Only a week after a suspected Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, it was business as usual for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Accompanied by his wife and family, he appeared in public at the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, taking part in prayers and walking the city streets.

If he seemed unperturbed by the fact that a foreign power had apparently killed several high ranking generals in his capital just a few days earlier, that was on purpose, says Haid Haid, a consulting fellow with the Middle East and North Africa program at London-based think tank Chatham House.

"The [Assad] photo op was not accidental. It's part of a wider campaign to show that business is proceeding as usual," Haid said during a Chatham House panel on the topic this week. "I think the message was that Syria will not be part of any retaliation for the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate and Syria will not be the main theater for that response."

That's not surprising, Haid said. "Because from the beginning of the war in Gaza, Assad has been distancing himself from regional escalation and portraying himself as neutral."

There are a number of reasons for this. Due to the long-running Syrian civil war, local military would not be equipped to respond anyway, the Syrian economy is in tatters, and political neutrality on Gaza could serve the Assad regime well in foreign policy terms.

The Syrian regime's attitude comes........

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