If Damascus falls, Israel and its gas fields feared threatened

DEBKAfile  Exclusive Report

Syrian military forces were gathered in Tuesday, July 17, to save Damascus.

Tanks and armored vehicles were positioned in strength in the capital’s center and around government buildings. However, the noise and fury of battle in the Syrian capital Tuesday, July 17, were produced, debkafile’s military sources report, by six battalions of Bashar Assad’s loyal Allawite militia in clashes with the rebels who captured the two southern suburbs of Meidan and Tadmon Monday. They are trying to pound the enemy into extinction before its forces reach central Damascus.

The two beleaguered districts are home to a quarter of the capital’s 1.8 million inhabitants.

The Syrian general staff has withdrawn its command headquarters to a well-fortified complex on Shuhada Street in the capital’s center.

If Damascus falls and Assad is cornered, the entire region stands in peril of wider repercussions, because neither he nor Tehran will take defeat lying down.

debkafile’s military sources report their campaign will be paced and scaled according to the momentum of the Syrian rebels’ advance on Bashar Assad’s door-step, which could be drawn out and bloody.

On the Iranian-Hizballah list are Middle East oil installations as well as Israeli, US, Turkish, Saudi and Jordanian strategic targets.

Saturday, the Cypriot police captured a Hizballah terrorist before he could blow up an Israeli El Al flight and tourist buses in Limassol.

Tehran is feared to be focusing on the Mediterranean island as part of a plot to set Israel’s Mediterranean gas field Tamar on fire. The field is 80 kilometers west of Haifa
It would be a spectacular curtain-raiser for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and for strikes against Gulf oil installations.

Navy Commander, Maj. Gen. Ram Rothberg called last week for an extra five warships and submarines to safeguard Israel’s burgeoning gas fields at the cost of a billion dollars.

The Syrian ruler has stoked up the menace by moving out of storage missiles and shells armed with mustard gas, sarin nerve gas and cyanide stockpiled for years.

They are on operational readiness at Homs, Latakia and Aleppo and, according to Nawaf Fares,
Syrian ex-ambassador to Iraq who defected to the opposition, may already have been used against rebel concentrations.

The longer the battle for Damascus goes on, the greater the danger that the Syrian ruler will release his poison-tipped missiles against Israel, Turkey and Jordan.

Russia accuses West of blackmail on Syria plans

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia on Monday accused the West of effectively trying to use blackmail to secure a new UN Security Council resolution that would authorize the use of force in Syria. 

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's comments came ahead of a meeting with Kofi Annan, the United Nations and Arab League envoy for Syria whose plan for halting the fighting is weakening amid escalating violence.

The council is debating a new resolution on Syria, spurred by the July 20 expiration of the mandate for the UN observer force there and the failure of the Annan plan.

Russia opposes any resolution that can be enforced militarily.

“To our great regret, there are elements of blackmail,” Lavrov said at a news conference. “We are being told that if you do not agree to passing the resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, then we shall refuse to extend the mandate of the monitoring mission.”

“We consider it to be an absolutely counterproductive and dangerous approach, since it is unacceptable to use monitors as bargaining chips,” he said.

Throughout the 16-month Syrian crisis, Russia has adamantly opposed international military intervention, fearing a repeat of the type of international action that helped drive Libya's Moammar Gaddafi out of power.

That position has put Moscow under intense criticism. Russia has rejected the criticism by saying it does not overtly support Assad, Russia's longtime ally, and by strongly backing Annan's plan.

Russia says any change of power in Syria must be achieved through negotiation, but the Syrian opposition has repeatedly said no negotiations with the Assad regime are possible unless he first leaves power.

Lavrov reiterated Moscow's position on Monday, saying it was unrealistic to try to persuade Assad to resign.

“He won't leave, not because we are defending him, but simply because a very significant part of the population in Syria stands behind him,” he said.

Comments by Annan last week indicated he favors the British resolution draft and it was unclear if he would have any significant leverage to exert on Russia during his two-day trip to Moscow, which also includes a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

Lavrov said he would not characterize the situation as a stalemate, but expressed dismay with the continuing fighting.

“What is happening in Syria is horrible,” he said.

Russia accuses US of arming Syrian rebels

By AFP

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday accused the United States of supplying weapons to Syria's rebels after Hillary Clinton said Moscow was supplying the Assad regime with "attack helicopters".

Russia was supplying "anti-air defence systems" to Damascus in a deal that "in no way violates international laws," Lavrov told a news conference during a brief visit to Iran.

"That contrasts with what the United States is doing with the opposition, which is providing arms to the Syrian opposition which are being used against the Syrian government," he said, in remarks translated from Russian into Farsi by an official interpreter.

It was the first time Moscow has directly pointed the finger at Washington. Previously, it had said unidentified "foreign powers" were arming Syria's opposition.

Lavrov's accusation followed a charge by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday that she had information Russia was sending to Syria "attack helicopters ... which will escalate the conflict quite dramatically."

Asked in Tehran about the helicopter allegation, Lavrov said only that Moscow was giving Damascus "conventional weapons" related to air defence and asserted that the deal complied with international law.

