Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's Damascus mission started with a military ultimatum and ended on a weak note which drew a contemptuous reaction from Bashar Assad. Damascus is working against the clock. Assad hopes to have broken the back of the anti-Assad protest. Otherwise, zero military conscription will break ...

The House of Assad has seized all-inclusive control of the ferocious assault on the opposition by getting rid of one general, defense minister Ali Habib, promoting another, chief of staff Dawoud Rajha, in his place, and so removing all the obstacles in the path of the president's brother-in-law Deputy Army chief Asif Shawqat for taking complete charge of the war on whole Syrian cities in the name of the ruling family.

Less than 24 hours after Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu handed Bashar Assad in Damascus "a final warning," to stop the bloodshed or else, Assad demonstrated coolly that he is not scared by the prospect of Turkish or NATO military intervention or deterred by new US sanctions against Syria's biggest bank and mobile phone company. The day after his Turkish guest departed, Wednesday, Aug. 10, Assad launched provocative military assaults on three towns in the Turkish border region - following receipt of a missile shield guarantee from Iran.

Twelve hours after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned Assad he faced a "sad fate" if he failed to introduce reforms, Moscow's envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin accused the Western alliance of planning a military campaign against Syria to help overthrow the Assad regime "with the long-reaching goal of preparing a beachhead for an attack on Iran."
In an Izvestia interview Friday, Aug. 5, Rogozin added: "This statement means that the planning [of the military campaign] is well underway."

While his bloody crackdown on Hama grabs headlines, and Bashar Assad's fights for his life against his people, Saudi Arabia eyes the eastern Euphrates Valley and its towns of Deir el-Zour and Abu Kamal for severance from Syria to link up with the Iraqi Anbar province and form a new ...

As Moscow prepares to block strong UN Security Council condemnation of Syrian violence against protest, Russian diplomats Monday, Aug. 1, launched a quiet effort to start freezing sanctions imposed on Iran over its military nuclear program in return for Tehran satisfactorily answering the International nuclear watchdog's "questions and concerns," debkafile's Moscow and Washington sources report.
Iranian Foreign Minister Saeed Jalili visits Moscow Aug. 17. Washington is standing by for results.

Early Monday Aug. 1, undeterred by international condemnation, President Bashar Assad broadened his bloody tank assault to all of northern Syria – a 20,000 square kilometer area almost the size of Israel. He is now waging war on the 3.5 million inhabitants of Hama, Deir al-Zour, Homs, Idlib, Ar-Raqqah and Abu Kemal, after inflicting a one-day death toll Sunday of 150 – 120 in Hama, 30 in Deir el-Zur and more than 1,000 injured.
Syrian armored forces are running into heavy resistance, increasing desertions.

President Bashar Assad and his brother Maher, who leads the crackdown on protest, are not talking. Their Alawite sect is withdrawing its support and the clergy spurn the regime's demand to keep the crowds off the streets during Ramadan, during which the opposition plans nightly anti-Assad rallies.

The big drug transit center in the Syrian town of Aleppo run jointly by the Assad regime and Hizballah keeps the city from joining the popular uprising for fear of extreme punishment that stops at nothing. The protesters struck at Assad's thriving drug trade only once by derailing a ...

Jordan's King Abdullah II was warned in Washington this week to hurry up and introduce political reforms because a revolt against the throne was knocking at his door from neighboring Syria, debkafile's Washington sources report.  US intelligence updates informed him the threat came from the potential spillover of the tumult rocking Syria. If that happened, Israel would have to decide whether to step in to save the Hashemite throne as well as preventing the unrest infecting West Bank Palestinians and Israeli Arabs communities.

Syrian President Bashar Assad sees his military crackdown of dissent beating hopelessly against a brick wall, and increasing American covert intervention against him, army desertions and signs of civil war. Yet he continues to send his tanks and guns against a rising tide of protest.

Mikhail Margelov is the first Russian diplomat ever named to perform a shared mission for the Russian, US and German governments. An Arabist with fluent English, he will be acting on their behalf in the Libyan and Syrian crises after helping to ease tensions in Sudan.

On the fifth anniversary of Israel's second Lebanon war this week, as former IDF generals and military experts hailed its outcome as the winning deterrent keeping the Shiite terrorist Hizballah at bay every since, Hassan Nasrallah quietly completed the organization's takeover of Lebanon's security and intelligence agencies and took delivery of advanced ballistic missiles from Syria. Hizballah is therefore going from strength to strength in Lebanon – contrary to the view current in top Israeli circles.

Obama's acceptance of the Russian-Libyan formula opens the way for ending the Libyan war by Muammar Qaddafi's departure from power – not the country – making way for transition administration and elections. His sons and loyalists will run for office. The format for Syria expels Bashar Assad and all ...

If Aleppo finally throws its weight against the anti-government opposition, Bashar Assad's days will be numbered – especially after his elite troops failed to break the back of the uprising and he blew his only shot at national dialogue by disinviting influential opposition leaders.

After Hama, US and French ambassadors to Damascus Robert Ford and Eric Chevalier will Friday, July 15, try to reach the eastern Syrian oil town of Deir al-Zar on the Iraqi border to meet opposition leaders, although debkafile's reports government forces are poised to stop them. The town is also a Sunni tribal and Kurdish center.
In a key policy shift, US President Obama Tuesday questioned Bashar Assad's legitimacy. And another first: A bomb blast damaged an East Syrian oil pipeline.

Monday, July 11, after a pro-Assad mob invaded the US embassy in Damascus, a personal attack on Syrian President Bashar Assad was heard in Washington for the first time. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Assad "is not indispensible and we have absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power," after US embassy staff were forced to shelter in a fortified wing of the mission as Assad's militiamen rampaged through the building and raised the Syrian flag.

The visits the US and French ambassadors, Robert Ford and Eric Chevalier, paid to Hama Friday, July 8, in the thick of the half-million anti-Assad turnout, offered a rare glimpse of the quest by Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy and Tayyip Erdogan for a Syrian compromise: It would leave Bashar Assad in place provided he accepts reforms and makes room for the opposition in government. But Turkish troops still remain poised on the Syrian border over his head.

The United States, Britain, France and Turkey are spearheading a plan to preserve Bashar Assad as Syrian president while cutting away his support system of relatives and political and military chiefs and replacing them with "moderate opposition" figures, debkafile reports exclusively. But the process is marred by profound mutual mistrust: The West suspects he has no intention of abandoning his savage crackdown on protest, while Assad suspects he is being set up for a Turkish invasion. 

The Lebanese capital was only the first stop for a delegation of the UN-backed Special Tribal for Lebanon investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. Thursday, June 30, the group arrived in Beirut and presented four arrest warrants against top Hizballah officers. Its next destination may eventually be Damascus for the submission of a second batch of warrants against Syrian officials suspected of controlling the Hizballah hit-team in the commission of the murder.