Military preparations for intervention in the horrendous Syrian crisis are quietly afoot in Washington, Paris, Rome, London and Ankara. President Barack Obama is poised for a final decision after the Pentagon submits operational plans for protecting Syrian rebels and beleaguered populations, debkafile reports. The deaths of two notable journalists helped galvanize the West into action. They died after Syrian artillery located their secret press center in Homs with the help of Russian spy satellites or Iranian electronic measures - and gutted it. 

Western intelligence sources reporting in real time concluded Saturday night, Feb. 11 that Bashar Assad's loyal forces had by and large managed to subdue the rebellion against the regime, even though flare-ups are still to come. They are now purging the last pockets of resistance, especially in Syria's third largest city, Homs. The Syrian ruler will go on record as crushing his own people with the help of non-Arab Iran and Russia. For the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia this is a contretemps.

British and Qatari special operations units are operating under cover with rebel forces in the Syrian city of Homs, debkafile’s exclusive sources report. They are not engaged in direct combat with the Syrian forces bombarding Syria's third largest city, but serve as tactical advisers and logistical aides. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is using this foreign military presence in Homs, revealed here for the first time, as grist for his own Syrian initiative.
More about this in the coming  DEBKA-Net-Weekly issue out Friday.
 

US President Barack Obama, by asserting Sunday, Feb. 5, he doesn't think Israel has decided whether to attack Iran, sought to keep Israel away from military action and set aside as a strategic reserve, while using its threat of attack to bring Iran to the table.  Monday, Feb. 6, Bashar Assad reportedly redoubled his deadly assault on Homs and, for the first time, Aleppo, taking advantage of the respite granted him by the Russian-Chinese veto. Syria is now a hub of the US-Iranian confrontation. 

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.

Military tensions are building up around Syria's borders. Wednesday, Jan. 4, Turkish military sources reported an Israeli Eitan drone hovering for four hours over the Turkish Hawk Brigade 14 stationed on the Syrian border at Kirikhan in the Hatay district – the expected jumping-off point for any foreign military intervention in Syria.  In the south, fierce battles raged Tuesday, Jan. 3 between Syrian troops and the mutinous 38th Mechanized Brigade in the Syrian-Jordanian-Israeli border triangle. Sounds of gunfire were heard in Israel.

As Arab League monitors fail in their mission to curb brutal regime violence in Syria and the ten-month popular defiance continues to rage, President Bashar Assad is digging in for a full-scale civil war:  debkafile reports exclusively that a fortress is under construction for the Syrian ruler, family, his loyal generals and ruling elite in the northwestern Alawite (Al-Ansariyyah) Mountains. From there, the Assad clan will fight for survival should Damascus become too hot for them. Some Alawites have already deserted him.

Expanded Russian military support for the Assad regime was underscored by the deployment Friday, Dec. 16, of advanced Moscow-supplied Yakhont (SSN-26) shore-to-sea missiles along Syria's Mediterranean shore to fend off a potential invasion by sea. Last week, Russia airlifted to Syria 3 million face masks against chemical and biological weapons; and the Admiral Kutznetsov strike group headed out to Syria's Mediterranean port of Tartus. US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in Ankara; Syrian Vice President Farouk a-Shara in Moscow.

Tuesday, Dec. 6, the US, France and Britain went into concerted action to contain the Syrian crisis before it detonates a regional conflict and deteriorates into civil strife. At the same time, Syria and its neighbors sharply intensified their war preparations, fully expecting diplomacy to fail.  In Geneva, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the leaders of Syrian opposition groups that the Obama administration had stepped up its pressure on Assad and now referred to his regime as the "Assad gang." 

The US, Canada and Russia have launched gunboat diplomacy against Syria and Iran. Washington is underscoring its military option against Iran's nuclear program, while Russia is demonstrating its resolve to prevent NATO from attacking Syria. Monday, Nov. 21, Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov accused Western nations of "political provocation" against Damascus. Turkish Prime Minster Tayyip Erdogan warned Assad he could go only so far with tanks and guns. "One day you will go." The question is when will naval diplomacy turn into war action.

