DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 30, 2012, 9:38 PM (GMT+02:00)

President Bashar Assad supported by his brother and cousin

According to exclusive reports reaching debkafile, President Bashar Assad Sunday, Jan. 30, pulled in the Syrian Republican Guard and the 4th armored divisions commanded by his brother Maher Assad from the northern rebel centers and over to Damascus. He ordered them into battle positions in the capital for the first time in the ten month uprising after receiving an intelligence tipoff that western powers had won over one of the armored division commanders posted in the capital and persuaded him to stage a coup d’etat to topple him.

The renegade general, whose identity is unknown, was reported to be planning to take advantage of the absence of the most trusted regime troops in trouble spots across the country to lead 300 tanks into the capital and seize power.
The conspirators were planning to make their move on the night of Monday Jan. 30 or early Tuesday Jan. 31, just before the UN Security Council was to convene in New York and air plans for him to step down. The putsch would have presented its members with the accomplished fact of Assad’s overthrow by the military.
The information passed to Assad, apparently from an external source, did not name the division commander who accepted this role from Western hands. If it turns out to be true, the scheme would strongly recall the US-led NATO-Qatari-Jordanian operation for the Libyan rebels to seize power in Libya by taking Tripoli by storm in the third week of August 2011.
Forewarned, the Syrian ruler is making every effort to ward off the threatened coup.

debkafile‘s military sources report that, aside from the Republican Guard and 4th division which Assad recalled to the capital, present there too are the 1st, 3rd and 9th armored divisions.

The fight rebel forces put up at the gates of Damascus Monday night was perceived by the Assad regime as part of the coup conspiracy. Western and military sources described the combat as a search, arrest and kill operation to wipe out the last vestiges of resistance around the capital, rather than battles.
Monday night, the White House issued a statement saying the UN Security Council must not let the Syrian President Assad continue the violence.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to address the Council meeting Tuesday. She has urged the forum to act before the violence in Syria spills over and destabilizes its neighbors.

Moscow has made it very clear in recent weeks that it will on no account let the Assad regime go the way of Qaddafi. Russia is adamant about vetoing the Security Council motion the US and European powers are gathering Tuesday in New Yorkto table in support of the Arab League transition plan for a national unity government to rise in Damascus within two months and implement Assad’s handover of power to vice president Farouk a-Shara. A Russian bid to bring the opponents to the negotiating table failed after the main Syrian opposition party demanded that Assad step down first.

At least 27 people were killed Monday in the central city of Homs – which was heavily shelled again – the northern province of Idlib and southern province of Daraa, where the revolt against Assad began in mid-March. Another 41 deaths were reported Sunday.The Syrian regime stepped up the violence in the days before the Security Council session to quell resistance and demonstrate its grip on the country.
debkafile reported earlier Monday, Jan. 30:

Ten months after the Syrian people launched an uprising against its ruler, Bashar Assad, if not yet safe in the saddle, has recovered the bulk of his army’s support and his grip on most parts of the country

Protesters have mostly been pushed into tight corners in the flashpoint towns and villages, especially in the north, hemmed in by troops and security forces loyal to the president.

Monday, Jan. 30, Syrian forces were close to purging the suburbs and villages around Damascus of rebel fighters. The operation began Sunday with 2,000 troops backed by tanks and armored personnel carriers. Six soldiers were killed when their vehicle blew up on a roadside bomb near Sahnaya, east of the capital.

The rebel Free Syrian Army and opposition groups continue to report heavy fighting in the Damascus area, and especially the international airport where they claim to have prevented Assad’s wife and children from fleeing the country. However, military watchers do not confirm either the fighting or the Assad family’s attempted flight.

While both sides spin propaganda, the extreme hyperbole of opposition claims attests to their hard straits and the Syrian president’s success in weathering their efforts and the huge sacrifices in blood paid by the people (estimated at 8,000 dead and tens of thousands injured) to oust him.
Having got rid of the Arab League monitoring mission, which gave up in despair of halting the savage bloodbath, Assad will shrug off the Arab-Western backed motion put before the UN Security Council Tuesday, Jan. 30, calling on him to step down and hand power to his vice president Farouk a-Shara. He will treat it as yet another failed effort by the combined Arab-Western effort to topple his regime.

