So all Russia and Iran are doing is just trying to defend against ISIS? That's certainly one interpretation I suppose.
Oh definitely, Assad is liberal and secular, to the point where he operates countless secret torture prisons and has forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of his citizens. Use the term "lesser of evils" if you must. But relatively liberal? Absolutely not.
Even when compared to similar Middle Eastern autocrats, Assad is simply on a whole other level in my opinion. One might argue it's because of the war, but I really don't see why war crimes and torture prisons are required to "win" the civil war.
On the contrary, his people will never forget. Good luck building a stable and successful country with so much blood on your hands.
There are a few other good sources. I'll try to find them.
We're talking about the al-Assad ruling family? The same family whose literal policy is to raze towns that shelter any opposition, and are currently literally gassing their own citizens?
Now they are in debt to the WMF, are a totally non-stable state ravaged with crime and their slowly progressively moving government has reverted decades in terms of democracy and human rights. It's a mini-Iraq with less than 1/8 of the news coverage.
The US have never managed to secure any positive relationship with any secular/moderate Arab movement due to an mixture of commiphobia and incompetent arrogance within the western diplomatic establishment. Where as there is an relatively close relationship between most of the sponsors of radical Islamic terror and the US establishment through the gulf royals and their investment into the failing businesses of western dynasties and retired generals/admirals.
So the result of tolerating/establishing a moderate semi-secular government in an Arab state, tend to benefit Iran/Russia as we saw with post Saddam Iraq where the new government was forced to buy Russian planes and ask for Iranian support as the US kept stalling their attempts to buy American(mostly due to infighting between us suppliers) until half of Iraq had fallen to ISIS.