Beirut: Like his predecessors, Lakhdar Brahimi and Kofi Annan, the United Nations-League of Arab States Joint Special Envoy for Syrian Staffan de Mistura, is desperate. As the deaths toll continues to climb and as Syria sinks into an abyss from which it becomes more difficult to extricate the country after each passing day, the international negotiator means to fulfil his duties and, with a little luck, spot an opening in the focus on Daesh, to cut a deal with President Bashar Al Assad.

To that end, de Mistura has proposed a minimalist strategy, “Aleppo First,” which would involve a stop to the fighting in what is still Syria’s largest city, provided the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) withdraws from certain positions. The goal is simple: allow a strangulated population the opportunity to enjoy a lull while establishing a precedent that, with a little luck, can be duplicated elsewhere. Is this realistic?

A few days ago, the UN envoy told the Security Council that Damascus was apparently ready to temporary halt its attacks in Aleppo for a period of about six weeks, even if the SAA launched new offensives both in the Aleppo region as well as southern Syria. As recent reports illustrated, Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard militias led these fresh campaigns, which resulted in significant casualties, including on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Likewise, the Aleppo-Turkey road was besieged with more civilian casualties and, naturally, a new wave of displacements, although some of these were the consequences of international coalition bombardments on Daesh.

Like his predecessors, de Mistura is in the “peacemaking” business and is desperately seeking to reduce the violence, although Al Assad seldom wavers from his sole objective — regime survival — that, he and his acolytes believe, will ensure victory and maintain the country’s territorial integrity.

Still, de Mistura’s “Aleppo First” plank presents a unique opportunity for the Syrian leader because, Al Assad concluded, the world has changed its focus and is now preoccupied with extremists. He banked on Washington’s “geopolitical equilibrium,” a vague Barack Obama idea that seeks to balance America’s traditional partners like Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Israel, and others, against Iran and, more recently, extremist groups such as Daesh, Jabhat Al Nusra and the Muslim Brotherhood.

What Al Assad overlooked is his own behaviour since 2011, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 200,000 and the destruction of a country, rendering millions homeless. He also failed to draw the correct lessons from the war for Iraq, where power fell to the country’s Shiite majority, even if the process was both chaotic and unresolved.

In fact, if the same logic were to apply in Syria, the rightful restoration of Sunni sovereignty would become reality, something that Al Assad wishes to prevent. It is for this chief reason, that Al Assad has gone out of his way to accommodate de Mistura whose offer, if successfully implemented, can accomplish two simultaneous objectives: ingratiate the Baath regime with gullible leaders who choose to focus on Daesh and extremists of the same ilk, while conveniently forcing everyone to overlook a bloody record.

Al Assad can thus hide his fears that Daesh will engage in a vendetta against his regime and Alawites while he appears to accommodate de Mistura as the latter concentrates on humanitarian assistance.

Nevertheless, while Damascus can play to the orchestrate, by holding meetings with the UN envoy, granting interviews to reputable foreign media outlets like the BBC, and asserting that its sole aim is to reach a ceasefire as quickly as possible, in reality, there is no evidence that he is ready or willing to concede a single iota from his original goal — regime survival at all costs.