Iran’s Warning Barks ARE MUCH Worse Than Its Promised Bites:
“Iran will not stand aside for a military operation against Syria”
A Syrian Uprising has Lasted Much longer than Many Believed.
The Reason the Syrian Uprising has sustained Itself so Long
Is Found BY The Determination Expressed In Milad’s Quote:
“We Have Been Waiting for THIS Moment Our Entire Lives”
As EACH DAY Passes, People’s HATRED For Assad Grows!
August 8, 2011
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Begin Excerpt 1 from DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
Assad toughs it out against US-Turkish ultimatum to halt military crackdown
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
August 8, 2011, 10:03 AM (GMT+02:00)
As his tanks and artillery stormed the eastern Syrian town of Deir al-Zour, killing 100 civilians in one day, the US and Turkey Sunday night, Aug. 7 began to turn the screw on President Bashar Assad: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked Turkey’s foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu to press Syria to “return its military to the barracks,” during his visit to Syria Tuesday
DEBKAfile: Behind the demand was an ultimatum that if Assad continued on his present bloody path, NATO member Turkey would intervene militarily in the crisis.
However, the Syrian ruler with backing from Tehran spurned the ultimatum even before the Turkish minister reached Damascus.
“He will be given an even tougher message to take home,” said one of Assad’s top advisers.
DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report that in the last few days, Tehran has repeatedly warned Ankara that Iran will not stand aside for a military operation against Syria and would come to the aid of the Assad regime.
It was indicated that Turkish attacks on Syrian military targets would bring forth Iranian attacks on the Turkish army and American bases in Turkey.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah recalled his ambassador to Damascus Monday, demanding an end to the bloodshed.
“What is happening in Syria is not acceptable for Saudi Arabia,” he said in a written statement read out on Al Arabiya satellite television.
Our military sources report that Assad was not deterred from pushing on Monday with his assault on the oil town of Deir al-Zour for the second day. For the first time in the five-month crackdown on protesters, the Syrian military are using self-propelled heavy artillery against rebel targets in a wide radius around the town to prevent the approach of rebel reinforcements.
Although he knew the US-Turkish ultimatum was coming, he embarked on his Deir el-Zour operation Sunday in order to present Washington and Ankara with a fait accompli.
Sunday, Aug. 7, disclosed that Ankara’s threat of military intervention was back in play.
After capturing the northern town of Hama in a bloody military assault, Syrian President Bashar Assad Sunday, Aug. 7, sent a whole division of 200 tanks and dozens of armored vehicles to blast their way into another rebellious city, Syria’s oil center of Deir el-Zour in the Euphrates Valley, a town of half a million inhabitants. At least 70 people were reported dead in one day.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that while Hama is a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold, Deir el-Zour is the urban center of some 2.1 million members of assorted nomadic Bedouin tribes. They too are Sunni Muslims though of different sects.
The Baqqara tribal federation is the largest, numbering 1.2 million, followed by the Fadan Walad and the Fadan Kharsa of the Euphrates Valley and the al Shammar Karsah of Deir al Zour and its environs.
Unlike the protesters of Hama, these tribesmen lack anti-tank weapons for battling Syrian armor and so their town may not hold out against the Syrian onslaught beyond two or three days. The tribesmen have meanwhile run for cover to the dense papyrus groves of the river bank and the narrow wadis of the Iraqi al Anbar province just across the border. From these hiding places, our military sources expect them refugees to organize protracted guerrilla warfare against the Assad regime and Syrian army.
DEBKAfile recalls that these are the very tribes which from 2003 to 2006 joined al Qaeda in bloody warfare on US forces in central Iraq, preventing Anbar and the central Iraqi towns of Falujja
and Ramadi ever being completely subdued and constantly convulsed by suicide attacks.
It was only when President George W.
Bush agreed to implement the Awakening Councils plan put forward by Gen. David Petraeus, the current CIA Director, which involved substantial monthly payments to the tribal chiefs for warfare against al Qaeda that, Al Anbar was pacified.
Aware of the menace posed by these tribes, Syrian security services last week – ahead of the Deir el-Zour offensive – captured the Baqqara tribal chief Sheikh Nawaf al-Bashir as hostage against the tribes joining the uprising against the regime. Syrian military intelligence will find him a tough nut to crack – even for a heavy bribe.
The upshot may well be that although the Syrian army finally subjugates Deir al-Zour and Abu Kemal on the Iraqi border its forces will be cornered by Sunni tribes which control the road networks around the two eastern towns and prey to their raids.
Assad’s offensive against the two towns also places at risk Syria’s small oil fields and pipeline system. Their daily product of $8-10 million is his primary source of revenue for sustaining his war on the uprising and they will certainly become a prime strategic target for the resistance.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan decided to send his foreign minister Ahmed Davutoglu to Damascus Tuesday, Aug. 9, after declaring Saturday that Turkey’s patience with its neighbor “was running thin and his country could not remain a bystander to the violence… but must do what is necessary.”Davutoglu will “deliver our message in a more determined way,” said Erdogan. “…a new process will take shape according to their response and actions.”
