Moscow has answered the US Patriots in Turkey with the top-line Eskandar missiles for Syria for which the West has no answer. This compounded the bad news coming from Pyongyang of North Korea’s first successful long-range three-stage missile test. To neither does Obama seem to have an answer.

Moscow is looking ahead to the post-Assad era and planning to set up permanent military enclaves at Damascus and Aleppo airports.

Iran’s nuclear chief Abbasi is in charge of the conversion of the captured US Sentinel by Iran and the work of mixed Iranian-Russian-Chinese teams to transfer its secret systems to Iranian drones.

War tensions over Syria shot up again early Thursday, Oct. 11, when the Turkish army was placed on high readiness and its chiefs pledge stronger responses to Syria. An authoritative US source told debkafile that Turkey had - by forcing a Syrian civilian flight en route from Moscow land in Ankara and banning flights over Syria - begun creating a no-fly zone over Syria. US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta again cited the threat of chemical warfare. US sources don’t expect Assad or Iran to take Turkish actions lying down.

Russia has indeed left Assad high and dry by shutting down its early warning stations which warning Syrian air and missile defense batteries of oncoming threats and turning back a Russian warship carrying SA-17 missile interception batteries for Syria.

Russian naval vessels have unexpectedly departed the Syrian Mediterranean port of Tartus and Russian arms shipments to Syria have been suddenly discontinued. debkafile’s military sources reveal that those and other military steps indicate that the Russians are rapidly drawing away from the Syrian arena to avoid getting caught up in the escalating hostilities expected to arise from military intervention by the US, Europe and a number of Arab states. Russian intelligence seems certain that this foreign intervention is imminent.

Moscow has come up with a new euphemism for the naval bases it seeks to acquire in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean Sea – Leisure and Rest Sites. Russian Navy chiefs warn the Kremlin that its naval assets are not up to defending Russian interests in the Middle ...

In a phone call to the Kremlin Sunday, July 1, Syrian President Bashar Assad said he needed just two months to finish off the revolt against his regime. “My new military tactics are working,” he said, as his regime and the Syrian opposition rejected the UN-sponsored peace plan approved in Geneva Saturday. debkafile also reports exclusively that Assad’s "new tactics" consist of retiring the top army command and replacing it with Shabiha thugs armed with an unheard-of level of fire power. Syrian-Turkish border tension continues to climb.
 

The US has confirmed the supply of weapons to the Syrian rebels and the presence of CIA officers controlling the flow from Turkey. However plans for persuading Bashar Assad to quit run hard up against his gains on the battlefield where the rebels, despite broad backing, are losing ground.

Military tensions around Syria shot up again Monday, June 18, with an Iranian report that a joint Russian-Chinese-Iranian exercise is to take place in Syria, called “the biggest of its kind ever staged in the Middle East,” with 90,000 personnel, 400 air planes and 900 tanks taking part.  debkafile: This would be the first time Russia and China have deployed substantial military strength in the Middle East. It points to their determination to deter a US-lead military operation against the Assad regime.

Syria is being further wrenched apart following US President Barack Obama’s maneuverings for winning Russian cooperation in resolving the Syrian conflict for US nuclear concessions to Iran:  As the coming DEBKA-Net-Weekly out Friday reveals, Russia is cementing its grip on Syria’s Mediterranean coast while pushing its civil war-torn heartland over to the Americans.
To spoil the Russian game, the US hopes to draw Damascus into the Syrian revolt, a goal only achievable with air force aid.

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The US President Barack Obama has ordered the US Navy and Air Force to accelerate preparations for a limited air offensive against the Assad regime and the imposition of no-fly zones over Syria - depending on Moscow's reaction.

Tehran early Sunday June 10 accused Syrian rebels of arming themselves with chemical weapons originating in Libya and acquiring training in their use - sending shudders of alarm through the West and Israel. They fear the Assad regime is preparing the ground for chemical assaults to finally crush its foes. Both sides to the conflict are talking about chemical warfare openly. If they go through with it, President Barack Obama will have to reconsider non-intervention and turn to limited force to stop the escalating horror.

After the UN gridlock on the Syrian crisis Thursday, an American delegation headed by Fred Hoff drew a blank in talks at the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow Friday, June 8, with Syrian expert, Mikhail Bogdanov. Russia flatly rejected President Barack Obama’s proposal to post 5,000 armed UN monitors in Syria, most of them Russian troops.  Moscow and Tehran calculate that the higher the flames of civil war in Syria, the more the US will be blamed for the bloodshed.They therefore refuse to join any international effort to stop it.

A new contact group, a Syrian military council for provisional rule under the group’s orders, and Russian-Iranian moves to make Assad step down – these are the key points of Obama’s plan for Syria, part of his grand design that also embraces Iran and its nuclear program.

Iran stalled the US Secretary and UN-Arab League Envoy Kofi Annan’s plan for a contact group based on five permanent Security Council members and Iran to handle the Syrian impasse, refusing to join the group so long as it faces nuclear conditions. Tehran's non-cooperation on Syria reflected its flat-out rejection of the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s demand that Iran come to the nuclear talks in Moscow “ready to take concrete steps” to curb its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent purity.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Baku, Azerbaijan Wednesday, June 6, amid Ali Khamenei and Vladimir Putin’s deep disapproval of President Ilam Aliyav’s pro-Western orientation and fast-growing ties with Israel. Frictions center on Baku’s $1.6 billion arms transaction with Israel and even more, debkafile reports, on the fact that the deal is matched by expanding Azerbaijani investment in Israel’s Mediterranean gas and oil projects. This tradeoff is marked for expansion.

The 12,000-strong US-Arab special forces exercise, Eager Lion 2012, ending in Jordan Wednesday, May 30, broadened  the orbit of international intervention in the Arab Revolt and preparations for war with Iran. The ground section took place near the Syrian border, while the marine section practiced landings on Aqaba beaches and mountain terrain resembling strategic sites in Iran. A Russian ship has meanwhile delivered heavy ammo to Syria, soon to be followed in Tartus port by the North Korean arms ship Odai.

On the return flight to Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov filled in the space left by his Prime Minister Dmitri Medvadev’s silence at the G8 summit Saturday, May 20 with a large dose of skepticism on Iran.
Contradicting President Barack Obama’s statement that diplomacy was preferable to military action, he spoke of “many signals that the military option is… realistic.” Less realistic were NATO decisions on the eurozone and the military exit from Afghanistan at the weekend Chicago summit.

Foreign intervention in Syria is expanding, hemming the Assad regime in with escalating bombing attacks, rebels armed with heavy weapons or a 17-nation special forces “exercise” across the border in Jordan. How will his backers in Tehran and Moscow react?