What you just said means: there will be no deal.
No, there will be no deal for now. The rebels want Assad to stand trial for his war crimes, while his supporters want him to be worshiped as the one true god.
It's not all about Assad personally though, it is what his rule represents. For decades the various Assad dictatorships have relied on sect based ethnic cleansing whenever there is any question to their iron fist rule. The institutions of torture and killing that they have set up is not something that those who support the Free Syrian side would allow or support. And on the other side, those who have not been the primary targets and victims of the Assad torture/killing factories fear what will happen to them if they were removed.
Even with coming up with a plan that allowed Assad to remain, he was declared 'biased' against the regime. And he has been accused of glosing over or ignoring the war crimes of the regime by the rebels.
Understandably, Brahimi's last plan had a lot of immediate problems with it. The regime is going to continue their current path of holding on as long as they can until they kill as many people as possible before they go down. Assad has repeatedly said that he would rather die than stop the bloodshed, so there was little that Brahimi could do working with that.
Now it seems that Brahimi's role is more about looking towards a post Assad Free Syria:
Brahimi’s final acts
Yet whereas Annan's goal was to get Moscow to sign onto his transition plan, Brahimi's intentions have been more opaque. The likeliest explanation is that he hopes to create the framework for more serious talks between Moscow and Washington if, and when, Assad falls, making Russia rethink its stance at last.
Last month, it seemed possible that this moment was at hand, with confused reports that Russia was starting to turn against Assad. Brahimi appeared to shift gear to a public peace drive, with high-profile visits to Damascus -- reiterating proposals for transitional talks under "strong observation" by a new U.N. peacekeeping force -- and Moscow. This backfired. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov used a press conference with Brahimi to affirm that Russia would not help force Assad out. Assad's bellicose public address on January 6, ruling out serious discussions of a transition and offering grotesquely unrealistic proposals for peace on the regime's terms, effectively killed off the envoy's efforts.
So while Brahimi started his tenure in a very different style to his predecessor, he has ended up in a version of the trap that Annan fell into: making a public push for a specific peace plan and seeing it die.
This has at least given Brahimi license to speak his mind, and he has indicated that he sees no political future for Assad. After this grueling episode, the envoy has every reason to stand down. But there are still ways in which he can do Syria some service. The first is to consolidate his channel between the United States and Russia. When Assad's final defeat does come, Moscow and Washington will need to coordinate their public and operational responses on everything from humanitarian aid to chemical weapons. They don't necessarily need Brahimi to do that, but he may be able to help them navigate the looming chaos.
In parallel, Brahimi and his team should make sure they have contingency plans for working with regional powers in the immediate aftermath of Assad's fall. Syria's fate is likely to be shaped by how effectively Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other backers of the rebels can control their friends in this period. If they can persuade them to show restraint, there may be a chance to negotiate a post-Assad settlement. If they fail to manage this, the country may become another Somalia, as Brahimi has repeatedly warned.
Recent news, northern air base fell to rebels, apparently an area of Damascus or near it has been taken/retaken by the government forces.
The Taftanaz airbase in Idlib is another major loss for the regime. The regime lost a lot of its ability to carry out air attacks on the Northern Free Syrian towns because of their loss of helicopter and other air power lost at the base. It is pretty far North from Damascus though.
The airbase near Damascus is the Muleiha airbase. It is where news reports have been talking about the large numbers of civilian casualties from the regime bombing of suburbs in responses to attacks on the airbase. It is the last major base East of Damascus that the regime has left, and while it will still take some time before it too falls, it has taken some major losses in equipment from the attacks.
Russians off the coast of Syria. What's their play?
The Russians are waiting off the coast of Syria for two main reasons
1) As a deterrent for Western intervention, and to have a closer eye on their assets in the country.
2) They are also standing ready to evacuate Russian civilians and military advisors once Assad falls.
The Russians primary complaint about the Libya mission was that they were cut out of many of the new energy contracts once Gaddafi fell.
The Russians primary concern in Syria is to make sure that their current contracts, investments, and loans are protected.
As RT notes,
Gaddafi demise leads to questions over [Russian oil] contracts
As well as the production operations on the Libyan mainland, in which Gazprom holds a 49 percent stake, crude oil production was resumed a few weeks ago on the Al Jurf offshore platform in the Mediterranean.
There has been an increase in Russian-Libyan economic ties since 2008, with Russia writing off Libya's national debt of $4.5 billion dating from the Soviet Union era.
Russian Railways signed a contract for 2.2 billion euros to build a 550 km long railway line connecting Sirt and Benghazi, with 2010 seeing Rosoboronexport sign a $1.3 billion contract on supply of arms and weapons to Libya.
In 2007 Gazprom signed a memorandum of cooperation with the National Oil Corporation of Libya, providing access to Mediterranean oil shelf. Since that time "Tatneft", "Monolitspetsstroy", "Stroytransgaz", "Lukoil", "Technopromexport" and "Tatneftegeophysica." opened branches in Libya.
Experts still doubt that Russia can count on same contract conditions in Libya signed during Gaddafi regime.
Russia is extremely determined to make sure that their investments are protected. The issues of the humanitarian, and the number of people who were unnecessarily killed never were a major issue for Russia in either conflict.
Syria's Pipelineistan war
Deep beneath "Damascus volcano" and "the battle of Aleppo", the tectonic plates of the global energy chessboard keep on rumbling. Beyond the tragedy and grief of civil war, Syria is also a Pipelineistan power play.
More than a year ago, a $10 billion Pipelineistan deal was clinched between Iran, Iraq and Syria for a natural gas pipeline to be built by 2016 from Iran's giant South Pars field, traversing Iraq and Syria, with a possible extension to Lebanon. Key export target market: Europe.
During the past 12 months, with Syria plunged into civil war, there was no pipeline talk. Up until now. The European Union's supreme paranoia is to become a hostage of Russia's Gazprom. The Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline would be essential to diversify Europe's energy supplies away from Russia.
