WarSclerotic

At least 67 people killed, scores injured in Syria as protesters reach capital.

Al Arabiya

Friday, 03 June 2011

Protesters call for the toppling of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. (File Photo)

DEBKA.

Saudi King Abdullah

For the second time in its short history, the Saudi royal house is raising an army of several thousand young Muslims dedicated to the Saudi brand of Sunni Islam for beating back alien and competing influences and interlopers.
Whereas in 1985, Saudi Arabia worked hand in hand with the American Central Intelligence Agency, this time Riyadh is acting on its own for an enterprise frankly designed to frustrate and delimit the pro-democracy uprisings the Obama administration is espousing in the Muslim world, the Middle East and North Africa.
Not surprisingly, therefore, the leading Muslim financial powerhouse rated no mention in the Middle East vision US President Barack Obama unveiled May 19. The president only disparaged (nameless) military intervention in Bahrain. Riyadh too left the implied aspersion without comment.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military and counter-terror sources point to the striking differences between the Muslim jihadi force the Saudis enlisted in the 1980s and the fighting force they are mustering in 2011, symptoms of the striking changes which have since overtaken the strategic thinking and actions of the most conservative of Arab regimes and the radical somersault in Saudi-US relations.
In 1985, King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz bin Saud placed his director of intelligence, Prince Turki bin Faisal bin Saud and a bright young Saudi talent, an engineer called Osama bin Laden, in charge of raising a new force for vanquishing the Red Army and ending its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. CIA Director William Joseph Casey provided with a $1 billion war chest led the American side of the enterprise.
Prince Bandar builds Muslim Army No. 2 as the architect of No. 1 is terminated
Then, the US and Saudi Arabia were as one for a common cause. But already, Riyadh was entertaining the notion of developing a Sunni army able not just to contain Soviet expansion but also to eventually confront the nascent Islamic Republic of Iran and its aspiration to export Shiite revolution beyond its borders and offset Iran’s first offshoot, the Lebanese Hizballah.
In the meantime, Osama bin Laden’s early start in the service of the United States and Saudi Arabia evolved into a terrorist organization dedicated to destroying both – al Qaeda.
A cynical quirk of history led the CIA and US Seals commandos to terminate the architect of Muslim Army No. 1 at a villa in Pakistan at the very moment that the Saudi impetus for establishing Muslim Army No. 2 was in full flight.
The architect of the new enterprise is Prince Bandar bin Sultan al Saud, head of the Saudi National Security Council, whom King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz has entrusted (as we reported in previous DEBKA-Net-Weekly issues) with managing the kingdom’s current military, political and intelligence strategy in the face of the seven-month old Arab Revolt sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.
His duties are extensive and varied and take him as far as South Asia and the Far East.
Thursday, May 26, Prince Bandar embarked on his second visit in three months to China, Pakistan and the Muslim nations of Asia and Central Asia.
Recruiting in Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, training in Central Asia
During his first visit to Beijing on March 18, he brought with him a two-part proposition: Saudi Arabia and China would sign a military pact making Beijing the oil kingdom’s primary arms provider. (See DEBKA-Net-Weekly 489 of April 14: Saudis Buy Advanced Nuclear-Capable Missiles in China)
As relations evolved, Saudi Arabia would grant China a naval base or bases in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea in lieu of partial payment for its arms purchases.
The Saudi prince’s tour also took him to Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia (from whose universities the original US-Saudi Muslim army raised its recruits). There, he whipped out draft contracts for military collaboration for establishing the units of a Saudi-funded rapid response force.
As outlined by DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources, the deal called for the Islamabad, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur governments to hold these special forces on call for intervention in any part of the Arab and Muslim world which Riyadh deemed at risk after consulting with those governments.
According to intelligence estimates, this mixed bag force would number 5,000 men under arms in the first stage – structured very much on the lines of the original Muslim army of the 1980s.
Recruitment centers would be established in Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, while the new volunteers would receive military training at facilities the Saudis plan to erect in the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kirgizstan and Tajikistan.
A fully mobile, trained Muslim rapid response force
Pakistan and Jordan have undertaken to run in the training centers and provide instructors. Riyadh has still to persuade Beijing to send weapons instructors, a step that would expand China’s military presence in Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East and move a key block onto the big powers’ regional game board.
Bandar and his team calculate that if the combined effort moves forward as planned, it will take two to three years to muster 10-15,000 combatants; the Saudi-led multinational Muslim legion will be ready to go in 2014 at latest.
Their plan provides for the graduates of the special courses to remain at their training facilities with three tasks:
To provide assistance to local forces called on to shield their governments against Arab Revolt-style uprisings;
To combat Iranian incursions in the three republics. They will be taught tactics for repulsing the intruders and covert cells planted in those countries by the al Qods Brigades, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ external terror and intelligence arm.
They will be on call at all times for the rapid transfer at short notice to other countries on orders from Saudi or its treaty co-signatories. Air transports chartered by Riyadh will carry them to threatened locations.
For its airlifts Riyadh routinely charters the Soviet-made air transports readily available in Central Asian republics.
Saudis go forward with Muslim legion after taking stock
Saudi Arabia and its GCC allies in the Persian Gulf are therefore providing themselves with a standing, highly mobile, paramilitary force to be at their disposal on short notice for dealing with crises in their countries and aiding any Muslim centers in trouble.
Our military experts note that the conception and organization of the new Muslim legion are clearly the products of a close Saudi study of the revolts threatening other Arab regimes. They have evaluated the outcome of Saudi intervention in the unrest and closely analyzed Iran’s thrusts for footholds in the Bahraini, Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian arenas.
The next article sums up Saudi Arabia’s military and clandestine activities thus far in ten Arab and Muslim countries.

