Aline Sara

During his speech on Thursday, US President Barack Obama said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must either lead his country through a democratic transition or "get out of the way.” (AFP/ Saul Loeb)
With Syrian demonstrators storming into another of their weekly days of rage on Friday, the number of arrests and casualties – now estimated at around 8,000 and 850, respectively, since anti-regime protests began in mid-March – is likely to increase, with experts noting that given the media blackout in the country, such figures could be well worse.
Though US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has condemned the violence in Syria, and while the US imposed economic and personal sanctions against two relatives of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on April 29, it was only Wednesday that Washington finally sanctioned the Syrian leader himself and six of his senior aides.
 
But during his much-awaited speech on the Arab Spring on Thursday, US President Barack Obama steered clear of calling for Assad’s ousting. While rumors that Obama would be using harsh rhetoric against Assad circulated around Washington, “He didn’t [call for Assad to step down],” noted  Dr. Murhaf Jouejati, a Syrian-born expert on Middle East affairs who specializes in Syrian politics and the Levant at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
“Instead, he gave him the choice of either reforming or stepping down, which means he is still giving him the benefit of the doubt,” added Jouejati, who is also a professor of Middle East Studies at the National Defense University and George Washington University. “But there was a lot of expectation.”

For the US, a country that prides itself on advocating for human rights and people’s right to self-determination, waiting two months before taking a decisive tone was seen by many as disappointing, if not hypocritical.
According to The Guardian's Michael Tomasky, “Waiting to specifically target Assad has to do with this idea that Obama and his people had that they could somehow turn Syria into a partner.”

But “It takes them a long time to accept discomforting realities sometimes, whether they have to do with the Republicans or Syria or whomever,” he said. “Hillary Clinton's May 6 statement that the regime was still capable of reform was evidence, I think, of this,” he added, noting that from the American standpoint, “Iran is a kind of insurance policy for Bashar.”  “We're not going to tamper too much with Syria as long as Syria and Iran are close.”
For Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, what Assad might do under pressure, however, is one of the main reasons behind the US’s cautious approach.

“[The] incident on the Golan is particularly telling in this regard,” he said, referring to the bloody clash at the Syrian-Israeli border on Sunday in which the Israeli Defense Forces killed three Palestinian demonstrators and wounded a dozen others during a protest making the nakba –“catastrophe”— of Israel’s founding. “[There are] fears that Assad might stir up things with Israel or Lebanon to deflect attention away from his deteriorating domestic situation,” he said, adding that the US and Israel would be rightfully apprehensive about a destabilized Assad regime.

“It may well be that, with Obama trying (again!) to get the peace process in gear, he doesn't want to upset Israel on a separate issue,” said Tomasky in an email message.
But though Israeli concern with Assad’s potential fall is certainly a very important reason behind the US’s apprehension, it is definitely not the only one, said Jouejati, noting that there are a number of other states not necessarily thrilled about Assad’s departure, especially in the Arab world.  

“The US along with a number of [neighboring Arab] states do not know what will come after Assad falls, so they prefer to deal with the known rather than the unknown,” he said. As Syria is strategically important, should Assad fall, turbulence could plague the region, he noted.
Another thing exacerbating Washington’s concern about possible post-Assad chaos is that the anti-regime protesters in Syria have still not formed a united front with a clear position and hierarchy, added the professor.
But despite such qualms, some experts feel the US could up the ante.
 
In a recent Foreign Policy article, Tabler highlights that the US could work on leading European nations to isolate Syria without United Nations backing, in light of China, Russia and Lebanon’s blocking a Security Council condemnation of Syria. Yet Jouejati says that the international community is not united on its willingness to address the issue to pursue strong measures together.
But Jouejati does note that while Wednesday’s sanctions against Assad might have a limited impact on the practical level, they will have an impact on the international level, as they may encourage the EU to increase its current measures against Syria, possibly turning it into a pariah state.
 
Ultimately, it seems to boil down to a question of being realistic.
“A president can't (and shouldn't) call on another leader to step down until it seems at least a 50-50 shot that he'll actually have to, and thus the president has at least a 50 percent chance of looking both prescient and forceful,” said Tomasky in an email.
And whether he actually does step down is largely up to the Syrian people, noted Tabler. “Now comes the hard part: How to make this happen?”