There seems to be lesser chances of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stepping aside to allow a transition Western powers claim is the solution to the conflict even as the Syria peace talks resume next week and Assad, backed militarily by Iran and Russia, shows no willingness to compromise.

After Russian air strikes reversed the tide and enabled his army to recover lost ground from Sunni insurgents as well as the jihadis of Islamic State, Assad is now pumped up with confidence while he was threatened by rebel advances last year.

While Syria experts doubt President Vladimir Putin will force him out – unless there is a clear path to stability, which could take years, they also doubt that Assad can recapture the whole country without an unlikely full-scale ground intervention by Russia and Iran.

The balance of power has been tilted in Assad’s favour and given him the upper hand at the talks in Geneva helped by Russia’s dramatic military intervention last September — after five years of inconclusive fighting between Assad and fragmented rebel groups mostly from Syria’s Sunni majority.

Mainstream and Islamist forces that launched an offensive last summer was the main target of the Russian air force bombardment. By only recently recapturing Palmyra, the Graeco-Roman city the jihadis overran last year, have Russia and Syrian forces taken the fight to Islamic State.

The rebels including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and units supported by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and the United States were outmatched by the Russian campaign, backed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Shi’ite militia such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Analysts say that the main aim of Moscow’s intervention was dealing with those groups rather than Islamic State.

“The Russian intervention fundamentally reshaped the Syrian conflict. The momentum of the rebels does not exist any more,” says Kheder Khaddour from the Carnegie Middle East Center.

The opposition was coaxed into accepting a settlement on Russian and Syrian terms by Putin, diplomats say. A government expanded to include elements of the opposition, with Assad at its head for the immediate future is the result of this rather than the “transitional authority” sought by the U.S. and its allies.

While the opposition and its regional allies, including the United States and Europe, insist Assad should step down, Russia still wants Assad to lead the transition to the elections. So far no compromises are in sight.

“We need things to advance in the coming weeks. If the political process is just about putting a few opposition people in nominal cabinet posts then this isn’t going to go very far. If there isn’t a political transition the civil war will continue and Islamic State will benefit from it,” said a European diplomat close to the talks.

“At this point the Russians have the upper hand in dictating a solution. The Americans are playing on Russia’s playing field,” Fawaz Gerges, author of ISIS: A History said.

Russia “played its cards in Syria very cleverly, but miscalculated in one aspect”, says Faisal al-Yafai, a leading commentator from the United Arab Emirates.

“They assumed that once the (Assad) regime felt secure, it would be more willing to negotiate. In fact, the opposite has happened. There’s a limit to the pressure that Russia can exert on Assad. Assad absolutely will not go quietly — and certainly not when there is no real alternative to him, even within the regime,” says al-Yafai.

(Adapted from reuters.com)