A Guide to the Saudi Thrust against Arab Revolts

Riyadh’s Hand in 10 Arab and Muslim Countries

More than any other Arab or Muslim nation, Saudi Arabia is getting involved – whether militarily, politically or in undercover operations – in 10 Arab and Muslim countries – 11, if the Palestinians are counted in.
Never in the House of Saud’s 70-year reign have its military and foreign policies been so assertive or its goals so clearly-defined. They are:
1. To buttress its rule solidly enough to defy any Muslim or Arab threat;
2. To provide crowned Arab heads and conservative rulers with a cure against the Arab Revolt’s spillover into their countries.
Riyadh is resolved to fight with all its strength to save all and every friendly regime and ruler from sharing the fate of Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak.
Had a rapid response force, like the international Muslim legion the Saudis are now building (see first item in this issue) in cooperation with Asian Muslim governments, been deployed in Cairo last February, Riyadh believes Mubarak could have been saved;
3. At all costs, Saudi Arabia is determined to block Shiite Iran’s expansion into Arab-Muslim countries – even if a military attack outside the kingdom is called for. The new Sunni Muslim legion is being carefully tailored for this role. Riyadh is equally determined to halt Iran’s advance toward a nuclear bomb even at the price of a full-blown Saudi-Iran war.
Second-generation royals bent on thwarting Obama’s policies
It is obvious from the second two goals that the Saudi throne has planted itself on a course of collision with US President Barack Obama and resistance to his administration’s support for the anti-regime protest movements in Arab countries and the Middle East at large, as our sources have been reporting since last February.
The second-generation Saudi royals running the show today on behalf of King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz are not anti-American per se – especially, despite appearances, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, head of the Saudi National Security Council, who manages the kingdom’s current military, political and intelligence strategy in the face of the seven-month old Arab Revolt.
For more than two decades, Bandar served as a friendly and popular Saudi ambassador to the United States and he still has friends in Washington. However, the next-generation members of all the main Saudi royal clans and branches are united with the king in a consensus that the time has come to break with the long tradition of strategic and military dependence on America and forge an independent path in keeping with Saudi Arabia’s national objectives and interests. Now, especially, Saudi rulers see danger in the Obama White House’s promotion of the Arab Spring for overturning the status quo in favor of democratic reform and, still more, in US advances to the oil kingdom’s arch enemy Iran for engagement in diplomacy.
These US policies have finally brought the Saudis out of their isolationist shells for a proactive display, which many find surprising, to thwart the dangers they see lurking against the kingdom, regardless of whether they do or don’t emanate from Washington’s policies.
This tectonic switch in allegiances is far less dramatic than the uprisings against Arab autocracies – but holds no less significance.
Bandar preaches non-reliance on Washington in Muslim capitals
Until recently, administration officials handled this hot potato gingerly, careful not to confirm the crisis with Riyadh in so many words: “… the United States and Saudi Arabia are certain to maintain their basic understandings and arrangements,” was a typical statement, or “We believe that the Saudi will not go so far…”
However, this week, Washington was jerked into admitting that matters had gone too far to gloss over: The Wall Street Journal quoted Prince Bandar as “warning…Pakistani military officials that the US could not be counted on to restore stability in the Middle East or protect Pakistan’s interests in South Asia.”
The background to the WSJ quote is instructive, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources note.
The Saudi prince made the comment in Islamabad shortly before the arrival Friday, May 27 of Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to smooth over the crisis in US-Pakistani relations. Washington had just discovered that its diplomatic efforts to ease tensions with Riyadh had been countered by Bandar going around Chinese, Indonesian, Malaysian and Central Asian capitals warning their leaders to beware of relying on the US.
The Saudi prince was also passing the same warning to Muslim or Arab political, religious and military leaders.
Rather than brushing US-Saudi differences under the carpet, Bandar was flaunting them, while also disparaging Obama administration policies on every possible occasion, a hurdle which US diplomats are finding it hard to overcome when promoting those policies.
First signs of Washington opening up to Saudis
Egypt is the most prominent US-Saudi wrestling arena.
Until very recently, the US and Saudi Arabia clashed head-on over post-Mubarak Egypt.
Washington worked hard to make sure the Supreme Military Council honored their pledge of elections in September as proof that the democratic process resulting from the regime’s overthrow was safely on track.
US strategists refused to see the generals and the Muslim Brotherhood were secretly in league for the latter to come out on top of the poll – either as leading contender for government or at least kingmaker.
Riyadh pulled in the opposite direction to get the elections postponed and defeat the Muslim Brotherhood’s drive for power.
Riyadh feared to see this radical group ruling the biggest Arab country and, still more, one that would most likely open Egypt to Iranian influence and place it on the radical pro-Iranian Middle East bandwagon alongside Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas.
