Agreement on a Syria-led transition based on mutual consent that includes members of the current government” was reported by UN-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan from the Action Group on Syria meeting in Geneva Saturday, June 30. He avoided mentioning Bashar Assad, but was not able to conceal the gap between Washington and Moscow over the Syrian ruler’s fate: The US still wants him gone, while Russia is still adamant about propping him up.  That is the devil in the Annan peace effort.

Aviation Week reports: “Evidence is mounting that the US defense community and the Obama administration view 2013 as the likely window for a bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear and missile facilities.” The chaos of the Syrian government’s fall could be used “to disguise such an attack,” the journal suggests. “The tools…are all operational.” Friday night, top US and Russian diplomats failed to bridge differences on Syria ahead of a UN-sponsored Action Group parley in Geneva. Military preparations are building up for an attack on Syria.
 

Saying “An Islamist flood threatens us all, the Russian president put before the Israeli prime minister propositions of a secret conduit through Moscow to Tehran and help for mending Turkish-Israeli relations in return for a Russian stake in Mediterranean oil.

Another urgent bid for the US to lead an allied offensive against Syria’s ruling regime fell on deaf ears. It came Tuesday, June 26, from Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who is spoiling for action over the Syrian shoot-down of a Turkish military plane last Friday. Obama turned him down and urged US, British, Turkish and French covert operations to continue. Erdogan is forced to resort to the strategy employed by Binyamin Netanyahu on a nuclear Iran - tough rhetoric accompanied by inaction.

Unconfirmed first reports from British, French and Turkish sources say British special forces crossed from Turkey into northern Syria Tuesday, May 26, advancing up to 10 kilometers inside the country. Those sources also report heavy fighting around the Republican Guards compound guarding Bashar Assad's palace on Mount Qaisoun overlooking Damascus. This two-pronged assault on the Assad regime, if confirmed, began at the end of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Israel. It challenges his repeated objections to foreign intervention.

Al Qaeda infiltrators from Libya are spearheading much of this month’s anti-Israel violence from Sinai and the Gaza Strip - a dangerous development Israel, Hamas, Egypt and the US prefer to conceal. It appears to tie in with the arrival of al Qaeda’s ex-Iraq fighters in Syria as part of its leader's master plan. Deeply concerned to check the spillover from Libya into Egypt, Cairo has posted its elite counter-terrorist “999 unit” in El Arish, on Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip and along the northern sector of its frontier with Israel.

Syria Friday shot down the Turkish Super Phantom jet with the sophisticated self-propelled medium range anti-air Pantsur-1 missile recently supplied by Russia. Short of time to master the improved missile system, the Syrian crews would have called on their Russian instructors to help launch them. debkafile:  Moscow and Damascus may have decided to stop the almost daily Turkish air force flights over the Syrian coast for spying on Russian arms deliveries through the Russian bases of Tartus and Latakia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin started putting his plans for Russia to displace the US at key Middle East points at the Moscow nuclear talks and the G20 summit in Mexico where he enlisted China and Iran to defeat Washington’s plans. Starting out with a scheme of revenge for Libya, his ...

debkafile postulates Syria’s ...

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.

Moscow is using the time up until Russian President Vladimir Putin faces US President Barack Obama across the G20 conference table in Los Cabos, Mexico Sunday, June 17 – or its corridors - to ship sophisticated anti-air, anti-ship arms to Syria able to prevent a no-fly zone being imposed. A fleet of Russian warships is also heading for Tartus. If the two presidents come to terms on Syria and Iran, the planned US and allied intervention in Syria may be delayed. If not - quickened.

Amid the worsening violence in Syria, US official sources said Saturday, June 16, that US intervention was not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ and defined its format as “Libya lite.”  Pentagon officials earlier reported a Russian contingent was on its way to Syria to guard the Russian base at Tartus. As the Syrian civil conflict mounted onto the plane of major power intervention, Maj. Gen. Robert Mood announced that the UN observer mission he heads had suspended activities and patrols.

Russia is not averse to Bashar Assad’s exile from Damascus to his retreat in the Alawite Mountains because his army would move west with him and the new coastal enclave would secuire secure Russia’s Tartus and Latakia naval and marine bases (see attached map).

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.

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.

Obama focuses on obtaining Vladmir Putin’s consent to deploying 5,000 largely Russian monitors in Syria in order to gain a partner also for his Iran nuclear diplomacy. HIzballah risks being cut off from its heavy weapons arsenal hidden in Syria.

US President Barack Obama, widely expected to pursue direct action against Syrian ruler Bashar following the Houla atrocity, is preoccupied with what he regards as the greater threat to the world: a potential grab for the huge Syrian stock of chemical and biological weapons by Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, to prevent which, debkafile reports, he has reached out to Russian President Vladimir Putin with a fresh plan for Syria: 5,000 international monitors, most Russian, to guard those stocks.

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.