Bashar al-Assad may be the luckiest man in the Middle East, and maybe in the world. The defiant Syrian president has been under fierce popular, military, regional and global pressure to step down, his country is almost destroyed, more than one hundred thousand of his people have been killed and thousands of his soldiers splintered. Yet he is seriously considering running in the 2014 presidential election. 

Assad is neither detached from reality nor delusional. The man knows well that he's backed by a solid front that he can bet on. Assad's front is ready to do whatever appropriate to keep him in power, providing money, arms, political backing and fighters.

Iran, Russia and Hezbollah each in their own way are fighting an existential battle along with their ally. The Russians are battling for their last base on the Mediterranean Sea, and for their gas pipelines in Europe that they fear will be replaced by Qatar's if Syria's regime is toppled. A Russian diplomat once said that there are plans to build a gas pipeline from the Gulf to Turkey that would traverse Syria to the Mediterranean, with the gas then being shipped to Europe. Such a project would mean the end to Russia's upper hand in the European energy sector, and this means a lot in politics, and on the economics side.

As for Iran, Syria signifies the western borders of the Islamic Republic’s national security. Syria is the forefront of the "resistance bloc," as moderate president Hassan Rouhani put it. Damascus is Tehran's closest ally since the ’80s; together they have formed an alliance that has included Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups fighting Israel. Iran and Syria were also together in Iraq, in the same bunker in the standoff in Lebanon after the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri and now they are tied together in the ongoing war in Syria.