To break up the pact between the generals and the Brothers, the Saudis made the Supreme Military Council in Cairo lavish offers of financial assistance for restarting the wheels of the stalled Egyptian economy and maintaining the army in place of US military aid.
But this week, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Washington sources discovered the first sign of the administration ready to retool its policy in Egypt and possibly open up to some sort of accommodation with Riyadh.
Assad’s survival is first Saudi fiasco
Iraq is another arena of competing US- Saudi interests:
The Saudis have gone back to their bid to unseat the Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whom they regard as an Iranian stooge, and replace him with the pro-Saudi former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi.
Sudan. There, the Saudis have been egging President Umar al-Bashir on to make a grab for the oil-rich Abyei province. This week, the Sudanese army threatened to attack any Southern Sudanese troops found in the northern border states of southern Kordofan and Blue Nile.
Riyadh is arming and funding Bashir’s army for three reasons:
– The Sudanese president has severed his military and intelligence ties with Iran and entered into similar ties with Saudi Arabia;
– Riyadh is loath to see a new oil republic with a largely Christian population rising in July as a result of the referendum which gave the South independence;
– Dominant influence in Khartoum will give Saudi Arabia a chokehold on the Nile headwaters before the great river flows north into Egypt. This would be a strong card for determining the outcome of the contest in Cairo.
Syria. Here, the Saudis have run into their first important fiasco.
Syrian President Bashar Assad appears to be coming out as the victor of his brutal showdown with popular protesters. (See debkafile story of June 31and an item in this issue on the regional connotations of this victory)
Jordanian army as provisional rapid response force
Prince Bandar personally commanded the covert operation for boosting the Syrian opposition and providing it with arms and funding. Assad’s overthrow would have knocked a vital component out of the Iranian-led axis, cut short its drive for dominance in Damascus and Beirut and diminished Hizballah and Hamas.
Riyadh blames the Obama administration for its Syrian setback, accusing Washington of soft-pedaling the pressure for Bashar Assad to step down and reducing it to harmless verbal condemnation and painless sanctions for the sake of preserving an open window of engagement with Tehran.
Because Washington held back, the Syrian middle class stood aside and let the protesters sink.
Nothing of the kind, say US sources. The Saudis are too hasty. The Obama administration has not finished with Bashar Assad. It believes that the stronger personal sanctions against him now in the pipeline will finally bring the Syrian middle class out on the streets.
Still, the Saudis are sure the Americans have missed the train.
Jordan. Riyadh has assigned the small Jordanian army (120,000 conscripts plus 60,000 reservists) and its intelligence agencies a prime role in the rising international Muslim legion. Until the new force is up and running – some time between 2012 and 2014 – Jordan is provisionally shouldering its rapid response functions. That was why the Saudis were in such a hurry to bring the Hashemite Kingdom into the GCC as a member with full privileges including a Saudi military shield against attack.
Without waiting for Jordanian membership to be formalized, the Saudis opened their borders for the first time in their history to the passage of Jordanian armored and mechanized infantry units on their way to Bahrain to join the Saudi-led GCC effort to prop up the island-republic’s throne.
Pakistan slides towards embracing Saudi plan
Yemen. For two months, Riyadh backed the beleaguered Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the face of a major revolt against his regime and American pressure for him to step down. Suddenly, this month, the Saudis changed course. (See DEBKA-Net-Weekly 494 of May 27: Saudis Have Big Plans for a Divided Yemen)
Saleh became superfluous to the new Saudi plan for a new republic to rise in southern Yemen with control of the country’s oil and the highly-strategic Red Sea approaches. As far as Riyadh is concerned, northern Yemen can sink into interminable civil warfare. This week, the violence took a heavy toll.
Here, too, Saudi Arabia struck out against a Washington’s objective, which is to quell strife in Yemen lest it open the door to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – AQAP seizing the advantage.
Pakistan. The Saudi master plan would integrate the armies of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Jordan in the future Muslim rapid response force. It would be bolstered by Riyadh’s financial might and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. The outcome, Riyadh believes, would be a modern military machine so mighty that no Middle East armed forces, including Iran’s, could hope to contest it now or in the future.
Prince Bandar accordingly brought Islamabad a similar proposition to the one relayed to the military rulers of Egypt: As the US-Pakistani alliance fades, Riyadh will make up for every aid dollar withheld by the United States as well as providing generous military assistance.
According to our intelligence sources, Pakistan’s rulers appear inclined to accept the Saudi proposals.
This acceptance would bear heavily on the chances of the quiet negotiations in train with the Taliban reaching agreement for ending the Afghan War. Pakistan’s change of strategic partners would also impinge on America’s standing in southwest Asia.