The conflict is not over. More ups and downs may still be to come and there are signs of sectarian war evolving. But for now, Assad’s survival is of crucial relevance in seven Middle East arenas:
1. The Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah bloc is strengthened, joined most recently by Iraq;

2.  Iran chalks up a first-class strategic achievement for counteracting the US and the Saudi-led Gulf Arab emirates’ presentation of the Islamic regime as seriously weighed down under by the crushing burden of crushing international sanctions imposed to halt its drive for a nuclear bomb.
3.  Hizballah has won a chance to recover from the steep slide of its fortunes in Lebanon. The Pro-Iranian Lebanese Shiite group stands to regain the self-assurance which ebbed during Assad’s hard times against massive dissidence, re-consolidate its bonds with Tehran, Damascus and Baghdad and rebuild its political clout in Beirut.

4.  It is hard to calculate the enormous extent of the damage Saudi Arabia and Turkey have suffered from their colossal failure in Syria. The Palestinians too have not emerged unscathed.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and their security agencies, which invested huge sums in the Syrian rebellion’s removal of the Assad regime, were trounced by Syria’s security and intelligence services and the resources Iran provided to keep Bashar Assad afloat.
The Arab League, which for the first time tried its hand at intervening in an Arab uprising by sending observers into Syrian trouble spots to cut down the violence, watched impotently as those observers ran for their lives. Assad for his part first accepted than ignored the League’s peace plan.
Turkey, too, after indicating its military would step across the border to support the Syrian resistance and giving the FSA bases of operation, backed off for the sake of staying on good terms with Iran.
5.  Russia and China have gained credibility in the Middle East and points against the United States by standing up for Assad and pledging their veto votes against any strong UN Security Council motions against him. Moscow’s arms sales and naval support for the Assad regime and China’s new military and economic accords with Persian Gulf emirates have had the effect of pushing the United States from center stage of the Arab Revolt, held in the Egyptian and Libyan revolutions, to the sidelines of Middle East action.
6.  The Syrian ruler has confounded predictions by Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak that he can’t last more than a few weeks. His survival and the cohesion of his armed forces have contributed to the tightening of the Iranian military noose around Israel.

The Syrian army was in sustained operation for almost a year without breaking and suffered only marginal defections. It is still in working shape with valuable experience under its belt in rapid deployment between battlefronts. Syria, Iran and Hizballah have streamlined the cooperation among their armies and their intelligence arms.
7.  The Palestinian rivals, Fatah and Hamas, have again put the brakes on the on-again, off-again reconciliation after it was galvanized by Hamas’ decision to create some distance between Iran and the embattled Syrian regime. Seeing Assad still in place, Hamas’ Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniyeh will visit Tehran this week and Meshaal may delay his departure from the Syrian capital.

White House: Assad’s fall inevitable – Israel News, Ynetnews.

US officials estimate that Syrian president’s regime has lost control, urge UN Security Council to adopt resolution that would stop violence, facilitate political transition

Yitzhak Benhorin

White House: Assad’s fall inevitable

US officials estimate that Syrian president’s regime has lost control, urge UN Security Council to adopt resolution that would stop violence, facilitate political transition

Yitzhak Benhorin

Washington – The White House estimated Monday that Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s government is on the verge of collapse and called on the United Nations to adopt a resolution that would facilitate a political transition in Syria.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that Assad’s fall in inevitable, noting that the Damascus regime has lost control over the country.

“As governments make decisions about where they stand on this issue and what further steps need to be taken with regards to the brutality of the Assad regime, it’s important to calculate into your considerations the fact that he will go. The regime has lost control of the country and will eventually fall,” he said.

Meanwhile, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice accused the Security Council of “inaction” and “neglect” during 10 months of Syrian violence, urging the global body to endorse an Arab League plan for a political transition there.

Rice was speaking a day before Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby and Qatar’s prime minister are due to plead with the 15-nation Security Council to back the league’s plan for Assad to transfer powers to his deputy to prepare for free elections.

“We have seen the consequences of neglect and inaction by this council over the course of the last 10 months, not because the majority of the council isn’t eager to act – it has been,” Rice told reporters.

“But there have been a couple of very powerful members who have not been willing to see that action take place,” she said. “That may yet still be the case.”

Rice was referring to Russia and China, which vetoed a European-drafted Security Council resolution in October that would have condemned Syria and threatened it with possible sanctions.

Clinton: Violence must end

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who will attend Tuesday’s council meeting with Elaraby, along with French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe and British Foreign Secretary William Hague, also urged the council to adopt a European-Arab draft resolution endorsing the Arab League plan.

“The Security Council must act and make clear to the Syrian regime that the world community views its actions as a threat to peace and security,” Clinton said in a statement. “The violence must end, so that a new period of democratic transition can begin.”

Clinton voiced concern that if the crisis in Syria isn’t stopped, it could spread.

