IDF: Syrian chemical threat targets Israel. Obama warns Assad against “tragic mistake”

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

Senior Israeli military officers, referring to the Syrian foreign ministry statement Monday, July 23, that Syria would only use chemical weapons against “external aggression,” found in it a direct threat by the Assad regime to turn those weapons against Israel. It was Syria’s rejoinder to Israel’s vow to use force against those chemical weapons to prevent them from reaching Hizballah’s hands in Lebanon.

Tensions between Syria and Israel, like its other neighbors - especially Jordan and Turkey – rose to a new pitch in the wake of the new Syrian statement.

Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said plainly Sunday that preventing Syria’s chemical weapons from “falling into the wrong hands” was a key to Israeli security, while Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he had ordered the Israeli military to prepare for a possible attack on Syria’s weapons arsenal, because “Israel cannot accept the transfer of advanced weapons from Syria to Lebanon.”

Monday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague, catching onto Syria’s veiled threat, called it unacceptable: “This is typical of the complete illusion of this regime that they are the victims of external aggression.”

A few hours later, the UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon said in New York that he was “very concerned” that “Syria may be tempted to use chemical weapons.”

He was followed by Pentagon press secretary George Little who told reporters: “They should not think one iota about using chemical weapons,” he said. “We have been very strong in our statements inside the US government on the prospective use of chemical weapons and it would be entirely unacceptable.”

Finally, US President Barack Obama said Monday that “Assad will be held accountable if he makes the tragic mistake of using chemical weapons.

An Israeli officer told debkafile that the Syrian foreign ministry’s statement was tantamount to a declaration that the Assad regime holds all the cards on when and against whom to use its chemical weapons. America, Israel, Jordan and Turkey have no say in the matter. Assad alone will decide if and when to wage chemical warfare against such enemies as Israel and Jordan, although he may be expected to follow Iran in refraining from going after American targets at this time.

He has, in other words, given himself carte blanche for resorting to chemical warfare at a time of his choosing by reiterating that his government is subject to external Arab and Western aggression.

Israeli sources point out that the Syrian statement omitted any mention – certainly no denial - of the possible transfer of those weapons to Hizballah in Lebanon. The Assad regime must therefore be understood to reserve to itself that option, too, thereby laying Israel wide open to a direct threat. Israel and its military were alone in expressly vowing to prevent this transfer.

“We understand the Syrian ruler to be preparing to expand the Syria war into Lebanon whence his troops can threaten northern and Mediterranean areas of Israel,” said a US military source.

Another development Monday portending the further exacerbation of the Syrian crisis was the announcement by Aeroflot that it was suspending flights to Damascus in two weeks “for economic reasons.”

It looks as though Moscow foresees a further downturn in the Syrian conflict and estimates that by early August intensified air force activity in Syrian skies will reach a dangerous level.

Sunday, July 22, debkafile’s exclusive military sources outlined the military dilemma facing Israel with regard to the Syrian chemical weapon threat.

Assad receives last warning to stop moving his WMD: Top generals defect

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
   
Several high-placed generals bolted Bashar Assad’s inner circle Sunday, July 17, including such key figures as two security services chiefs who were operations commanders of the Alawite Shabiha militia plus the former head of Syria’s chemical and biological administration who took six other generals with him. They all fled to Turkey and defected. A fourth senior general from another security service was assassinated in Aleppo. This is reported exclusively by debkafile’s military sources.

The loss of the generals orchestrating the pro-Assad paramilitary Shabiha’s savage crackdown on the opposition has seriously weakened Assad’s protective circle of trusties and reduced his military and security options.

Also today, the Syrian ruler was given a “last warning” through intelligence channels in the West to leave the warheads and shells loaded with mustard gas, sarin and cyanide where they are. If he dared move them out of the northern and central locations where he deployed them last week, they would be destroyed from the air.

debkafile names the defecting Shabiha commanders as:  Gen. Mohamed Tatouh, Deputy chief of Syrian political intelligence, and Gen. Mohamed Kodissia, deputy chief of the “Palestinian” Intelligence agency (a misnomer: it has nothing to do with Palestinians).

