By RANIA ABOUZEID / DAMASCUS

In the Middle East, politics has usually been a waiting game, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, 45, is better than most at playing it. He has outlasted U.S. neocon threats of regime change, international and Saudi-led regional isolation following the 2005 murder of ex-Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri (at the time widely blamed on Damascus), deftly mitigated the effects of U.S. sanctions and the Iraq war next door, while strengthening his close ties to the region's rising powerbroker, Iran. Now, he may just ride out the youth-led revolts sweeping across the region.
The secular, authoritarian Baath Party regime Assad inherited in 2000 from his late father and former president Hafez, is older than he is. In fact, the party is older than the majority of his country's 22 million people. Even critics concede that Assad is popular and considered close to the country's huge youth cohort, both emotionally, ideologically and, of course, chronologically. (See TIME's complete coverage "The Middle East in Revolt.")
Unlike the ousted pro-American leaders of Tunisia and Egypt, Assad's hostile foreign policy toward Israel, strident support for Palestinians and the militant groups Hamas and Hizballah are in line with popular Syrian sentiment, a view Baathists and state media have keenly pushed to the public to explain why other presidents have fallen and theirs is safe. Much publicized are such acts as driving himself to the Umayyad Mosque in February to take part in prayers to mark the Prophet Mohammad's birthday, and strolling through the crowded Souq Al-Hamidiyah marketplace with a low security profile. These have apparently helped to endear him, personally, to the public.
Yet Syria also shares the corruption, nepotism, high unemployment, widespread poverty, repressive state security apparatus, emergency law and lack of freedom that contributed to the fall of other Arab leaders and now threatens Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. Still, in a masterful application of "good cop, bad cop" politics, Assad is viewed as a reformer even by some Syrians who may despise the regime, blaming its shortcomings on his father's "old guard" surrounding him. "In Syria it's different," says Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria. "The majority want and request that the president undertake reform within the party, the government and the security agencies. That is important." (See photos of protests across the Middle East.)

There are several opportunities on the calendar for Assad to take the initiative and institute real change (which he has often spoken of), from a position of strength rather than the desperate last-minute concessions that other Arab leaders offered only after their emboldened youth were already on the streets and in sight of victory. There are municipal and parliamentary elections slated for this year, providing the president with the chance to either transform Syria from a one-party state ruled by the Baath and its various fronts since 1963 with only a weak, fractured and frequently imprisoned opposition, into a country with real political parties. The Baath Party conference expected in the coming months is another convenient occasion.

Mazen Darwish, who founded and ran the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression until it was closed by authorities in 2009, says Assad now has a "golden opportunity" to make core, rather than cosmetic reforms. "In Syria, we've been talking about reforms for the past decade," he says, "as if we just want to add oil to an engine, to help it function better. Today, I think the situation has shifted to the engine itself, to the nature of the government, its foundations."