Syria security forces shoot dead 10 at Friday protests – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Security forces open fire on demonstrators in several parts of Syria as protests erupt following Friday prayers.

By Reuters

Syrian security forces killed at least 10 pro-democracy demonstrators on Friday when they opened fire at protests in the city of Hama, the Syrian human rights organization Sawasiah said.

Three residents said that security forces, including snipers, fired from automatic rifles at thousands of demonstrators in the old quarter and in the nearby Assi Square in some of the biggest protests the city has seen since the uprising against President Bashar Assad erupted in March.

	Syrian anti-regime protesters carry national flags and banners during a rally in Talbiseh, in the central province of Homs, Syria, May 27, 2011.
	Photo by: AP

Scores of casualties were taken to the Horani hospital in the city, they added.

Hama, 300 km (186 miles) north of Damascus, was attacked in the 1980s by troops to crush an Islamist-led uprising.

Syrian forces opened fire on to disperse demonstrators in several parts of the country on Friday, residents said, and protesters defied a widespread military crackdown to demand that  Assad must go.

In a pattern seen every Friday since mid-March, protesters have marched out of mosques after noon prayers, to be met by security forces intent on crushing a revolt against Assad, in power in Syria for the last 11 years.

Activists and residents said thousands of people marched in the northwestern province of Idlib, the Kurdish northeast, several Damascus suburbs, the cities of Homs and Hama and the town of Madaya and Zabadani, in the west.

Residents said security forces opened fire in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor and in Damascus’ Barzeh district.

“Some of the biggest demonstrations today are in Idlib and Hama. There is also intense gunfire in Hama,” said Rami Abdulrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In the southern city of Daraa, where protests first broke out 11 weeks ago, hundreds defied a military curfew and held protests, chanting “No dialogue with killers”, two residents in the city told Reuters. The protest later broke up.

Analysts say protests continue to spread despite the military crackdown, but show no sign of reaching the scale needed to topple Assad’s rule.

Rights groups say Syrian security forces have killed more than 1,000 civilians in the unrest, provoking international outrage at Assad’s ruthless handling of the demonstrators and leading U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to say Assad’s legitimacy “had nearly run out”.

Syrian authorities blame the violence on armed groups, backed by Islamists and foreign powers, and say the groups have fired on civilians and security forces alike. Authorities have prevented most international media from operating, making it impossible to verify accounts of the violence.

Assad has responded to what is the most sustained and challenging rebellion against his rule by sending in tanks to crush demonstrations in certain flashpoints and by making some reformist gestures, such as issuing a general amnesty to political prisoners and launching national dialogue.

World outrage grows

But protesters and opposition figures have largely dismissed these measures. The cities of Daraa, Tel Kelakh, Banias and the town of Rastan have all witnessed intense crackdowns by the military.

The international community has escalated its condemnation of Assad as the unrest shows no signs of abating and the death toll grows.

The United States, the European Union and Australia have all imposed sanctions on Syria, but perhaps because of reluctance to get entangled in another confrontation, such as Libya, and wary of provoking more instability in a region still in the midst of an “Arab Spring”, their responses have been less vehement.

But outrage has grown over the death of a 13-year-old boy, Hamza al-Khatib, whom activists say was tortured and mutilated, before being given back to his family. Syria denies he was tortured.

Khatib has emerged as a potent symbol for protesters and in Dael, a town near Daraa, about 5,000 protesters raised pictures of him as they called for freedom and the downfall of the regime.

Two UN special advisers said they were alarmed about the Syrian authorities’ “systematic and deliberate attacks” against civilians, adding they appear to have been targeting residential neighborhoods in their operations.

Opposition figures meeting in Turkey called on Assad to resign immediately and hand power to the vice president until a council is formed to transform the country to democracy.

DEBKA.

Except for local outbreaks, Syrian President Bashar Assad appears to have overpowered the nationwide uprising against his regime, thereby demonstrating that his intelligence and security forces are the best and most fearsome in the Arab world. His survival unscratched will have also left the radical bloc of Tehran, Damascus, Hizballah and Hamas alive and kicking – against all predictions.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military and intelligence sources are certain that the Syrian crisis would have had a completely different ending were it not for massive and expert Iranian and Hizballah assistance,.
Iran tipped the scales against the protesters with an airlift of anti-riot equipment, 250 top Revolutionary Guards and police experts in riot control, who orchestrated the brutal Syrian crackdown, and cyber war specialists who tracked opposition leaders and activities through Internet activity and cell phones.
Another piece of luck which played into Assad’s hands was the concatenation of the outbreaks against his regime and the entry of Saudi-led GCC troops into Bahrain, which prompted Tehran to order Al Qods Brigades units to whisk the 1,000-strong Hizballah contingent, the backbone of the Shiite uprising in Bahrain, out of the island-kingdom at top speed before the Saudis nabbed them.
Those Hizballah combatants, trained to crush street uprisings in urban centers, were airlifted to Iran and Lebanon via Damascus airport. Their leader Hassan Nasrallah made these troops instantly available to Bashar Assad in the first week of the revolt against him.
For the next 10 weeks, Hizballah’s fighting force spearheaded the Syrian onslaught on the demonstrations.
A formidable Syrian-Iranian-Hizballah fighting collaboration
It was the combination of Iranian crowd control expertise, Hizballah’s aggressive fighters and Assad’s ruthlessness in ordering his army to shoot demonstrators where they stood, which eventually broke the back of the Syrian uprising.
Washington and Riyadh counted on the Syrian-Iranian-Hizballlah intelligence and military pact being badly blooded by the fierce showdown with Syrian protesters. Instead, it emerged stronger than ever, having proved its mettle and efficacy in action. The collaboration was honed by its Syrian experience into a pro-Shiite fighting force that will take the Saudi-sponsored multinational Muslim rapid deployment force in the making (see first item in this issue) some time to match.
The Syrian dictator, while going through the motions of appeasing the opposition, feels strong enough to punish those who backed it, starting with Saudi Arabia.
He is capable of organizing Shiite covert networks in Iraq for stirring up trouble in the oil-rich Shiite regions of eastern Saudi Arabia and staging terrorist attacks against the crown, to avenge himself for the fighters, arms and funds which Saudi intelligence pumped to the Syrian protesters from Iraq.
Last Tuesday, Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moalem warned Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that if he failed to stop Saudi smuggling operations, the Syrian army would go into Iraq and take care of them.
Also in Assad’s sights is his former friend the Qatari ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani who switched sides and the content of the broadcasts put out by his Al Jazeera TV network from pro-Assad to pro-Syrian opposition.
Jordan too is unlikely to get off unscathed for hosting the Saudi intelligence headquarters which fueled the uprising in the southern Syrian province of Horan and its capital, Daraa.
Turkish premier and Hamas leader to be let off lightly
Even Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan will come in for slaps on the wrist for berating Assad’s savagery. But the punishment won’t go too far. The Syrian ruler knows that Ankara may have misjudged the true state of affairs during the 10 weeks of clashes because he himself booted Turkish MIT intelligence service agents out on 12 hours notice after his Iranian advisers warned him that Erdogan was planning to give him a poke in the eye.
This was confirmed when Syrian opposition leaders-in-exile were allowed by the Turkish prime minister to meet in Antalya from May 31 to June 2.
That meeting was called to approve the basic tenets for a new regime to have taken power in Damascus after Assad’s fall.
The meeting was originally planned to take place in Alexandretta, an abiding sore between Syria and Turkey ever since 1939 when the French mandate handed the once Syrian territory over to Turkey.
The dispute was never resolved, only lightly papered over by the recent rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus.
Staging a Syrian opposition event in Alexandretta would indeed have been a poke in the eye for the Syrian ruler and Assad is not expected to let that intention go unnoticed.
And, lastly, Hamas’ Khaled Meshaal, whose headquarters enjoyed Syrian hospitality for decades, will pay for planning to move out of Damascus to Cairo in expectation of Assad’s ouster.
If Meshaal escapes his just reward it will only be because in his case the Syrian and Egyptian governments agreed on the move and Assad would not want to jeopardize the ties unfolding between Damascus and Cairo and Cairo and Tehran.