The murdered general, Ali Khallouf, was ambushed by rebels in Aleppo.

Maj. Gen. Adnan Nawras Salou, a Sunnite, who headed the chemical warfare authority until 2008, will no doubt have important intelligence to offer the West about the Assad regime’s current activities and plans for his WMD.

debkafile points to three singular features of the latest wave of defections:

1.  They all managed to spirit their families out of Syria well before they absconded themselves, an operation that must have required weeks of careful and secret preparation. The failure of Assad’s many-tentacled, clandestine agencies to discover what was up and foil the walkouts, attests to serious lapses in their notorious efficiency.

2.  All the defectors served in Damascus at the regime’s nerve center for suppressing the revolt.

3.  They all made tracks for Beirut before making their way to Turkey. Neverthetheless, the extensive spy networks run by Iran and Hizballah in the Lebanese capital failed to pick up on the city’s use as a way station for Syrian defectors in flight to Turkey.

4.  Despite their active roles in crushing the civil uprising in Syria, those generals clearly hoped to escape the consequences of their actions and becoming liable for prosecution.  The Red Cross Committee in Geneva, the first international organization to call the violence in Syria a full-blown civil war, made it clear Sunday, July 15, that international humanitarian law applied henceforth throughout the country and provided a basis for war crimes prosecution, especially if civilians were attacked.

Clinton: Syria on brink of catastrophe as rebels advance. The region in danger

DEBKAfile Special Report

“There is still a chance to save the Syrian state from a catastrophic assault that would be very dangerous not only to Syria, but to the region,” said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Tokyo, Sunday, July 8. She did not elaborate, but stressed earlier, “… the opposition is getting more effective in defense of themselves and going on the offensive against the Syrian military.”

debkafile’s military sources note that her over-the-top language comes at a pivotal moment in the Syrian conflict: The rebels are winning more and more territory and not only encircling Damascus but fighting inside the capital. To save itself, the Assad regime which still controls the army outside Damascus may in desperation open up its arsenals and deploy weapons of mass destruction in a bid to drive off the rebels while also spreading the flames to other parts of the region, including Israel.

Persian Gulf sources reported Sunday that inside the capital, the Syrian army no longer moves troops in military convoys for fear of rebel attack. They now travel in unmarked civilian vehicles. Some officers prefer to stay on base for fear of assassination or kidnap on their way home.

Clinton did not explain how the rebels were suddenly able in the last few days to develop their ubiquitous capabilities, rising numbers and military organization - or where they procured weapons for their wholesale offensive against the Syrian army.

According to debkafile’s intelligence and military sources, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have substantially stepped up the flow of munitions to the rebels. They are reaching combatants inside Syria as well as the trainees at Turkish military facilities.

Their numbers have, furthermore, risen to 50,000 armed men who are efficiently organized in 17 brigades. Fighting inside the country are 260 military units, each consisting of one or two battalions, which mostly range from 1,000-1,500 men - depending on the arena. Some are brigades of 3,000 men.

By the first week of July, the rebel army had put in place an efficient logistical system:

1. The Free Syrian Army had been able to establish a geographical presence in all of Syria’s provinces, barring the minority regions (Kurds and Druzes) which are outside the conflict, and the pro-regime Alawite region.

2.  A regional operational command was working in all those provinces (260). It was equipped with hi-tech communications connecting the provinces and linked to the FSA’s high command in Turkey.

3.  A well-organized arms smuggling ring was transferring weapons from one command to another as required for local attacks on Syrian military and security forces. This pipeline is fed by Turkish, Saudi and Qatari suppliers via Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Turkey..

