frandroid

He still had to recover a third of the country, between the Islamists and the Kurds, so while he had frozen the conflict, the sanctions were really crippling the country, and he had no escape valve/mineral resource income like Russia has with China and India (and the rest of Asia, really). In the end it's really Israel that ground down his secondary defenses (Iran and Hezbollah), but I don't know that they foresaw that this would lead to a collapse of his regime. But either way, with the demolition derby they've just engaged in, they're probably fine with the results in the short and medium term.

The wind blows indeed, I don't think it's glib, it's just grim, which is a proper assessment of what the future looks like. Particularly for anyone who is not a straight Arab Sunni man.