“We do not see Syria as a foreign problem, Syria is our domestic problem because we have a 850-kilometer border with this country, we have historical and cultural ties, we have kinship,” Erdogan said.
This was the last warning from Ankara – and therefore NATO – that Turkey was about to intervene militarily in Syria, after maintain army units on the Syrian border for weeks.
Friday, Aug. 5, Russia’s NATO ambassador Dmitry Rogozin accused NATO, of which Turkey is a member, of planning a military campaign against Syria to help overthrow the Assad regime “with the long-reaching goal of preparing a beachhead for an attack on Iran.”
Begin Excerpt 2 from MEMRI
Middle East Media Research Institute
Syrian Blogger Milad ‘Umran: ‘We Have Seen the True Face of the Regime’ and It Can No Longer Hide the Truth
Special Dispatch No. 4050
August 4, 2011
Following are excerpts from an interview with Syrian blogger Milad ‘Umran, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on June 24, 2011.
Milad ‘Umran: “Each and every one of us [Syrians] has dozens of stories about people who disappeared, people who were tortured, people who… Stories about the things the intelligence agency did to the Syrian people… Each of us has such stories. I have images seared in my memory. All these things are taboo, things that cannot be talked about, but they exist within us.
“I remember, for instance, that when I was five years old, I saw our neighbor… This is an image that is indelibly seared in my memory. I saw our neighbor when he came to visit my father. He had just been [released] from detention. I don’t know what he did. Chances are he did nothing. He showed my dad the marks on his back. I was only five years old. He lifted his shirt and showed my dad what they did to him. His back was… It’s impossible to imagine that anybody, even a criminal, would do something like that to another human being.
“We have been waiting for this moment our entire lives. The [uprising] is something we expected would happen, and we expected that it would exact a high toll. Every tyrant would fight to the death.
“The truth has come out, and they can no longer hide it. It is documented and brought to life through the cell phones of eye-witnesses, and the thousands who participated in the demonstrations. Only 1% [of what happened] has come to light.
Heinous things took place there. We have seen the true face of the regime.
“Perhaps only 1% of these images have been uploaded to the Internet, but these things will emerge for the whole world to see. More importantly, it should be seen within Syria.
When we upload a video to the Internet, it is for our own people to see, not [just] the world. We should never rely on the world to bring about change for us.
If our people do not bring about change, nothing will change.”
Begin Series of Excerpts from Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs/Daily Alert
Excerpt 3 – Washington Post
U.S., Europe Consider Boycott of Syrian Oil
Mary Beth Sheridan and Alice Fordham
The U.S. and European governments have begun to discuss whether to escalate sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad by targeting Syria’s oil industry, as officials on both continents are looking at stepped-up measures to pressure Assad. While the U.S. has little economic leverage on Syria, having cut off most trade years ago, the Europeans buy about half of Syria’s oil. France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands are the biggest customers. Syria’s petroleum exports of 150,000 barrels per day account for one-third of government revenue.
“If these [sanctions] are implemented, does it immediately mean the regime stops killing? No,” said Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“But does it mean several months from now the regime runs out of money? Yes.”
The U.S. ambassador in Damascus, Robert Ford, said this week that previous sanctions were starting to bite. “More and more business people, especially Sunni business people – an important pillar of the regime’s support – we do see them slowly but surely shifting sides.” (Washington Post)
Excerpt 4 – Washington Post
Russian President: Syria’s Leader Will Face a “Sad Fate” If He Fails to Introduce Reforms
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday he has warned Syrian President Bashar Assad that he will face a “sad fate” if he fails to introduce reforms and open a peaceful dialogue with the opposition. “Both on a personal level and in the letters I sent to him (Assad) I have emphasized that it’s necessary to urgently conduct reforms, negotiate with the opposition, restore civil peace, and create a modern state,” Medvedev said in remarks carried by Russian news agencies. (AP-Washington Post)
Excerpt 5 – New York Times
Civilian Toll Is Mounting in Assault on Syrian City
Nada Bakri
Syrian human rights activists said Thursday that Syrian government forces had killed more than 100 people in Hama since seizing control of its central square with armored columns and snipers on Wednesday, doubling the count of civilian dead there to more than 200 since the military’s tanks began shelling the city over the weekend. Cars trying to carry food into the city have been attacked, and doctors trying to treat the wounded were being detained. One resident in Hama said that most women and children had fled the city. (New York Times)
Excerpt 6 – Middle East Media Research Institute
Under Iranian Pressure, Iraq Reportedly Providing Financial Support to Syria
A source in the National Alliance of various Shi’a groups in Iraq that support Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has told the London daily al-Sharq al-Awsat that “Iran has pressured its allies in Baghdad to support the Syrian authorities with $10 billion.” He said that al-Maliki had “succumbed to the pressure and provided financial support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”
According to the same source, Iranian Ambassador to Baghdad Hassan Dana’i Fer carried a verbal message from Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Brigade commander Gen. Qassim Suleimani (who is rumored to be one of the most influential figures in Baghdad) to the leaders of the National Alliance to provide $10 billion in financial support to the Syrian leader. (MEMRI)
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