4.  A foreign “military adviser” is posted at each provincial command center. They are usually special forces experts mainly from the British, French, Turkish, Saudi and Qatari armies.

Up until last month, the rebels were fighting primarily to sever a strategic strip of land from Idlib in the north to Deraa in the south in order to tie down the regime in Damascus and its Allawite loyalist forces in the west and center and cut it off from the rest of the country. 

This goal has now been abandoned. Today, the anti-Assad forces are concentrating on a single objective: The regime’s overthrow.

After 8,763 soldiers killed and a stream of defectors, Assad still thinks he can win

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

In its 17-month crackdown on dissent, the Syrian army had by early July, lost 8,763 dead and 21,357 wounded. Some units lost a quarter of their manpower. Around 600 tanks and APCs – six percent of the Syrian armored corps fleet – were crippled. Around 200 can be fixed but repairs will take three months.

Defections from all ranks up to general are depleting combat divisions. All in all, the Syrian army has never been hit with this scale of casualties and losses. Yet Bashar Assad and his ruling family, some members of whom hold high military, security and intelligence command, show no cracks or fear of impending failure.

Just the reverse: President Assad boasted to the Turkish Hurriyet in a recent interview that were it not for the majority support he enjoys from the Syrian people he would have fallen like the Persian Shah in 1979.

The Syrian ruler is generally unfazed by the stream of high officers defecting to the rebels because, as debkafile reported on July 2 – he has quietly made a clean sweep of long-serving elite commanders, especially Sunnis, and replaced them with younger Alawite officers, drawn from security and intelligence agencies and the loyal, exceptionally brutal Alawite Shabiha militia.

Some of the defectors are generals who were quietly retired on full pay; others, mid-ranking officers who see their prospects of promotion vanishing in the incoming surge of young Alawite officers awarded top jobs.

The latest high-ranking defector, Brig.-Gen. Manaf Tlass, 105th Brigade commander of the Republic Guard belongs to the second category, debkafile’s intelligences disclose. His desertion is potentially a lot more damaging to the regime –politically rather than militarily.

He did not abscond to rebel ranks in Turkey as the Syrian opposition reported Friday, July 6, but headed for Paris to join his father, Gen. Mustafa Tlass, former Syrian Defense Minister who served Bashar Assad and his father for 40 years, and his daughter Nahed Ojjeh, widow of the leading Saudi arms dealer Akkram Ojjeh.

Both have good connections around the Arab world and are close to the Russian ruling elite in Moscow.

Mustafa Tlass left Syria five months ago over a conflict of loyalties: The prominent Sunni Tlass clan spearheaded the anti- Assad revolt in Rastan, a town near Homs. To avoid taking sides, Tass senior decamped.

His son, Brig.-Gen. Manaf, served in the Republic Guard defending the presidential place on Mount Qasioun, the nerve center of Assad’s vicious campaign to suppress dissent. As a member of the presidential inner circle, he was certainly part of the military establishment running that campaign.

Indeed, Assad rewarded his loyalty by letting him keep his job, only putting his promotion to general on hold.

Manaf, realizing his career prospects as a Sunni had been overtaken by the advancing Allawitization of the top Syrian command, decided to join his father.

According to our sources, he actually flew out of Damascus on June 26, not this week as widely reported.

From their new base in Paris, the heads of the Tlass clan have yet to decide which way to jump – whether to make use of their excellent connections in Moscow or join up with the pro-Western “Friends of Syria” Western-Arab group whose latest meeting in Paris, Friday, July 6, was chaired by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The Assad regime would suffer a serious setback if the Tlasses opted for the West and its Arab enemies.

US diplomats are therefore going out of their way to rope them in. They have turned to Firas Tlass, the powerful Syrian clan’s Dubai-based “finance minister,” for help. Above all, they are going to great lengths to dissuade these prominent Sunnis from gravitating toward their old ties in Moscow.