Clinton says Assad’s legitimacy has ‘nearly run out’ as regime continues murders.

(“Nearly run out”?!  Can the US look any more hypocritical than this?  For shame! – JW)

Al Arabiya

Thursday, 02 June 2011

Syrian woman living in Jordan paints her hands with the Syrian national flag and shouts slogans demanding that Syrian President Bashar Assad steps down during a sit-in protest near the Syrian Embassy in Amman. (File Photo)

Syrian troops shoot at unarmed civilians as ‘children’s Friday’ protests start.

Al Arabiya

Friday, 03 June 2011

Protesters call for the toppling of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. (File Photo)

The regime of President Bashar Al Assad of Syria ratcheted up its brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protesters on Friday, shooting at unarmed civilians in Ankhal, close to the protest-bastion city of Deraa.

The number of new deaths resulting from the firings on Friday could not be independently confirmed. An activist group said, however, that Syrian troops pounded Ankhal with artillery and heavy machinegun fire, killing at least two people in the latest onslaught.

The Local Coordination Committees, which helps organize and document Syria’s protests, said troops also opened fire on residents fleeing the bombing of Rastan. Friday’s deaths bring the toll in Rastan and nearby Talbisseh to 74 killed since the attack started last Saturday.

Rights group said more than 1,100 people have been killed since the revolt against Mr. Assad erupted in mid-March.

Syrian activists called protests on Friday over the dozens of children killed in anti-government protests after the opposition demanded President Assad’s “immediate resignation.”

Snubbing government concessions, opposition groups at a meeting in Turkey called late Thursday for parliamentary and presidential elections within a year of Mr. Assad’s ouster and vowed to work “to bring down the regime.”

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, meanwhile, said the international community needs to be more united on dealing with the Syria government’s crackdown on the pro-democracy movement.

“Right now the attitude of the international community is not as united as we are seeking to make it,” she told reporters in Washington, apparently alluding to Russia’s moves blocking a proposed UN Security Council condemnation of Syria.

Activists called for “Children’s Friday” protests to honor the children killed in the uprising, such as 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib whom activists say was tortured to death, a charge denied by the authorities, and to commemorate the nearly 30 children killed by the regime in the uprising.

UNICEF says at least 30 children have been shot dead in the revolt against President Assad’s autocratic regime.

The more than 10-week-old revolt in Syria was sparked by the arrest and torture of 15 children and adolescents accused of painting anti-regime graffiti in the southern town of Deraa, which became a flashpoint of the deadly protests.

“A photo of a child who is dead or being tortured or being mutilated is much more powerful than of an adult,” said UNICEF spokesman Patrick McCormick, referring to the Facebook campaign focused on the fate of Hamza.

“The use of Facebook or any image especially of children is incredibly powerful,” he told AFP. “They are innocent victims here, they get caught in the middle, and it is not their fight.”

Mr. McCormick warned the situation would worsen with the end of the academic year. “It will leave the children and teenagers more vulnerable because they will be out and about and not sitting in a classroom.”

