Rasha Saad sees Damascus entering a whole new situation Last week's bombing of the Syrian National Council building is the beginning of the end of the Syrian regime, pundits believe. However, there are conflicting reports over the perpetrators of the explosion which led to the killing of Defence Minister Dawoud Rajih, his deputy and strongman Asef Shawkat, the chairman of the group, the interior minister, and several security and military generals during a crisis meeting. According to Abdel-Bari Atwan, there is speculation that the regime itself, or a group within it, came up with the plot. In the daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Atwan wrote that there was a great deal of talk about a power struggle between Shawkat, who is also the president's brother in law, and Maher Al-Assad, the president's brother, who commands the Fourth Division. Atwan wrote that the regime is undoubtedly reeling from blows from all sides. Those who are fighting on the inside are the most effective and have the most legitimacy because the Syrian people have been suffering for such a long time. However, Atwan warns that the danger is that "Bashar Al-Assad might resort to the Samson option, bringing down the temple on his own head and the heads of everyone else, resulting in the deaths of countless thousands." "Of course, the dictatorship will be largely responsible but the lives of these victims who are our kinsmen, brothers, sons, and daughters remain our most urgent priority and concern," Atwan wrote. The perpetrator argues Atwan, could equally likely be a young man "who could not bear any further massacres. His own relatives, village, or town may have been butchered and therefore he decided to exact revenge in this way, which is carried out only by the jihadists." Raghida Dergham wrote that in general the magnitude of what happened in the bombing of the National Security building lies in the fact that "it was an inside job, meaning that a security fault allowed the armed opposition to achieve a breach that brought about a turning point." Such a development indicates that the regime is falling apart from the inside and losing control within its ranks, Dergham wrote in the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper. Defections among the ranks of the army, explains Dergham, become in such a case a natural consequence that warns of either division within the military institution or of preparations for a coup from within its ranks. Taking the conspiracy theory into consideration, Dergham reiterated Atwan's reports that the strong regime is itself the one that carried out this operation against a group that had been planning a coup. Talk had also been leaked of the Americans' desire for Shawkat to have remained as one of the pillars of the regime that would stay in power, after Al-Assad would have stepped down and left the country. "Such leaks have perhaps had an impact on the conviction of some that the story of a coup-preparing group having been eliminated might be true," Dergham wrote. Also in Al-Hayat Jihad Al-Khazen wrote that following the latest developments "the situation in Syria has gone out of control." Al-Khazen wrote that he is confident that the regime will be ultimately defeated. "I am holding out for a better future for Syria compared to what the country has seen in the past half century, and this is not difficult. I also hope that an enlightened regime will come to power in Syria, and I do not care whether it is Islamist, secular or a combination of both," Al-Khazen wrote. Al-Khazen finds that change can develop in a positive direction in Lebanon. Hizbullah, Al-Khazen wrote, started as a national resistance movement against Israel, and many Lebanese rallied around it, but it has ended up as a political party with its base consisting of Shiites alone. "So perhaps the closure of the Iranian supply line though Syria will remould Hizbullah into a resistance movement with a broad popular base in Lebanon and beyond," Al-Khazen argued. In his article in the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat, Tariq Al-Homayed focused on the impact of the Syrian crisis on Iran. He argued that both Iran and Hizbullah are beginning to sense defeat in Syria and have begun to feel that the 'Arab Spring' is nothing but a curse against it, after it previously viewed this as a "gift from God". "Tehran, which previously hailed the Arab Spring in the region, viewing this as part of a grand Islamic awakening, has today begun to view its events as a conspiracy now that it is sensing the impending end of its vital regional ally," Al-Homayed wrote. There can be no doubt that the regional scene will be completely different, Al-Homayed noted. "The main difference will be that Iran's hand will have been cut off from the region for the first time in approximately four decades. This will represent a major blow to Iranian foreign policy," Al-Homayed maintained. Also in Asharq Al-Awsat, Adel Al-Toraifi attempted to refute allegations that unlike the peaceful revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, the popular uprising that erupted in Syria 16 months ago is an "armed revolution" led in the main by the Sunnis, with Salafis and Islamists among the ranks. Al-Toraifi highlighted the view of some supporters of the Syrian revolution who try to completely distance the popular uprising there from any element of sectarianism, placing the blame entirely on the Syrian regime for inciting the sectarian dimension. Others, adds Al-Toraifi, believe that sectarianism doesn't exist in the first place, given that many key figures and symbols in the Syrian opposition, whether domestically or abroad, belong to the Alawite, Druze, Christian and Kurdish sects. While Al-Toraifi does not deny the predominance of the Sunni sect among the ranks of the opposition both domestically and abroad, he believes it may be due to the "demographic reality, whereby the Sunnis are the most populous sect, and they constitute the largest proportion in most Syrian cities and provinces."