Assad to Kremlin: I can finish the revolt in two months, replaces army chiefs

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

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 in a secret video-conference with Russian intelligence and foreign ministry officials who shape Moscow’s policy on Syria.

Reporting this exclusively, debkafile’s intelligence sources also register the fleeting life span of the new plan for ending the Syrian war which UN envoy Kofi Annan announced had been agreed at a multinational Action Group meeting in Geneva on Saturday, June 30. Within 24 hours, the principle of a national unity transitional government based on “mutual consent” was rejected by the regime and the Turkish-based opposition leaders alike, as the violence went into another month.

On the first day of July, 91 people were reported killed in the escalating Syrian violence after a record 4,000 in June.

The new military tactics to which Assad referred are disclosed here:

1. The sweeping removal of most of the veteran Syrian army commanders who led the 16-month bloody assault on regime opponents and rebels. They were sent home with full pay to make way for a new set of younger commanders, most of them drawn from the brutal Alawite Shabiha militia, which is the ruling family’s primary arm against its enemies.

The regular commanders had shown signs of fatigue and doubts about their ability to win Assad’s war. Their will to fight on was being badly sapped by the mounting numbers officers and men going over to the opposition camp in June.

One of the tasks set the new commanders is to stem the rate of defections.

To keep the veteran commanders from joining the renegades and reduce their susceptibility to hostile penetration, the officers were not sacked but retired on full pension plus all the perks of office, including official cars.

2. But a higher, unthinkable level of violence is the key to Assad’s “new tactics.” He has armed the new military chiefs with extra fire power - additional tank and artillery units, air force bombers and attack helicopters - for smashing pockets of resistance and unlimited permission to use it. Already the level of live fire used against the rebels has risen to an even more unthinkable level which explains the sharp escalation of deaths to an average of 120 per day.

On the Syrian-Turkish border, tensions continue to mount. Monday morning, Turkey was still pumping large-scale strength including tanks, antiaircraft and antitank guns, artillery, surface missiles and combat helicopters to the border region.

Saturday, half a dozen Turkish jets were scrambled to meet Syria helicopters approaching their common border.

In Tehran, Brig. Gen. Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, commander of Iran’s IRGC Aerospace Division, warned Ankara that if its troops ventured onto Syrian soil, their bases of departure would be destroyed. The threat was made during Hajizadeh’s announcement of a three-day missile exercise starting Monday in response to the European oil embargo. He reported that long-, medium- and short-range missiles would target “simulations of foreign bases in the northern Semnan Desert,” without mentioning any specific nation except Turkey.

Assad is confined to palace by his Republican Guard

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report


Debkafile, citing Western intelligence sources, reports Thursday, June 28, that the Republican Guard battalion commander charged with the Syrian president’s security is keeping Bashar Assad shut away in his “Unity” palace. Assad and his family may not leave the building without the commander’s permission under an order current since the second half of last week. It is not clear to whom the commander defers in this case and who in fact actually determines whether Assad can come or go.

Asked by debkafile if an element in the Republican Guard ordered the palace placed under siege to prevent the president and his family fleeing, those Western sources replied that the situation could be described as a “partial siege” which is constantly expanding. They added, in response to another question about the Syrian ruler’s freedom of movement, that neither Assad nor members of his family are able to leave the palace to go anywhere and they are aware of the restrictions placed on their movements.

"Because of the partial siege and these restrictions," said those intelligence sources, "Assad and his wife are both in very low spirits and the atmosphere inside the palace is very bleak."

The video clips showing the Syrian president and his wife Asma happily playing badminton in the palace grounds were released this week by the regime’s propaganda arm – apparently to belie the rumors spreading in Damascus about the first family’s virtual imprisonment in their own palace.

In fact, say the sources, “"Inside the palace, Assad and his family are so mistrustful of their immediate circle that food tasters are on hand in to partake in advance of all the food and drink served them.” The tasters belong to the elite unit of Syrian military intelligence. They were brought in after at least two attempts by Syrian rebel associates to sneak poisoned food into the palace. It was discovered before causing harm or even death.

