‘Syrian President Bashar al-Assad argued in an interview aired on the state al-Ikhbariya television station last week that his country faces a choice between submitting to “a new colonization” by the West or to the “dark” forces of extremist Islamism. Europe and the United States will pay the price for weakening the Syrian state, he warned, as al-Qaeda will transform Syria into a safe haven for jihadists from other Muslim countries. “There is no choice before us but victory,” Assad concluded, “failure to achieve it would mean the end of Syria.”

This was familiar stuff. So were the responses of the Syrian opposition, which described Assad as “detached from reality” and “delusional,” and the reactions of Western media, which noted his position was “hardening.” But the real takeaway is that Assad expects to survive until the presidential election scheduled for May 2014 and plans to use this as leverage in negotiations with the principal external actors currently arrayed against him.’