How Iran Prevented Fall of Syria’s Assad…But Soon May Be Clashing With Him Syria's leader Bashar al-Assad with Iran's Supreme Leader (File) Ali Younes and Shafik Mandhai  write for Al Jazeera English , with a contribution from EA: In the summer of 2012, the leading commanders of the Free Syrian Army were confident that momentum was with them. A bomb blast deep inside central Damascus had just taken out four senior commanders of the Syrian army, including the country’s defence minister, Dawoud Rajiha, and his deputy, Assef Shawkat, who was also President Bashar al-Assad’s brother-in-law. The explosion, believed to have been carried out by an insider sympathetic to the opposition cause, gave hope to rebels that it was only a matter of time before Assad met a similar fate. That hope was bolstered by successes on the battlefield, as ragtag groups of fighters coalesced into more effective armed groups, large swaths of the country started to come into rebel control. ...