"Bashar Assad won’t even drink a glass of water unless his personal food taster first swallows at least a quarter of its contents."

It is important to note, said the Western sources, that access to the Assad palace on Mt. Qaisoun on the outskirts of Damascus is gained only through two underground roads which are fortified against aerial bombardment and invisible to spies in the sky. The two roads serve the separate entrance and exit from the palace.

All vehicles using the roads, including supply trucks, belong to Syrian intelligence services. The drivers and porters unloading the vehicles – although intelligence personnel - are all closely watched at all times, starting with detailed inspections when they arrive at the entrance to one of the roads.

The rebels’ success in planting poison in one of those closely vetted supply trucks attests to their success in penetrating some of the layers of security protecting the persons of the president and his family.

British forces in Syria, Assad presidential compound said under attack

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

Unconfirmed first reports from British, French and Turkish sources say British special operations forces crossed from Turkey into northern Syria Tuesday, May 26, and advanced up to 10 kilometers inside the country. The same sources report heavy fighting around the Presidential Guards compound on the outskirts of Damascus.

debkafile’s military sources note that this compound exists to defend Bashar Assad’s presidential palace on Mount Qaisoun overlooking Damascus.

British and Gulf TV stations are again running interviews with dozens of Syrian soldiers taken prisoner by rebel forces and transferred to Free Syrian Army centers in South Turkey. But this time, they are being aired in conjunction with those two developments, indicating pivotal and coordinated military action inside the embattled country, or even the start of western intervention against the Assad regime.

Later Tuesday, Gulf military sources confirmed the presence of British special forces in Syria.

Our military sources estimate that the British military drive into Syria, if confirmed, is designed to establish the first safe zone along the Syrian-Turkish border, to be followed by more Western military incursions to establish additional zones of safe asylum in other parts of Syria.

This follow-up action would depend substantially on Syrian, Russian and Iranian (+ Hizballah) responses to the initial stage of the operation.

The reported British incursion, if confirmed, occurred at the tail end of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 24-hour visit to Israel Tuesday morning and would have posed a direct challenge to his repeated warning that Moscow would not tolerate Western military intervention in Syria and actively prevent it. Similar warnings have issued from Tehran.

As for the timing, the double military drive against Assad also occurred hours before a NATO “consultation” in Brussels on the shooting down of a Turkish warplane by Syria last Friday, June 22, which Ankara stated Monday “must not go unpunished.”

The two-pronged operation - the reported British incursion and major clash at the front door of Assad’s presidential palace - would appear to be designed to widen the cracks in his regime and speed its final breakup.

Obama speeds up limited air strike, no-fly zones preparations for Syria

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

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, debkafile reports. Their mission will be to knock out Assad’s central regime and military command centers so as to shake regime stability and restrict Syrian army and air force activity for subduing rebel action and wreaking violence on civilian populations.

debkafile’s sources disclose that the US President decided on this step after hearing Russian officials stating repeatedly that “Moscow would support the departure of President Bashar al-Assad if Syrians agreed to it.” This position was interpreted as opening up two paths of action:

1. To go for Assad’s removal by stepping up arms supplies to the rebels and organizing their forces as a professional force able to take on the military units loyal to Assad. This process was already in evidence Friday, June 8, when for the first time a Syrian Free Army (which numbers some 600 men under arms) attacked a Syrian army battalion in Damascus. One of its targets was a bus carrying Russian specialists.

2. To select a group of high army officers who, under the pressure of the limited air offensive, would be ready to ease Assad out of power or stage a military coup to force him and his family to accept exile.
The US operation would be modulated according to the way political and military events unfolded.
Washington is not sure how Moscow would react aside from sharp condemnations or whether Russia would accept a process of regime change in Damascus and its replacement by military rule.