The war in Syria has reached the heart of the capital Damascus and the confrontation between the opposition and the regime is no longer limited to local operations, raids, arrests and the planting of mines. Indeed, there is now a real combat front in which the regime has pushed the air force after the heavy artillery, as it had been seen in the other major cities, especially in Aleppo, Homs, Daraa, Deir ez-Zor and many other towns and villages. However, for mortar shells to start falling in the area surrounding the presidential palace, from which President Bashar al-Assad should be managing the battle, means that Syria is entering the last stage before the regime's collapse. This is true, although some leaders in this regime are spreading talk about their imminent victory, a rumor which is being circulated by their allies in Iran and their supporters in the rejectionist front. The propagation of this rumor does not mean that the leaders of the Syrian regime do not realize what is happening on the ground, or that they are unaware of the meaning of the increasing diplomatic action or are unable to draw the lessons from the beginning of the American-Russian negotiations. They are aware of all of this. On the Syrian political level, the opposition groups reached a coalition formula which has started to enjoy credibility and a credit never before earned by any other Syrian opposition body. As for the Marrakech conference, it constituted a turning point at the level of the international – and before that the Arab – recognition granted to the coalition as the representative of the Syrian people, with all what this means in terms of its transformation into an entity capable of negotiating on their behalf. On the military level, and despite the controversy over the presence of groups which were described as being extremist and terrorist, the Free Army was able to reach a unification formula for its brigades, and has become the most credible representative of the military operations command against the regime. Now, it is perceived as being the side which will be assigned to uphold civil peace following the collapse of the regime. Hence, the new developments on the ground, which are further distancing the regime's influence from many parts of the country – reaching the capital and its airport – support the opposition's new position and grant legitimacy to its new character as an alternative for the regime. In the meantime, the international and regional sides are being politically active, relying this time around on what was achieved by the opposition both politically and on the ground, i.e. on new facts imposing themselves even on Russia and its diplomacy whose discourse has taken a new turn – albeit an ambiguous one – about the nature of the crisis and the ways to resolve it. Moreover, these facts imposed themselves on the Iranian ally and its supporters, thus pushing it to increase the talk about initiatives, and even about a transitional phase. These facts are not far away from the calculations of the Syrian regime and its decision-making circles. It is in this context that one can place the statements delivered by Vice President Farouk Sharaa to the Lebanese Al-Akhbar newspaper, along with the response of Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem to the condemnation of the regular army's air raids on the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus. Indeed, the circumstances surrounding Sharaa's statements, their timing and the newspaper in which they were published, all revealed an intention to converge with some of the initiatives being promoted by the regime's allies, whether directly as it is case with the last Iranian initiative, or through maneuvers based on the pretexts advanced by the Russians in their negotiations. The ideas expressed by Sharaa might have found some sort of an echo, had they conveyed a clear initiative by the regime prior to the aforementioned domestic political and field developments. Today however, based on the role the man is playing and the extent of his influence within the decision-making circle, these statements are a mere test balloon with which the regime wanted to provide his allies with tools to negotiate on its behalf, in the context of its policy to pass the time while awaiting the achievement of the illusory military settlement. This illusion was reiterated by Al-Muallem when justifying the targeting of the Palestinian refugees in the Yarmouk camp with air raids, as the Syrian diplomacy chief linked the camp's bombardment to the non-participation of the Palestinians in the battle alongside the regime, against the “terrorists" in the camp. In other words, anyone who does not participate in the battle on the regime's side, should expect air raids, whether in a refugee camp or in any other location. But Al-Muallem also tried to blame the world for this air raid, considering that the refugees could not return to their homes, and consequently stayed in Yarmouk and became a legitimate target. In any case, the Free Army was able to oust the regime from the camp despite the air raids, which means that victory through raids is an illusion onto which the regime is still holding.
