Iranian intelligence experts in Damascus have been disrupting the Syrian opposition movement's telephone and Internet links with the outside world and among fellow-protesters in the country. In the last two weeks, the US and Saudi Arabia have smuggled thousands of satellite phones into Syria for opposition activists. This also allows them to continue to transit images of Syrian brutality, debkafile reports.
A new Saudi-funded TV station representing the Syrian opposition began broadcasting on July 19.

Since Thursday, July 21, Syria's entire operational fleet of 1,500 tanks surrounds the country's most active anti-Assad protest cities Homs, Hama, Deir al-Zour, Abu Kamal and the big Damascus suburb of Harasta. The same evening, tank-backed forces stormed Homs, shelling densely populated districts at random, causing many casualties.
Five months into the uprising, these flashpoint cities are out of control, barred to the army except in large contingents backed by heavy armor and live fire.  

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 Syrian army went into action Tuesday, June 21, the day after the Assad speech, to drive back to their homes the nearly quarter of a million civilians who fled towns and villages on the Turkish border to escape military persecution. Syrian President Bashar Assad remains undeterred by the risk of a showdown - even after the ominous phone conversation between US President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Ministeror and Obama's demand that his regime end the "outrageous" violence now.

In his first address to the nation in two months, Syrian President Bashar Assad June 20 accused a "minute number of terrorists" backed by "conspirators at home and abroad" of exploiting legitimate demands for reform to serve longstanding plots for controlling Syria because of its geo-strategic importance.
While hinting at possible reforms, there was no suggestion that he might step down or dismiss his brother who has been leading the savage crackdown on the nearly four-month old protest.

Thousands of paramilitary rebels wielding guns and explosives have seized the northwestern Syrian region between the towns of Homs, Hama and Latakiya. Syrian State TV interrupted its broadcasts Monday, June 6, to announce that "terrorist gangs" had killed at least 120 troops and security officers, most of them in the embattled town of Jisr al-Shughour. debkafile reports: Syrian President Bashar Assad has dispatched strategic reserve Brigade 555 and the army's 85th Brigade to regain control of the area.

Damascus is humming in anticipation of a speech in the coming hours by Syrian President Bashar Assad declaring victory over the 10-week uprising against his regime, debkafile reports. Two pockets of resistance still hold out around Homs, but the protest ringleaders fled briefly to the Lebanese port of Tripoli and will soon be on their way to a West European safe haven. It is not clear how many of the 10,000 protesters arrested will benefit from the amnesty announced Tuesday.

The military and intelligence cliques of Assad's inner circle are sharply divided among themselves over the handling of the Syrian uprising: One group calls for a letup and compromise, while the other threatens to resist any easing of the crackdown by force.

debkafile's intelligence sources report that Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has secretly ordered his government officials to dump Ankara's ties with Damascus with all speed and allowed Syrian opposition leaders to meet in Antalya on May 31-June 2 on ways to topple Bashar Assad. He is also thinking twice about a Turkish role in the June flotilla for breaking the Gaza blockade for fear Assad might seize on a clash at sea as a pretext for attacking Israel in an undesirable show of Syrian-Turkish solidarity.

debkafile reports exclusively that President Barack Obama is ready to stamp down hard on Syrian President Bashar Assad in person for his inhuman crackdown on protest and the massacre of hundreds of dissenters. After five mass graves were found near Deraa, Obama may announce sanctions against the Syrian president even before his May 19 speech on US relations with Middle East Muslim nations, as well as recalling Ambassador Robert Ford from Damascus. Syria has threatened to hit back at Israel.

With every passing day Bashar Assad loses ground. His army is increasingly insubordinate, refusing orders to shoot protesters and his ruling Baath party elite drawing away in disgust at his brutal methods.

Thursday, May 5, Israel augmented the units deployed on its border with Syria and the intersection of the Israel-Syria-Jordan frontiers in the Har Dov area against the spate of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in flight from President Bashar Assad's bloody crackdown in Damascus and the Daraa region. The UN force on the Golan Heights – UNDOF – is likewise beefing up the contingents policing Israeli-Syrian ceasefire lines. Some, turned away at Turkish, Jordanian and Lebanese borders, are heading for Israel.

The Lebanese Shiite Hizballah has decided the Assad regime is sinking. debkafile's military sources report the organization is preparing to pull its heavy, long-range weapons out of storage in Syrian military facilities – no longer sure they are safe there – and transport them to Lebanon. Hizballah may even risk Israel making good on its threat to destroy the Iran-made Fatah-110 surface missiles, its Syrian equivalent  M-600 and mobile SA-8 (Gecko) anti-air battery - if they cross the border. 

After shelling, tank assaults and siege left 100 protesters dead in the last 48 hours without quelling the unrest, Western intelligence sources believe the menace to the regime has careered too far for President Bashar Assad to hold it at bay - an assessment shared by Ankara. The protest is likely to keep on spreading and evolving into armed rebellion. Those sources estimate the uprising as already encompassing 6-7 million Syrians (out of a population of 26 million) and a third of its area.

For the first time in the anti-Assad uprising, elements of Syria's popular protest movement are turning to armed revolt on lines similar to those marking the Libyan conflict, after discovering the regime's military crackdown is masterminded by Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers. Wednesday, April 27, armed civilians were seen for the first time, some carrying anti-tank weapons, in the Daraa district of the South and Banias and Jableh on the coast.  Washington is preparing new sanctions against Damascus.

Bashar Assad has launched all-out war on his people. Tanks firing artillery, infantry units, commandoes and snipers were deployed for the first time in Syrian cities at daybreak Monday, April 25 for the most brutal assault on any anti-government protesters in the four-month Arab uprising. Hundreds are estimated to have been massacred and thousands injured and left to die in the streets. Syria hopes to conceal the scale of the carnage in Daraa by shutting its borders with Jordan.

Security forces and demonstrators continued to clash Saturday, April 23 in Damascus, Hama, Daraa and nearby Izraa after Friday's bloodbath left more than 100 dead and hundreds injured. Syrian snipers shot dead at least 15 mourners, injured dozens, at the funerals. Two Syrian lawmakers resigned their seats in protest at security police brutality against civilians. Damascus rejected President Barack Obama's charge of Iranian help to repress citizens.  France warned regime leaders they could face international prosecution.