On the ground, security forces armed with heavy machine guns shot dead 15 civilians in Rastan on Thursday, a human rights activist said, adding to a toll of at least 43 killed in towns of the flashpoint Homs region since Sunday.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s special advisers on prevention of genocide and responsibility to protect civilian populations expressed alarm on Thursday at the mounting death toll in Syria.

“We are particularly alarmed at the apparently systematic and deliberate attacks by police, military, and other security forces against unarmed civilians,” said advisers Francis Deng and Edward Luck.

More than 1,100 civilians have been killed and at least 10,000 arrested in a brutal crackdown on almost daily anti-regime demonstrations in Syria since March 15, human rights organizations say.

The government insists the unrest is the work of “armed terrorist gangs” backed by Islamists and foreign agitators.

(Dina Al-Shibeeb, an editor at Al Arabiya English, can be reached at: dina.ibrahim@mbc.net)

Strategic Weapons: More Mythical Mystery Missiles From Iran.

June 3, 2011: Iran recently announced that it had delivered the first new type of ballistic missile, the Qiam 1, to the Iranian Air Force. Few details were given, other than the missile was liquid fueled, had no fins and that its warhead could maneuver as it plunged to earth (which makes it more difficult for anti-missile systems to hit). The Qiam 1 looks their existing Shahab 3 ballistic missile. This is one weapon the Iranians have put a lot of money and effort into. It was known that they were building an extended range (from 1,300 to 1,800 kilometer) version of their Shahab 3 ballistic missile. The new version (Qiam 1?) puts all of Israel within range, even if fired from deep inside Iran. Chemical warheads (with nerve gas) are thought to be available for these missiles. But Israel has threatened to reply with nuclear weapons if the Iranians attack this way. Iran would probably get the worst of such an exchange, and the Iranians are aware of this.

This Shahab 3/Qiam 1 missiles are basically 1960s technology, with the addition of GPS guidance. Russian and North Korean missile technology has been obtained to make these missiles work. This has resulted in missile designs that apparently will function properly about 80 percent of the time, and deliver a warhead of about one ton, to a range of some 1,700 kilometers, to within a hundred meters of where it was aimed. By current standards, this is a pretty effective weapon.

In general, however, such vague and threatening weapons announcements are quite common for the Iranians. Last year, for example, they announced that they had developed an armed UAV, with a range of 1,000 kilometers. Pictures of this new weapons showed what appeared to be a copy of 1950s era American cruise missile, or target drone. These, in turn, were based on a similar weapon, the German V-1 “buzz bomb” that was used extensively in World War II to bomb London. The Iranian “Karar” UAV has the benefit of more efficient jet engines, more effective flight control hardware and software, and GPS navigation. Karar is not a wonder weapon, but the Iranians are depending on a clueless international mass media, and their own citizens, to believe it is.

In the last few years Iran has announced many similar weapons. There was, for example, a domestically designed and manufactured, helicopter gunship and another UAV with a range of 2,000 kilometers. Recently, there have also been revelations of heavily armed speed boats, miniature submarines, new artillery rockets and much more. Two years ago they showed off a new Iranian made jet fighter, which appeared to be a make-work project for unemployed engineers. It was a bunch of rearranged parts on an old U.S. made F-5 (which was roughly equivalent to a 1950s era MiG-21). The new fighter, like so many other Iranian weapons projects, was more for PR than for improving military power.

If you go back and look at the many Iranian announcements of newly developed, high tech, weapons, all you find is a photo op for a prototype. Production versions of these weapons rarely show up.   Iranians know that, while the clerics and politicians talk a tough game, they rarely do anything. Even Iranian support of Islamic terrorism has been far less effective than the rhetoric. The Iranians have always been cautious, which is one reason Arabs fear them. When the Iranians do make their move, it tends to be decisive. But at the moment, the Iranians have no means to make a decisive move. Their military is mostly myth, having been run down by decades of sanctions, and the disruptions of the 1980s war with Iraq. Their most effective weapon is bluster, and, so far, it appears to be working.

Not all of the clerics that run the country are eager to go to war with Israel, or even threaten it. But because the clerical factions do not want to appear at odds with each other in public, the more radical leaders are allowed to rant away about attacking Israel. That’s also the thinking behind the many IRGC press conferences announcing imaginary new weapons. The clerics are not going spend billions on mass production of second rate systems that are most notable for being designed in Iran.

IDF sources: Assad regime will eventually succumb to Syria protests – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Senior source says downfall could take months, but regime will not re-stabilize as Assad has lost legitimacy in eyes of Syrian people; death toll in demonstrations higher than 1,200, say human rights groups.

By Amos Harel

The regime of Syrian leader Bashar Assad will not survive and will eventually collapse under the pressure of demonstrations in his country. This is the assessment of Israel’s military establishment – and this view is gaining strength.

A senior security source told Haaretz this week that “Assad is becoming weaker. It may take a few months, or a year or more, but the regime will probably fail to recover. Forty years of rule by the Assad family are on their way to coming to an end.”

	Palestinians breaking through the Syrian border near Majdal Shams two weeks ago. Israel is working to avoid a similar scenario on Sunday, the anniversary of the end of the Six Day War.
	Photo by: Yaron Kaminsky

“Assad has lost his legitimacy in the eyes of his people and therefore his fate is sealed. Every week of demonstrations and deaths only makes things more difficult for him. His dilemma is between further concessions to the demonstrators – which will be seen as weakness and will lead to an intensification of efforts to bring him down – and the adoption of more aggressive means of suppressing the demonstrations, which may accelerate his fall. I do not think he has a chance against the opposition. This is the twilight of his rule,” the senior defense source said.

