the acceptance of a trio: (the transitional government), (normalization with Israel), and (cutting ties with Iran).
As every situation has a lever, the strong lever here is the seizure of Bashar’s properties in the UAE specifically, the lifting of the blockade on the American anti-normalization law, and lifting protection against an Israeli assassination, starting with the halting of the ministerial committee and Jordan’s announcement of ongoing threats from Syria’s Captagon to its country.
Thus, a trio for a trio has put Assad between the jaws of a vise (the clergy), where he can neither refuse and thus be represented by someone else at the Arab League Council or even apologize, to declare his affiliation and lean towards the Iranian embrace.
Nor can he accept, as he would lose his power and expose himself to Iranian wrath.

Assad has a few months to respond, and so we await the rest of his hidden cards, if he has any left, which he will play to extend his life!
Meanwhile, in Idlib, public demonstrations are erupting, and certainly, there are partisan or hostile hands against Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, and the demonstrations call for the dismissal of Abu Mohammed al-Julani.
The military and security forces are mobilized, and armored vehicles are placed in front of the demonstrators, resulting in wounded and injured, and if there were martyrs among them, Idlib would enter a bloody conflict difficult to end quickly.
With the hum of armored vehicles, we hear from Moufaq Zaidan and Ayman Haroush who lead a virtual media campaign represented by a space through the X program, followed by their clips spreading like wildfire, summarizing:

• It is necessary to preserve the Sunni community’s egg.
• Al-Julani was placed by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and not by the people, thus the body alone owns the right to dismiss him.
• It is not permissible to rebel against the liberator’s leadership because it will lead to bloodshed.
  And other narratives that remind us of the narratives of 2011.
  And those frustrated by this bleak scene say: If only we had not rebelled against Bashar, who is today besieged by his oppressive policy between the choice of killing or being killed, and we did not reach the stage of leadership by Hussein al-Shar’a Abu Mohammed al-Julani!!
  For al-Julani has tied his status and chair to the status and survival of the Sunni community’s egg.
  As for the homeland, Syria, the Syrian people, these are naive terms that do not even deserve a response, just as Haroush did not respond to the concept of democracy he criticized!!

Finally, we may wait for a card in Bashar al-Assad’s hand that he has not yet used that may save him from the vise that has surrounded him, which made him silent on the Arab League’s statement to continue implementing UN resolutions 2254, meaning all of Assad’s and his regime’s claims that he has implemented the resolution have become a doormat.
And we fear that what is happening in al-Julani’s camps might be by the hidden hands of Assad and his regime itself to revive the bogeyman of armed groups and chaos anew, in hopes that it expands instead of contracting!! And that it appears that he is the protector of the sanctuary and the only option for stability!!

We wonder if we will witness the departure of Assad first or al-Julani or both…
For Abu Mohammed al-Julani has tied his survival to preserving the Sunni community’s egg, and Assad tells the world it’s either him or endless chaos.
And perhaps we witness the fall of Assad, and with him, the cursed al-Julani syndrome falls.

Dr. Sameh Issa
Independent Researchers
Syrian Future Movement (SFM)