It turns out that decades of treating totalitarian cretins like totalitarian cretins is having its effect on Syria. This is coming Farid Ghadry - one of the anti-Syrian activists in Lebanon that Assad hasn't gotten around to killing yet - so it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. On the other hand it can't be any less credible than the wild fantasies that professional Syria watchers routinely make up about peeling Syria away from the Iranian orbit.

Plus - again in contrast to the prognostications of our liberal foreign policy establishment - it has the benefit of kind of making sense:

Between US sanctions, a severe drought in an agrarian-based economy, sustained terror that has caused the migration of over 1 million Iraqis to Syria, political risks promoting "resistance" instead of cooperation, dwindling oil revenues, an alarming increase in Syrian population and a determined new Israeli government, Assad is being squeezed like a Syrian olive for its oil. Very few people grasp the reality Assad faces now that he has systematically destroyed whatever he inherited from his father through ill-advised policies. Some Middle East analysts are aware of the economic pressure Assad is under, but the extent of the harm his policies have caused the Syrian treasury is largely unknown.

Ghadry emphasizes that delegitimatizing Iran will bring enormous pressure to bear on Assad, which would be great news except for how the Geneva talks have allowed Tehran to rehabilitate itself. I wouldn't focus too much on the Iranian angle though, since Obama is doing his best to relegitimize the Syrian regime directly:

A senior Syrian official has been invited to Washington for talks, a U.S. Embassy official said Monday, in the latest signal of the Obama administration's efforts to improve relations with a country deemed a state sponsor of terrorism. The upcoming visit by Syria's deputy foreign minister, Fayssal Mekdad, is the first in about five years and is part of U.S. efforts to improve strained relations with Damascus. Mekdad, who is currently in New York as part of the Syrian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly meetings, will fly to Washington on Monday for talks with U.S. government officials on a range of issues, the embassy official said.

I wonder if we brought up the thing about how Syria refuse to budge on their ongoing incitement of violence in Iraq. Probably not. Wouldn't want to spoil the mood.

References and previously after the jump...