The thousands of Israeli military reservists rushed to the Syrian and Lebanese borders this week were told they would take part in a drill starting next Sunday. In fact, they opened up the border outposts and other facilities which had been shuttered for years and reactivated them as backing for ...

The Syrian army’s 4^th Division-Republican Guard cleared most of the rebels out of the eastern suburbs of Damascus Monday, April 8, debkafile reporst. Bashar Assad’s brother Maher at the head of the 4^th Division, executed a surprise pincer movement spearheaded by tank and artillery fire, in time to impede the rebel advance on the center of Damascus and the international airport. This major operation is assumed to have been designed by Assad’s foreign advisers, Iranian or Russian, and averted a chemical attack.

The rebel fighters’ newly-acquired antitank guided missiles-ATGM (of both Russian and American manufacture) are knocking over the T-72 tanks of the 4^th Republican Guard Division and the 3^rd Division, the backbone of the capital’s defenses, while their portable MANPAD air defense systems have brought practically all takeoffs and landings ...

Bashar Assad has evacuated most of the troops of his 5th Army Division from their permanent bases on the Golan opposite Israeli forces and transferred them along with their artillery to Damascus, debkafile’s military sources report. This step was intended by Assad to reinforce the defense of his capital, while at the same time providing the al Qaeda-linked fighters in rebel ranks direct access to the Israel border. In no time, the jihadists are expected to turn their guns and missiles on Israel.

Moscow Monday, Jan. 21 said two Russian planes would land in Beirut Tuesday to evacuate 100 Russians from Syria, and contingency plans were in hand to lift 30,000 Russians from the embattled country. debkafile: This was decided after Bashar Assad told his high command to organize mobile armored strike groups for a big push to evict rebel forces from the places they captured. Russia and Iran have stepped up their arms deliveries to Assad’s army by sea and by air in support of Assad's coming offensive.

Moscow and Tehran have advanced from their strategic partnership for Bashar Assad's survival to military cooperation. debkafile: An Iranian naval maneuver began in the Straits of Hormuz Friday, Dec. 28 - two days after Russia launched its largest naval war game ever in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. As Iranian-made Fateh A-110 missiles were fired this week by the Syrian army under Iranian officers, Moscow rapidly expanded the deployment of its highly-sophisticated S-400 interceptors near the Turkish border.

 US, Turkish, British, Jordanian and French forces stand ready around Syrian borders awaiting the order to go forward still to come from US President Barack Obama. debkafile: President Bashar Assad is regrouping his army in defense array in strategic parts of Damascus, while planting mines and bomb traps in abandoned bases. Convoys carrying missiles, shells and canisters armed with chemical weapons continue to ply roads to the north, while the airlift of Iranian arms is rerouted to Palmyra.

Two Bashar Assad external supporters took significant military steps Wednesday, Oct. 17. Russia started moving advanced S-400 interceptors over to its southern military region opposite Turkey, as Ankara’s clashes with Assad’s forces intensified. Hizballah began removing rockets and fighting units out of their South Lebanon positions opposite Israel and transferring them to the Homs front as back-up for Syrian forces. This attests to the rising scope and fury of the Syrian army’s onslaught on rebel forces.

Turkish artillery continued to pound Syria Thursday, October 4, with the aim of carving out a 10-kilometer buffer strip inside Syria, debkafile reports. Several Syrian army bases and positions inside this strip have taken direct hits and a large number of Syrian troops were killed or wounded. Turkey hopes its artillery barrage will help Syrian rebels create a 50-km long protected corridor between Aleppo and the Turkish border. Ankara and Damascus have both imposed a blackout to keep events under control and avoid a full-blown war.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta commented Monday, July 30 on his way to the Middle East that the assault on Aleppo, “will ultimately be another nail in Assad’s coffin.” He spoke after the Free Syrian Army’s Saudi and Qatari intelligence backers based in Apaydin, Turkey, admitted that the ferocious Syrian government onslaught had derailed for now their safe haven scheme for the Aleppo region which was to have housed the FSA forward command and a Benghazi-style transitional government. Rebel-held Salaheddin has fallen.

In 17 months of brutal operations, the Syrian army has lost 8,763 dead and 21,357 wounded soldiers, 600 tanks and APCs, and a stream of high-ranking defectors. Yet neither Bashar Assad nor his ruling family appears to falter or fear failure. Why? Because Assad has purged the top command of veteran commanders and installed loyal Alawites in their stead. How does the desertion of Brig.-Gen. Manaf Tlass, 105th Brigade commander of the Republic Guard and member of a prominent Sunni clan, fit into this picture?

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.
 

Syria apologized for the downing of a Turkish military F-4 over Syrian territorial water Friday, June 22. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan denied receiving an apology. Before going into an emergency meeting of government and military heads, he said it was not clear how the plane was lost. Hizbalah’s media reported it was ambushed by Syrian anti-air missiles. debkafile: This was Syria’s revenge for a Syrian air force pilot’s defection with his MiG-21 Thursday, which Damascus believes was organized by US and Turkish intelligence.

Israeli border lookout points report that in the last two days, large groups of armed Syrian soldiers have been seen deserting their Golan bases and prowling for water and food, after their regular supplies were stopped and redirected to units fighting anti-Assad rebels. They don’t ask Israeli soldiers for food, but parcels thrown across the fence vanish in a trice. Meanwhile, gangs, some local, some from Jordan and Iraq, are raiding the unguarded Syrian facilities on looting expeditions and stripping them of equipment.

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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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.

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 ...

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.

Rumors have started that Syria generals have deposed Assad in a secret putsch and left him in place as a front. They reportedly struck as middle class and army support for Assad was fading fast as the economy kept sinking – a deterioration exacerbated by President Obama telling him ...

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 ...