Can Assad woo the West?

Pretend that you’re the president of Syria, and Charlie Rose asks you to ruminate on your biggest challenge. What comes to mind? Acceptable answers include: the ever-present threat of war with Israel, which continues to occupy the Golan Heights; dismal relations with the United States; your country’s moribund economy, which must somehow make up for rapidly diminishing oil revenues; or even relations with Lebanon and Iraq, with which you have recently been involved in very public spats.

But Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had a different answer, in an interview with Charlie Rose aired last night. "The biggest challenge is how can we keep our society as secular as it is today," he said.

This answer, like the rest of the interview, was primarily concerned with winning the sympathies of a Western audience rather than providing a realistic accounting of the Syrian regime’s priorities. Syria’s supposed devotion to secularism is a common trope for its diplomats: I remember sitting in the anteroom at the Syrian embassy in Washington D.C., and seeing two books laid out on the table in front of me: Aromas of Aleppo: The Legendary Cuisine of Syrian Jews, and another depicting the Christian quarter of Damascus’s old city. As Rose rightly pointed out, however, if maintaining secularism was really the largest challenge facing Assad, perhaps he could have chosen better allies than Hezbollah and Hamas.

Assad’s larger message was that Syria is ready for peace. The Syrian president said that he was ready to sign a peace treaty with Israel — though it would only be  a "permanent ceasefire" until a resolution of the dispute with the Palestinians — and the only obstacle was Israeli intransigence. He claimed that Syria is "against any nuclear weapons in the region." And he brushed aside allegations that Syria had supplied Hezbollah with SCUDs. "I don’t have to waste my time with what you believe or not," he said. "When you have evidence, come to us."

Assad, however, is battling against the news cycle. A U.N. report leaked to the Associated Press yesterday declared that North Korea has "has provided assistance for a nuclear program in Syria, including the design and construction of a thermal reactor at Dair Alzour," which Israel bombed in September 2007. The Times also published an article today saying that it had been shown satellite imagery of a compound where Syrian and Iranian weapons are transferred to Hezbollah, and alleging that two Syrian SCUDs may currently be hidden in underground arms depots in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. The Syrian president may have done his best to woo the West, but these reports are going to affect public opinion more than an interview on Charlie Rose ever will.