While many analysts viewed Assad as a weak pawn, facts are contradicting this assessment. Indeed, on the contrary Assad turns out to be an astute strategist playing his cards quite well.

First he weathered a nasty storm in 2005, clinging to power and fending off successfully all his adversaries including former French President Jacques Chirac, U.S. President George W. Bush and Saudi King Abdullah. Then, he started "secret" peace negotiations with Israel while at the same time closing ranks with Iran and profiting from Tehran's financial largesse.

But now the crucial time has come and Assad is going to have to decide in the next few months which camp he really belongs to: the West's side or Iran's.

The first major public event that really put things in motion was the assassination in February in Damascus of Hezbollah's terror master Imad Mughnieh. In an article for the Middle East Times, right after Mughnieh's murder, I made the case of Syria's involvement and the possibility that this was part of a deal with Israel. The fact that the investigation on Mughnieh's death was a joke, coupled with the complaints from Tehran and Hezbollah of not getting full cooperation from Syrian authorities, seem to confirm the theory of a deal between Assad and Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert.

The second event has been the recent demise of the powerful head of Syrian security services Assef Shawkat, who incidentally happens to be Bashar's brother-in-law. Shawkat, a hardliner, had been rumored to be behind the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, whose investigation is in limbo at the United Nations.

In fact, the international tribunal that is supposed to try the culprits of Hariri's assassination has been a huge thorn in Assad's side since it will most likely point to involvement from within the Syrian regime. That the international tribunal might be dead in the water seems to indicate that it might also be part of that grand bargain between the West and Syria. Assad's side of the bargain is probably to distance himself for good from Iran and to stop supporting Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Interestingly enough, Shawkat was a fierce proponent of a close and tight alliance with Tehran. But he is now out of the picture.

Taking cue from so-called goodwill from Syria to stop being a problem, France has aggressively engaged Damascus. As a reward, Assad has been invited to attend the prestigious celebrations for France's National Day, known in the United States as Bastille Day, on July 14 in Paris as a guest of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The gesture was not appreciated by numerous French politicians: former president Chirac, for one, is allegedly boycotting the ceremonies to protest Assad's presence in the French capital. It seems that Damascus is cooperating somewhat in return to France's overture.

According to the news Web site elaph.com, Syrian intelligence services allegedly informed their French counterparts that Syria was not involved in the recent fighting in Tripoli (Lebanon) between Sunni and Alawites. They also allegedly provided the French with a full dossier on the latest skirmishes, which proves the involvement of a group of 70 Hezbollah fighters equipped with very sophisticated weapons and led by Hezbollah's security head.

Time will tell if Assad will fulfill his side of the deal. Nothing is less sure. Right after "helping" to broker a deal in Doha for the election of his protégé Gen Michel Suleiman, Syria signed a defense agreement with Iran. Assad is still debating whether to cut the umbilical cord with Tehran.

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Olivier Guitta, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant, is the founder of the newsletter The Croissant (www.thecroissant.com).