Syrian President Bashar Assad has hired hit squads to kill top Lebanese government, intelligence and security officials whom he suspects of helping insurrectionists and Saudi and Qatari agents smuggle fighters and weapons into the country to fight his regime. debkafile's counter-terror sources report that one Lebanese hit squad was captured and confessed to being armed and assigned by Syrian Military Intelligence to murder the two heads of Lebanese Internal Security by rigging bomb cars in Beirut. A second plot targeted a Lebanese lawmaker.

The West and Russia had a major showdown Saturday Feb. 5 over the Arab League resolution calling on Bashar Assad to step down. US President Barack Obama said the UN must take a stand against his "relentless brutality" and hold a vote before the end of the day. The vote was defeated by Russian and China vetoes. debkafile: Moscow backed its hard line against the West by putting Rapid Reaction Force (aka Spetsnaz) units on the ready to set out for Syria.

To pierce the layers of armor devised by Syrian, Russian and Iranian strategists to keep Assad afloat, the Western-Arab bloc is recruiting top Syrian generals to march on Damascus and unseat the dictator.

An undercover operation to topple Bashar Assad has been set in motion by a large group of nations, the US, Britain, France, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar– the most elaborate of the Arab Spring cycle. The latest DEBKA-Net-Weekly out Friday has the details and weighs its chances of success. The operation aims to bypass the Russian veto stacked against any effective UN Security Council resolution for halting Syrian bloodshed by striking at Assad's support structure of loyal troops and Russian-Iranian backing.
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Syrian President Bashar Assad is reported by Persian Gulf sources Tuesday, Jan. 31 to have confided to his advisers that he will start up a regional conflict if the UN Security Council calls on him to step down. The heads of the Syrian armed forces and intelligence have been given their orders. Other sources tell debkafile that the Russian flotilla in Tartus appears to be on alert and Sunday, a US nuclear submarine and destroyer sailed through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea.

President Bashar Assad Sunday, Jan. 30, pulled in the Syrian Republican Guard and the 4th armored division commanded by his brother Maher Assad from the north to Damascus, debkafile reports exclusively. He deployed them in battle positions in the capital for the first time following an intelligence tipoff that one of the armored division commanders had been won over by Western powers and persuaded to stage a coup d'etat in time for Tuesday's UN Security Council meeting on Syria.

The Syrian ruler is still fully in control in Damascus, contrary to the reports propagated by the opposition. He is still backed by the high army command and supported by Iran and Russia. The Assad regime will be in danger only if two of those three backers turn against ...

Iran will avoid a full-dress confrontation with superior US military might and trust to pinpoint harassment and provocations to carry the day. Tehran believes the apparent US-Israeli rift it’s a subterfuge to camouflage US-Israel war preparations against its nuclear sites.

Bashar Assad, universally hated and despised for his brutality, is confounding predictions of his imminent downfall with the help of tactical, arms and propaganda assistance from Russia and Iran. Al Qods Commander Maj. Gen. Haj Qassem Soleimani directs the Iranian team in Damascus and military advisers attached to Syrian Army riot dispersal units. From Lebanon, Hizballah pumps out emergency reinforcements for the Syrian military.  

As Arab League monitors fail in their mission to curb brutal regime violence in Syria and the ten-month popular defiance continues to rage, President Bashar Assad is digging in for a full-scale civil war:  debkafile reports exclusively that a fortress is under construction for the Syrian ruler, family, his loyal generals and ruling elite in the northwestern Alawite (Al-Ansariyyah) Mountains. From there, the Assad clan will fight for survival should Damascus become too hot for them. Some Alawites have already deserted him.

As NATO cargo planes airlifted Libyan fighters to join the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army units in Turkey, Syrian forces armed with Russian spy satellite intelligence waylaid FSA rebels and deserters, killing them where they stood. A large-scale exercise prepares Syrian army to repel a combined offensive.

Tehran offers to slow uranium enrichment in stages in step with the lifting of sanctions. The Obama administration is listening - provided Iran ditches Assad. This exchange of messages was carried by Iraqi PM Nouri al Maliki when he visited Washington this week.  It was the main subject of President Barack Obama's talks with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak Friday, Dec. 16. Israel is concerned that Iran has again contrived to buy time and leeway for completing its nuclear weapon program.

Syria has moved Scud missiles, some tipped with chemical warheads, to its border with Turkey, reinforced its tank units on the Jordanian border and airlifted from Russia three million face masks against chemical and biological weapons.

President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan have developed relations of mutual trust which allowed the US to set up its headquarters for the campaign to oust Bashar Assad in southwest Turkey. The next US-inspired step is to foment a campaign of civil obedience against the Assad regime, starting ...

By deploying US troops on the Jordanian-Syrian border, the Obama administration played the last piece of its master game for Bashar Assad's ouster – in conjunction with Turkey, France, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's latest issue out Friday offers glimpses of covert US action in Syria alongside counter-steps pursued by Damascus, Tehran and Hizballah.
The next in our series of US RQ-170 exclusives reveals not just how Iran tampered with the stealth drone technology but also with the satellite controlling it.

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Units of US troops evacuated from Iraq have been diverted to positions in Jordan opposite a Syrian tank concentration building up across the kingdom's northern border, debkafile reports.The incoming US contingents are housed at the King Hussein Air Base of al-Mafraq, 10 kilometers from the Syrian border. They are the first US boots to hit the ground directly opposite Assad's army, brought there by Bashar Assad's threat to set the Middle East on fire if the pressure against him persists.

Bashar Assad is preparing to quit Damascus should civil war erupt and carry on fighting from a mountain stronghold in the Alawite Mountains. The encampment is already under preparation with protected premises for his Allawite following.

Tuesday, Dec. 6, the US, France and Britain went into concerted action to contain the Syrian crisis before it detonates a regional conflict and deteriorates into civil strife. At the same time, Syria and its neighbors sharply intensified their war preparations, fully expecting diplomacy to fail.  In Geneva, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the leaders of Syrian opposition groups that the Obama administration had stepped up its pressure on Assad and now referred to his regime as the "Assad gang." 

The actions and words of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Syrian ruler Bashar Assad in the last 72 hours indicate they are bracing for a regional war, including an attack on Iran, within a time frame between mid-December 2011 and mid-January 2012.
debkafile points to Syria's military exercise in "war conditions," Binyamin Netanyahu's war speech, Washington's heavy hand on Jerusalem to desist from attacking Iran and the hide-and-seek maneuvers of US and Russian fleets.

Small Western special forces units have begun filtering into Syria to prepare the ground for a major military operation by the US, several more NATO members and Gulf emirates, to captured northern Syria and use it as a beachhead to eventually dominate the rest of the country.