Is Syria less important than Libya? Just the opposite: Regional experts agree that Damascus is a pivoting point for the Arab Middle East. If the Assad regime crumbles, Iran will lose its closest ally and its bridge to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. The Iranian shadow empire could collapse; the dictatorship in Tehran would be in mortal danger. ~Jackson Diehl

If the Assad regime crumbled, why would the next Syrian government break out of Iran’s orbit? What incentive would any future Syrian government have to give up on such a connection after thirty years at a time when Iranian influence generally seems to be increasing? More to the point, what incentives are the U.S. and Israel willing to offer to make sure that happens? Since everything in any case for meddling in Syria hinges on this outcome, it matters that we have good reasons for expecting that this is what would happen.

A future Syrian government would probably see the same benefit from an Iranian connection that the Assads have seen. If most Syrians still want their government to be aligned with the so-called resistance bloc, why is Syria going to split from Iran in the event that the Syrian government managed to become more democratic? In the event that a new Syrian government distanced itself or became openly opposed to Iran, it might be targeted for destabilization by Iran. The Syrian military would probably end up having great influence on the future relationship with Iran, and I haven’t seen anyone explain why Syria’s military would want to break with Syria’s main patron. On the other hand, if Syria collapsed into sectarian violence, that would give Iran serious headaches, but it would do the same to other states in the region, so it’s not clear that the benefits of Syrian regime change would outweigh the costs.

Diehl’s complaint is that the Western response has been too sluggish. Of course, he always thinks the response to such things is too slow. He continues:

No one in Syria has asked for a Libya-style military intervention, and nothing else the United States and Europe could do, even in concert, would probably be decisive. But why do so little, and so slowly?

Er, because there is not much to be done that would have any effect on the outcome? Inevitably, if Assad does not fall, critics of the slow Western response will claim that he would have fallen had the administration only done more, despite the fact that they know full well that there was not much more that could have been done at the time. If Assad is bound to fall anyway, as one of the opposition figures claims later in Diehl’s column, there is nothing more that Western governments need to be doing to assist this process.