Human rights groups reported recently that the number of demonstrators killed by security forces during the past two and a half months of demonstrations in Syria is higher than 1,200. Thousands have been injured and many more arrested.

IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz confirmed the data earlier this week during a briefing to the members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “Assad himself does not know how Syria will look at the end of this week or the next. The uncertainty is troubling him, as it is troubling us,” Gantz said.

Assad’s weakness is already a matter of concern for his close allies. Senior Hamas figures rejected Assad’s pressure to publicly support his regime, even though the group’s politburo sits in Damascus. Hezbollah is also sensitive to the regime’s stability and is closely following developments. There are concerns the group – also concerned about Assad’s possible fall – may have recently moved some arms stores from Syria into Lebanon.

Iran Tests Nuclear Missile Warhead Design.

Iran has built and tested all the elements of a nuclear weapon design similar to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, and is actively working to fit it onto a ballistic missile capable of reaching Israel, nuclear experts told Newsmax this week.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna first revealed that Iran had been working on the tried and true nuclear weapons design three years ago. But only last week did the U.N. agency spell out the details of Iran’s nuclear weapons-related work.

Yukiya Amano (AP photo)

The tests the IAEA says Iran has carried out “seem logically to be part of a weaponization process,” said Dr. James McNally, a former U.S. nuclear weapons lab researcher. “The Iranians appear to be scoping out what needs to be done to get to their goal.”

In a technically-worded section of his May 24 report to the U.N. Security Council, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said the Agency “remains concerned about . . . activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

The IAEA said the weapon design uses hemispheres of highly-enriched uranium, a design consistent with an implosion device. The agency also has information showing that Iran had conducted “design work and modeling studies involving the removal of the conventional high explosive payload from the warhead of the Shahab-3 missile and replacing it with a spherical nuclear payload.”

“I don’t see that as part of a peaceful nuclear program,” McNally told Newsmax in an interview.

Iran has displayed its Shahab-3 missiles in public parades draped in English-language banners that read, “Israel Must be Wiped Off the Map.” It developed the missile in the mid-1990s with help from Russia and North Korea, and conducted its first successful test flight in July 1998.

Iran claims it has built several hundred of the missiles, which can reach targets up to 1,200 miles, depending on the version.

The report listed six additional technologies it claims Iran has tested that are specifically related to a nuclear implosion device. These include an exotic uranium-deuterium neutron initiator that China gave Pakistan to use as a nuclear “spark plug” nearly 30 years ago and that Pakistan has now transferred to Iran.

Taken together, the new information from the IAEA shows that Iran has carried out a “cold test” of its nuclear weapons design, former CIA nuclear weapons analyst Dr. Peter Pry told Newsmax.

“These are all the components required to do not only a cold test but to actually build a screw-ready nuclear weapon short of having the fuel,” Pry said. “If you master the explosive lenses and the neutron generator, then really all you need is the fuel and the ability to shape the fuel into hemispheres.”

Iran has been able to shape uranium into hemispheres for several years, according to earlier IAEA reports. In its latest report, the IAEA said that Iran has conducted “full scale experiments” of the complex high-explosive detonation component of the bomb, “work which may have benefited form the assistance of foreign expertise.”

As for nuclear fuel, the latest IAEA report shows that Iran has recovered from the Stuxnet computer worm attack, and has accelerated the production of enriched uranium at its declared centrifuge plant at Natanz.

“In constructing any program it is logical to identify each task needed for producing a working nuclear explosive,” McNally told Newsmax. “These steps can be carried out almost independently in order to keep a low profile and hide the proximity to the final nuclear detonation,” he added.

Former assistant secretary of State for On-site Verification, Paula Desutter, saw no ambiguity in Iran’s nuclear test program. “That’s weaponization,” she told Newsmax. “There is no other reason to conduct those tests except to prepare a nuclear device.”

Most Western intelligence analysts believe Iran has a parallel program and has installed enrichment centrifuges at secret sites it has not declared to the IAEA, using uranium milled from local mines that are not covered by IAEA safeguards.

In April, Iran acknowledged that it was building enrichment centrifuge components at a previously undeclared facility just outside Karaj, an industrial city some 40 kilometers west of the capital, Tehran.

Two years ago, Iran admitted that it had built a secret enrichment plant in the mountains outside Qom, and that the plant was just the first of 10 or even 20 secret uranium enrichment plants it intended to build and ultimately declare to the IAEA.

In its May 24 report, the IAEA noted that Iran had broken a verification seal at its enrichment plant in Natanz, a event that “could theoretically have allowed Iran to remove uranium from the process stream, an action that could go undetected until the next IAEA inventory” this fall, according to IranWatch, a website run by the Wisconsin Project for Nuclear Arms Control.

Gary Milhollin, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Project, told Newsmax that the broken seal was “a big issue” and “raises questions” that the IAEA needs to resolve.

“When you breach a seal, it’s the beginning of a story. What we need is the rest of the story,” he said.