“The longer the Assad regime continues its attacks on the Syrian people and stands in the way of a peaceful transition, the greater the concern that instability will escalate and spill over throughout the region,” she said.

Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said last week that he was willing to engage on the European-Arab draft resolution, but said the draft was unacceptable in its current state.

Diplomats said Elaraby would be meeting with Churkin behind closed doors in New York to explain to him that vetoing the draft resolution would be tantamount to vetoing the Arab world.

Earlier, a French diplomat said that at least 10 members of the Council support a resolution calling for a political transition in Syria.

A vote on the draft resolution is unlikely before Thursday or Friday, Western diplomats said on condition of anonymity.

Reuters contributed to the report

‘Israel sees narrowing window for Iran strike’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

International sanctions on Iran are constraining Israel from taking military action against Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites, which must be mounted by summer, officials say

Associated Press

Israeli officials are quietly conceding that new international sanctions targeting Iran‘s suspect nuclear program, while welcome, are further constraining Israel’s ability to take military action – just as a window of opportunity is closing because Tehran is moving more of its installations underground.

The officials said that Israel must act by the summer if it wants to effectively attack Iran’s program.That has raised speculation that Israel’s veiled threats are no more than attempts to get Iran to back down

A key question in the debate is how much damage Israel, or anyone else, can inflict, and whether it would be worth the risk of a possible counterstrike.

Israel has been a leading voice in the international calls to curbIran’s nuclear program. Like the West, it believes the Iranians are moving toward nuclear weapons capability – a charge Tehran denies.

Obama: No options off table on Iran nuclear program

Israel contends a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten its survival. It also fears an Iranian bomb would touch off a nuclear arms race in a region still largely hostile to Israel.

Israeli leaders say they prefer a diplomatic solution. But – skeptical of international resolve – Israel refuses to rule out the use of force, saying frequently that “all options are on the table.”

Is time running out?

After calling for tougher sanctions against Iran at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Friday: “We must not waste time on this matter; the Iranians continue to advance (toward nuclear weapons), identifying every crack and squeezing through. Time is urgently running out.”

Key Israeli defense officials believe that the time to strike, if such a decision is made, would have to be by the middle of this year.

Complicating the task is the assessment that Iran is stepping up efforts to move its work on enriching uranium deep underground.

Several officials at the heart of the decision-making structure, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing some of Israel’s deepest secrets, said they feel compelled to give the sanctions time.

In this way, somewhat paradoxically, the new economic sanctions the US and Europe are imposing – while meeting a repeated Israeli request – have emerged as an obstacle to military action.

Iranian nuclear facility (Photo: EPA) 

An Israeli strike would risk shattering the US-led diplomatic front that has imposed four additional rounds of sanctions on Iran and jolt the shaky world economy by causing oil prices to spike. Still, the officials said that if Israel feels no alternative but to take military action, it will do so.

The US has sold Israel dozens of 100 GBU-28 laser-guided “bunker-buster” bombs. The 2.5-ton bombs are capable of penetrating more than 20 feet of solid concrete.

It’s not clear how much damage the bunker-busters could actually do. Iran’s main enrichment site at Natanz is believed to be about 25 feet (6 meters) underground and protected by two concrete walls.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told The Wall Street Journal last week that even more sophisticated US bunker-busters aren’t powerful enough to penetrate all of Iran’s defenses.

‘Strike won’t really delay Iran’

Many believe that in the event of a strike, Iran would likely unleash its large arsenal of missiles capable of striking Israel.

Iran’s local proxies, Hezbollah to Israel’s north and Hamas to the south, possess tens of thousands of short-range rockets and missiles. American soldiers in the Persian Gulf might come under fire. Islamist backers of Iran could target civilians all over the world.

The prospect of a new conflagration in the Mideast is one reason cited by some influential Israeli figures, like recently retired spy chief Meir Dagan, when arguing against an Israeli military attack.

Perhaps the biggest factor in the Israeli thinking is how much damage an airstrike could even cause.

“What will tip the scales in favor or against an attack is whether we will really be able to do inflict serious damage,” said Yiftah Shapir, an expert in nuclear arms proliferation at Tel Aviv University. “That will be more important than whether we are ready to absorb (the casualties) of an attack.”

Israeli officials believe the Iranian nuclear program is so far advanced that any attack would delay it by two to three years at best, but not destroy it.

“It’s a very advanced program with many facilities, some very large and some very fortified. To destroy them you need a series of massive assaults for two to three weeks, a month, something like that,” Shapir said.

A one-time surgical strike, the most likely attack by Israel, “can’t do more than politically declare that we aren’t willing to tolerate” a nuclear Iran, Shapir said.