‘Putin Has Now Given Obama the Perfect Cover to Do Nothing About Assad’

Russia's incursion into Syria and expanding influence throughout the Middle East have offered the Obama administration something it has sought since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011: a way to stay in the background. 

“If you think the Obama administration is upset at recent events in Syria, you have it wrong,” Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said on Twitter last week.

“Embarrassed? Yes, but it never wanted to lead.”

On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin took the stage at the UN General Assembly in New York for the first time in a decade. There he called for a “genuinely broad alliance against terrorism, just like the one against Hitler.”

Putin also used the speech to reiterate Russia's support for the Syrian government and emphasize how he thought US intervention in the Middle East had destabilized the region.

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“If the Russians had someone else they could propose that would guarantee the survival of the regime as it is now, they would have done so already,” Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider.

“The whole point of Putin's intervention is to move Obama towards accepting Assad staying, which has, for the most part, already been won,” Badran said.

“Putin has now given Obama the perfect cover to do nothing about Assad.”

Haunted by the war in Iraq and the disastrous campaign in Libya, and wary of mission creep, Obama has always been “deeply ambivalent” — and, as a result, deliberately ambiguous — on the subject of Assad's removal, and Russia has taken notice, according to Badran.

“Russia has never been too worried about Obama accepting a continued role for Assad, because it is clear that Obama was never comfortable with Assad leaving,” Badran said.

As Badran sees it, Obama — knowing that Tehran could “precipitate a crisis that would corner the White House,” derail negotiations, and sabotage any hope for an opening with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani — never had any intention of intervening against Assad, which may be why Obama agreed so quickly when Russia offered to oversee the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons in September 2013.

“Obama has used Putin as a foil since day one,” Badran said. “He's just been moving the goal post incrementally.”

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