Monday, Nov. 21, Jordan's King Abdullah II arrived in Ramallah at very short notice for his first visit in more than a decade. He came wearing two hats – one for Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates and one for Washington – on an urgent mission to pull Abbas back from a peace deal with Hamas which would deposit the Palestinian Authority in the Iranian-Syrian orbit. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is in the picture. So are the Israeli chief of staff's words on a Gaza operation.

The Assad regime suffered a shock Wednesday Nov.16 when self-styled "Free Syrian Army" deserters firing shoulder-borne rockets and heavy machine guns struck its biggest security complex at Harasta west of Damascus. This was the first rebel attack on a major strategic target and a potential game-changer. debkafile: It was undoubtedly part of a well-laid plan drawn up by Turkey, the Persian Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Jordan to topple Iran's closest ally, Bashar Assad.

Has Syrian President Bashar Assad started murdering his own generals? Three have disappeared. One body was discovered in hospital riddled with bullets and may have been liquidated by rebels. After quelling mass demonstrations, the regime faces rising opposition guerilla attacks. Fearing a descent into civil war, the Allawites and Druzes have formed armed militias to protect their domains. Strapped for cash by sanctions, the Assad regime is borrowing from Iranian banks.

Targeted assassinations now dominate Bashar Assad's savage confrontation with the popular opposition to his rule. The White House finally told the Syrian ruler to step down for the first time as 50,000 Syrian Kurds clashed with security forces at the funeral of the popular Kurdish leader Mashaal Tammo, 53, slain  by masked men at his home in Qamishli, northern Syria Friday, Oct. 7. debkafile: The killers were members of the Syrian Air Force Intelligence Directorate acting on direct orders from Assad.

"We sided with the Syrian people because regimes will go but the people always stay," said Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu Sunday, Sept. 18 in a bid to vindicate the "zero conflict" doctrine against its many critics. In fact, debkafile reports, most of "the Syrian people" had gone to their graves when Davutoglu made his remark: Bashar Assad and his army had virtually smashed their six-month protest, aided substantially by Turkey reneging on its pledge of military backing for "the people."

The Syrian ruler has ordered his military chiefs to get set to launch their biggest operation to destroy the protest movement bedeviling his regime for nearly six months, debkafile's military sources report exclusively. All units are deployed on full preparedness around the protest centers for coordinated strikes in the coming days and all leaves cancelled.The five divisions posted on the Israeli border have been pulled back. Aleppo has staged its first major anti-Assad rally.

Taking advantage of the 15-day leeway granted him by the US and Turkey, Bashar Assad Monday, Aug. 15, sent tanks and mechanized infantry into Homs, a town of 1.5 million inhabitants. Heavy shelling rings out as clouds of smoke rise over the city. Homs is Syria's third largest town and the biggest the Syrian military has attacked. In Latakia, Syrian tanks continue to battle armed Palestinians and in Brussels, NATO and Turkey get set to send the rebels anti-tank weapons.

As his tanks and artillery stormed the eastern Syrian town of Deir al-Zour, killing 100 civilians in one day, the US and Turkey Sunday night, Aug. 7 began to turn the screw on President Bashar Assad: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked Turkey's foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu to press Syria to "return its military to the barracks," during his visit to Syria Tuesday. The Syrian ruler with Iranian backing spurned the ultimatum even before the minister reached Damascus.

Thursday night, Aug. 4, the commanders of Syria's military crackdown on the city of Hama ordered suspected protesters to be picked up off the streets for summary execution. Within hours, hundreds of victims were "executed" by firing squad in Nasser Square. The order was issued when the military failed to overcome mounting resistance.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned Syrian President Bashar Assad: "We are watching how the situation is developing. It's changing and our approach is changing as well."

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 ...