The Syrian crisis was Friday, June 29, on a knife edge between a Western-Arab-Turkish military offensive in the next 48 hours and a big power accord to ward it off.
debkafile’s military sources report heavy Saudi troop movements toward the Jordanian and Iraqi borders Thursday overnight and up until Friday morning, June 29, after King Abdullah put the Saudi military on high alert for joining an anti-Assad offensive in Syria. The Saudi units are poised with tanks, missiles, special forces and anti-air batteries to enter Jordan in two heads:
One will safeguard Jordan’s King Abdullah against potential Syrian or Iranian reprisals from Syria or Iraq.
The second will cut north through Jordan to enter southeastern Syriam, where a security zone will be established around the towns of Deraa, Deir al-Zour and Abu Kemal – all centers of the anti-Assad rebellion. The region is also the home terrain of the Shammar tribe, brethren of the Shammars of the Saudi Nejd province.
The Saudi units deployed on the Iraqi border are there to defend the kingdom against potential incursions by Iraqi Shiite militias crossing into the kingdom for reprisals. The Iraqi militias are well trained and armed and serve under officers of the Iranian Al-Qods Brigades, the Revolutionary Guards’ external arm.
Western Gulf sources report that Jordan too is on war alert.
Following the downing of a Turkish plane by Syria a week ago, Turkey continues to build up its Syrian border units with anti-aircraft guns, tanks and missiles towed by long convoys of trucks.
A Free Syria Army officer, Gen. Mustafa al-Sheikh, reported Friday that 170 Syrian army tanks of the 17th Mechanized Division were massed near the village of Musalmieh northeast of Aleppo, 30 km from the Turkish border. He said they stood ready to attack any Turkish forces crossing into Syria.
As these war preparations advanced, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in St. Petersburg Friday for crucial talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. They meet the day before the new UN-sponsored Action Group convenes in Geneva to discuss UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s latest transition proposal for Syria. He hopes for a political settlement that will ward off military intervention.
Invited to the meeting are the five veto-wielding UN Security Council members plus Turkey and Arab League envoys from Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq.
Annan proposes forming a transitional national unity government in Damascus that includes the opposition and excludes unacceptable regime members.
It was widely reported Thursday that Russia had agreed to this formula, even though it entailed evicting Bashar Assad from power. However, Lavrov stepped in to correct the record, stressing in reference to the Annan proposal that Moscow would not lend its support to “any outside interference or imposition of recipes in Syria.”
This position is doubly aimed at the intensive military movements afoot around Syria.
Clinton and Lavrov are therefore expected to go at the Syrian issue hammer and tongs. The outcome of their meeting will not only determine the course of the Action Group’s discussions but, more importantly, whether the Western-Arab-Turkish alliance goes forward with its military operation against Syria.
US-Russian concurrence on a plan for Assad’s removal could avert the operation. The failure of their talks would spell a worsening of the Syrian crisis and precipitate Western-Arab military intervention, which according to military sources in the Gulf is scheduled for launch Saturday, June 30.
WarSclerotic 
June 29, 2012 at 11:59 AM
I also read this twice and i must say it seems real to me. It lacks the usual highly speculative debka like style. As JW opened this, ” This may be actually the big one ” .
June 29, 2012 at 3:39 PM
When the Iranians in Syria pack up and run back to Tehran, then you will know an attack is imminent.
June 29, 2012 at 3:52 PM
Seems that Debka is the only one reporting this as of 8:45am US Central Time. I was just at Arutz-7 and nothing like that was there. WND and Fox aren’t saying anything either.
June 29, 2012 at 4:31 PM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9364390/Syrian-tanks-amass-on-border-as-Assad-threatens-opposition.html
June 29, 2012 at 5:45 PM
”Syrian government forces have massed 170 tanks north of the city of Aleppo, close to the Turkish border, according to the rebel Free Syrian Army.”
Of course the rebels will say that, they are hoping for a intervention.
June 29, 2012 at 4:52 PM
You think that several decades of military training by American forces Will bear fruit?
June 29, 2012 at 7:17 PM
Does anyone ever waisted a thought on behalf of the more than 2 million Iraqi refugees whom found a temporary home inside Syria?
Will the US offer them refuge once the war has officially begun?
June 30, 2012 at 11:57 AM
That’s what I said half a year ago: there will be a showdown between the Levantine Sunnis – at a certain point of time: openly supported by the Saudis – and the Shia Axis in the region.
Putin is waiting for the moment, when it must appear like a Saudi agression (for Russia & friends); then we will see, what he has prepared in his visit to Abbas: A PLO-Peoples’ Republic in Damascus; in order to prevent an Islamist Levantistan Emirate … Turkey will love it, because that will save them from civil war.
My advice: EU and Russia should exile the Alawites and Levantine Christians to Greece; otherwise: offer Greece, to hand the country back to the Turks.
July 1, 2012 at 8:39 AM
48h later … nothing happens !
July 6, 2012 at 4:50 PM
I’m with Chalom.
Wonder what happened?