Will Putin be able to carry al-Assad forever?

The bottom line of the Syria talks between the U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin is that they agree that Syria today under Bashar al-Assad is no longer sustainable, but they disagree on the future of al-Assad himself.

The Russian suggestion about holding a conference of the ?outside players? - made up of themselves, the U.S., Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia - was promising in the sense that perhaps Russia would be open to negotiate to make al-Assad part of a transition government in return for contributing to removing him from power in the ?new Syria.? But the speech he delivered at the U.N. General Assembly was disappointing in terms of his outright support for al-Assad, who is denounced as a tyrant by Obama. It is not just Obama; many Western leaders - the most recent ones being David Cameron of the U.K. and François Hollande of France - think al-Assad can have no place in the future of Syria because of the devastation he has wrought on his people.

The Turkish government?s staunch anti-Assad position may be criticized, but the words of Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu in New York had a point when he said it was impossible to expect to expect ?a dictator, a tyrant? to successfully orchestrate a transition period. After all, al-Assad only has control of 14 percent of his country amid a war that has killed 300,000 people, leading to the migration of nearly 6 million refugees and the displacement of 7-8 million within the country.

Being part of a transition to a Syria without al-Assad and steering that transition are two different things. The second sounds like an oxymoron; as in Davuto?lu?s criticism of Putin, it may only extend the rule of al-Assad. Putin?s rhetoric of ?letting the Syrian people decide the fate of...