IN A RARE INTERVIEW broadcast this week, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad vowed on Iranian television to “annihilate terrorists” and told the rest of the world to get lost. “No one knows how to solve Syria’s problems as well as we do,” he said. But judging by the protests Friday near the presidential palace in Damascus, where people chanted, “We will no longer kneel to anyone but God,” and by the spiraling violence around the country, Mr.