Assad of Syria.

This is coolbert:

From DEBKAfile:

The despot Assad continuing the fight, not willing to relinquish power to even the slightest degree, preparing for the final show-down, even as some of his most important military assets obliterated.

1."Assad in a position of strength after Vienna deal with Iran"

27 July.

Syrian President Bashar Assad, in his first public speech in a year, Sunday, July 26, admitted to losing territory . . . he was quietly handed a new Iranian rehabilitation plan for his army, which reorganizes divisions and brigades into three armored commando super-divisions, one each for the northern, southern and Damascus fronts.


2. "ISIS wipes out the Syrian army's largest strategic arsenal, flattens sections of Al Safira complex"

29 July.

"As the US and Turkey got started on a new air campaign against the Islamic State in Syria, the jhadis pulled off their most devastating attack yet on the Syrian army's biggest arsenal. They subjected the giant Al-Safira military complex north of Aleppo . . . Facility No.790, a large depot of the Syrian army's strategic weapons, including chemicals, was set on fire and flattened. Many Iranian technical personnel were present at the facility." 

Assad has the proverbial staying-power, much to the chagrin and amazement of many experts. Iran too and their proxy Hezbollah have a big stake now in the Syrian Civil War, that whole host of actors as involved and the dynamics on the ground almost without peer or equal in any conflict of modern times.

coolbert.