Russia's deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told reporters last month that Moscow believed "it would be wrong to leave the Syrian government without the means for self-defence."

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said at the same news conference with Lavrov that Tehran and Moscow were "very close" on the Syria issue.

Western and Arab nations, he said, "are sending weapons to Syria and forces to Syria, and are not allowing the reforms promised by the Syrian president to be applied."

Reports in Iran allege that Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States are arming Syria's rebels – termed "terrorists" by Damascus – while US officials claim Iran is giving arms and military advisers to Syria's regime.

Some observers fear the conflict, which the UN's chief peacekeeper agrees now resembles a civil war, could blow up into a struggle between forces helped by outside nations.

"There is a real risk of it sliding into a proxy war as certain states support the regime or 'the opposition'," one Western diplomat told AFP, speaking on condition on anonymity.

"The conflict in Syria certainly appears to be getting more brutal – and not just on one side," the diplomat warned.

Monitors say at least 14,100 people have been killed in the 15-month uprising against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Russia came under fierce criticism from Western and Arab countries for vetoing two UN Security Council resolutions that would have sanctioned Assad for his use of force.

Since then, it has sought to distance itself from Assad while continuing to support his regime. "We do not support any individual or government, we support the people of Syria," Lavrov said.

Moscow is now trying to organise an international conference on Syria that would include several nations with influence over the conflict, including Iran. The United States, Britain and France, though, object to Iran taking part.

"We want the support of all the players," Lavrov said.

"All sides in the conflict need to stop operations ... Any player with leverage should apply pressure to stop the violence and facilitate negotiations," he said.

Putin warns of worsening Syria conflict

By Anna Smolchenko / AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Friday of an "extremely dangerous" situation in Syria and emerging signs of a civil war but rejected a military intervention as he met with European leaders.

Amid mounting pressure for Moscow to drop its resistance to tougher UN action on Syria, Putin met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and had arrived in Paris for talks with newly elected French President Francois Hollande.

In Berlin, Putin appeared to strike a more conciliatory tone, warning of the escalating danger from the Syrian conflict and refraining from openly backing President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"Today we are seeing emerging elements of civil war," Putin said after arriving in Berlin from Belarus. "It is extremely dangerous."

But he also continued to defy calls for tougher UN action to stop the violence, warning at a joint press conference with Merkel: "You cannot do anything by force and expect an immediate effect."

And he hit back at suggestions Moscow was supplying weapons for use in the internal conflict, after the United States condemned Russian arms deliveries to Syria as "reprehensible".

"As far as arms supplies are concerned, Russia does not supply the weapons that could be used in a civil conflict," Putin told reporters, as he continued his first foreign tour since returning to the Kremlin.

Putin's brief trips to Berlin and Paris came amid mounting outrage in the West against Assad's regime after a massacre of 108 people, including women and children, in the town of Houla last week.

UN rights chief Navi Pillay said the massacre could be a crime against humanity.

In Moscow the foreign ministry blamed the Houla massacre on foreign assistance to Syrian rebels, including arms deliveries and mercenary training.

"The tragedy in Houla showed what can be the outcome of financial aid and smuggling of modern weapons to rebels, recruitment of foreign mercenaries and flirting with various sorts of extremists," the ministry said in a statement.

Putin said Russia, Germany and their partners would do their utmost to stop the violence from escalating and help UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, who has brokered a peace plan for Syria, achieve "positive results".

"We both made clear that we are pushing for a political solution, that the Annan plan can be a starting point but that everything must be done in the United Nations Security Council to implement this plan," Merkel said.

Putin said Moscow was not taking sides in the deadly strife rocking Syria, where the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 13,000 people have been killed since Assad's regime launched a brutal crackdown on the opposition in March last year.

"There is a need to find a convergence of these interests and have them sit down at a negotiating table. That's the direction we are going to work in."

Merkel earlier greeted Putin with military honours as demonstrators waving Syrian flags shouted and whistled outside.

Putin was to hold a one-on-one meeting and dinner with Hollande, who has refused to rule out foreign military intervention as long as it is carried out with UN backing, followed by a press conference.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague also said Syria was on the verge of a civil war and risked collapsing into sectarian strife after meeting members of the Syrian opposition based in Istanbul.

Germany, France, Britain, the United States and other Western nations expelled Syrian diplomats in protest at the slaughter in Houla.

Syria allies China and Russia, which have both blocked previous attempts at the UN Security Council to condemn Damascus, joined other council members on Sunday in backing a statement condemning the Houla killings.

But US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday warned that Russia's policy of propping up the Assad regime could contribute to a civil war and even lead to a wider proxy war because of Iran's support for Damascus.

And she claimed Friday that Russia had continued to supply arms to the Assad regime, raising "serious concerns" in the United States.

"We know there has been a very consistent arms trade, even during the past year, coming from Russia to Syria. We also believe the continuous supply of arms from Russia has strengthened the Assad regime," Clinton told a news conference in Oslo.

Amnesty International demanded that Putin immediately stop Russian weapons deliveries to Syria, while Human Rights Watch called on Putin to make human rights a priority at home and abroad.