WI: Bassel-al Assad survives

Bassel, the heir apparent to the Syrian state under Hafez’s Ba’athist regime, was expected to pick up the mantle once his aging father passed. However after a car crash in ‘94 he was fatally injured, and his less well known son Bashar (who was an eye doctor at the time) had to fill in. Bassel was groomed to be heir from the start, and was highly popular among the people, atleast compared with his brother. How would this change the trajectory of Syria, internally and externally? How would Bassel have reacted to the Arab Spring?
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
Bashar-al-Assad successfully improved Syria's relations with America, Western Europe, and Turkey before the Arab Spring. He also withdrew from Lebanon, reformed the economy and made some minor symbolic gestures towards political liberalization. He likely would have been willing to normalize relations with Israel if Israel agreed to return the Golan Heights, but any chance of that happening was ended by the civil war. None of these decisions were done for humanitarian reasons - they were done because it was smart politics. Bassel-al-Assad likely would have been more conservative and ruled more like his father Hafez, but that doesn't mean he is stupid. Many of the decisions made by Bashar would have been taken by Bassel, and he might have been more successful in those goals due to having a larger power base. Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon was inevitable once Israel withdrew for instance, so that likely would have gone as OTL. If the Arab Spring still happens as OTL, Bassel will likely crackdown earlier and harder instead of trying wait out the protestors at first or appease them with minor concessions. This could trigger an American intervention against Syria, but if it doesn't then it will likely result in the opposition being crippled earlier and the civil war being shorter.
 
Bassel would probably crush the uprising long before it took off. Bashar dilly-dallied too long, he seems to have genuinely been caught by surprise and didn't take hard moves till late 2011 OTL.
 
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