While Milhollin doubted that a single broken seal indicated Iran intended to “break out” of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and build one or several bombs with its declared inventory of nuclear material, he called on the IAEA to “make clear whether this is an important breach or just a slip-up.”

IranWatch has published a chart showing that Iran in theory could build as many as four nuclear warheads in a matter of months if it decided to enrich the low-enriched uranium it has already produced to weapons grade.

Milhollin said he doubted Iran would pursue such a break-out scenario, at least for now.

“They are working on becoming a virtual nuclear weapons state,” Milhollin told Newsmax. “The Iranian strategy is to do as much as they can to get as close as they can to nuclear weapons capability without provoking a big response from the outside world. So far it’s been working pretty well. They’ve been stopping just short of provoking a military response.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) reportedly took delivery of two nuclear-capable re-entry vehicles for its Shahab-3 missiles in recent days, according to former IRGC officer Reza Kahlili, author of a recent memoir, “A Time to Betray.”

Kahlili believes the IRGC will receive eight more nuclear warheads within the next 10 months, and will mate nuclear weapons to two of the warheads no later than March 2012.

“When IRGC Commander General Mohammad Ali Jaafari promised his troops that in the near future we will witness the ‘miraculous project,’ which will shock the world, he was referring to the fact that the Revolutionary Guards will be armed with nuclear weapons,” Kahlili said.

The move from virtual nuclear weapons state to actual nuclear weapons capability “has been authorized by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,” Kahlili believes.

“They have the knowledge, and now they have the materials. The time for speculative argument is over. They are going to have it. They are going to have the bomb,” Kahlili told Newsmax.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report June 3, 2011, 8:24 AM (GMT+02:00)

Iran’s nuclear clock ticks steadily

The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, American’s scientific watchdog on world nuclear weapons production, estimates that by Dec. 2008, Iran had accumulated enough U-235 to fuel one nuclear bomb; by 2009, enough for a second, by August 2010 material for a third bomb and by April 2011, enough enriched uranium for a fourth bomb.
These estimates presuppose an Iranian decision to further process low-enriched material to weapons grade – a process taking no more than a couple of months.
Iran, says the Wisconsin Project, is consolidating its status as a “virtual” nuclear weapon state – meaning it can set about building a bomb whenever its rulers so decide.
In its twice-annual report published Thursday, June 2, Wisconsin revealed three further developments in Iran’s nuclear drive:

1. Since November 2010, when Iran stopped enriching uranium in all cascades at the Natanz plant for about a week (the report does not give the reason for the stoppage – possibly a Stuxnet virus invasion of its computer control system), the enrichment rate has increased. The 5,000 centrifuges spinning in February 2011 increased to nearly 6,000 in May 2011.
debkafile‘s Iranian sources add: Prof. Ferei-doon Abbasi Davani has taken over as director of the enrichment complex at Natanz. He was formerly in charge of combating the Stuxflex worm.  Last November, Prof. Abbasi Dayani escaped with light injuries from an attack by a pair of motorcyclists who attached a sticky bomb to his car. It occurred near the Imam Hossein University in Tehran where most of Iran’s secret nuclear labs are located.

2.  Wisconsin quotes the International Atomic Energy Agency’s May 2011 report that one of its seals was broken in the “feed and withdrawal area” of the Natanz enrichment plant.
This means that Iran took action to conceal the real amount of is enriched uranium stockpile from the nuclear watchdog and the fact, as Wisconsin reports, that it has accumulated enough material for building four nuclear bombs. Its steady progress will go undetected until the next IAEA inventory in October or November.
debkafile‘s intelligence sources point out that Tehran has won a period of six to seven months for keeping its nuclear activities hidden from oversight with no one in the West or in Israel able to find out what is going on at the Natanz enrichment plant.
3.  Wisconsin goes on to state: “Uncertainties about the number of centrifuges operated by Iran make it difficult to draw a conclusion about the performance of individual machines.”  More machines may be switched on when IAEA inspectors are not present while less, more advanced centrifuges, may take over after the inspection is over.
Our sources stress that these revelations are highly pertinent to the controversy taking place in Israel over the surprising comments by ex-Mossad Director Meir Dagan.
Dubbed “Mister Stop the Bomb” for reputedly directing covert operations that held off Iran’s nuclear threat for five or six years – though this may an exaggeration – Dagan suddenly began speaking out strongly against any Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Wednesday, June 1, he implicitly warned that such an attack would precipitate a regional war in which Israel would fare badly.

Israel’s political and defense establishments have always had their doves but Dagan is sounding one like for the first time.

The controversy around his comments reflects a similar argument afoot in US political and defense circles over whether the time has come to smash Iran’s nuclear capability or stand by and let the Islamic Republic becomes a “virtual nuclear weapon state.”

In the last three years, the two schools of thought for and against military action against Iran have been joined by a third, which affirms that the US and Israel can live with an Iran armed with one or two nuclear bombs because this number would be dwarfed even by Israel’s reputed stock let alone the American arsenal. Therefore, until Iran stockpiles a serous arsenal of weapons, it does not constitute an existential threat to Israel.
The Wisconsin Project’s latest report explodes this argument because it exposes the steady accumulation of materials for four bombs in two-and-a-half years and Iran’s dogged advance toward a serious arsenal unless it is stopped.
That is the reason why the military option is back on the table in Jerusalem.

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