Iran’s Mullahs Take Over Syria to Save Bashar Assad
Presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Bashar Assad of Syria
Iran and its radical religionists are in the process of taking over the Middle East and North Africa and who is going to stop them? There is little discussion in the mainstream media that this is happening, but Iran’s mullahs have had their stealth hand on the region, and are making their move in the vacuum of power caused by what appears to be U.S. indifference.
Syrian “strongman” Bashar Assad’s independent reign is all but over. Observers say this week the Iranian National Guard basically “took over” leadership of the country, which accounts for the reports of vicious human rights violations against the citizens and the Syrian military members who were refusing to fire on their own people. Two reports here: from Debka.com and Ryan Mauro of Frontpage. Do not forget that just recently, Israel intercepted a huge high-tech cache of Iranian weapons aboard a ship bound from Syria for Gaza. Iran’s president Ahmadinejad and Assad have worked closely together to orchestrate the Hezbollah takeover in Lebanon. This relationship is deep. The recent reports of brutality against Syrian citizens and soldiers who refuse to shoot their own citizens bear the imprimatur of Iran’s mullahs.
The popular uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad is still spreading. Tuesday, April 12, one of the Assad family’s own Alawite tribes and the key Sunni city of Aleppo joined the movement demanding the president and his kin’s removal. Assad fought back against the expanding threat to his survival by mobilizing all his military and security resources, including the loyal young thugs of the shabbiha gangs. They have orders to shoot to kill and not permit ambulances to collect the wounded. Tanks seal the most restive towns of Teraa, Bania,s Latakia and Hama.
Video on YouTube of soldier shot in back saying he would not fire on the people.
….while another video shows the funeral of Muhammad Awad Qunbar.
Alawite unrest centers on the impoverished Knaan tribe centered in the village of Bhamra in the mountains of northern Syria. A second immediate danger to the regime comes from Aleppo, Syria’s commercial hub, where for the first time more than 10,000 protesters marched. The Druze mountain inhabitants are up in arms. So too are the Kurdish towns of the north such as Kamishli and the Shammar tribes of southeastern Syria around the border town of Abu Kamal.
Damascus University has been under siege for four days, although security forces have not been able to breach it.
A grave humanitarian crisis is spreading with the unrest. Army outposts and roadblocks have cut off main roads linking the north to southern and central Syria, as well as telephone and internet services and even food deliveries in many places. Mass arrests of thousands take place nightly including, according to debkafile’s sources, members of the Syrian ruling establishment for the crime of appealing to Assad to abandon his violent methods of repression and meet some of the protesters demands for reforms. Some are journalists who support the regime but who wrote articles to this effect. They were not published.
For the first time, debkafile’s sources report that the protesters began returning the fire against security forces on Monday, April 11, in a number of places, especially Deraa in the south and Banias in the north. A well-laid ambush was laid on the main coastal road linking Latakia and Banias and nine Syrian officers and troops killed.
debkafile’s Middle East and intelligence sources report a three-way shooting war currently in progress in Syria, in which the army and security forces, the protesters, and the shabbiha gangs are taking part. The and bloody mayhem is such that the number of casualties is almost impossible to assess.
The troops open fire at protesters as soon as a few people gather in the street without waiting for a demonstration to form. The wounded are denied medical care and allowed to die in the streets as a deterrent to protesters. Tuesday night, the White House finally issued a harsh denunciation of the Syrian “government.”
The statement read: “We are deeply concerned by reports that Syrians who have been wounded by their government are being denied access to medical care. The escalating repression by the Syrian government is outrageous, and the United States strongly condemns the continued efforts to suppress peaceful protesters. President Assad and the Syrian government must respect the universal rights of the Syrian people, who are rightly demanding the basic freedoms that they have been denied.”
debkafile’s sources in Washington say that the language used in this statement from the Obama administration continues to skirt the protesters’ most pressing demand for the Syrian president to step down, because of the still unresolved internal debate on how to handle Assad.
Despite the mounting brutality of the Syrian ruler’s methods to crush the revolt against his regime, some White House circles in Washington are warning that Assad’s fall would open the door for radical Muslim elements to take over, even suggesting that this would put Israel in “mortal danger.”
This argument was never heard in Washington when Hosni Mubarak was toppled in Egypt. And it by no means relates to the Assad regime’s eight-year long record as primary accomplice and abettor of radical Muslim organizations such as Al Qaeda, the Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian Hamas. Starting from the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Damascus gave sanctuary and launching-pads for Muslim groups to strike American forces fighting in Iraq, including training camps and logistical aid for smuggling weapons and explosives for that purpose. Syria also facilitates the passage of arms and other support to the Hizballah radicals.
The extreme measures to which Assad has resorted as the revolt against him enters its fourth week have led to firefights within the army. Many cases are now reported of Syrian officers opening fire on other Syrian officers, killing them when they refuse to shoot protesters. There have been incidents of Shabbiha gangs shooting two ways – on demonstrators and at times on army forces. In one such incident in Ras al-Naba’a, a quarter of Banias – the irregulars appeared to be goading the soldiers into using more force to disperse the protesters. In others, these pro-Assad street gangs appear to be shooting from demonstrations to make it look as though the protesters were killing the soldiers.
Contrary to the image the Assads have always presented that “the Alawites are the ruling class in Syria,” it is worth pointing out that they in fact rule Damascus, while the rest of those minority tribes, which number 1.4 million (8 percent of the 26 million population) live in abject poverty with no electricity or running water in their villages and no ties to the Assads. The paradox is that though lacking influence in the capital, their revolt against the regime could be the last straw for Asad.
These villages are now rising up for fear of being stigmatized, however unjustly, by the Sunni majority of collaboration with the Assads and targeted for revenge. In any case, they are so penurious and neglected that they have little to lose by the regime’s fall.
The Shabbiha: This well-armed, roughly organized group derives most of its 9-11,000 members from Assad clans within the Alawite community and its allies. Their fighting skills were imparted by the Lebanese Hizballah or Iranian Revolutionary Guards instructors, but their loyalty to the Assad family is undivided. As smugglers, their strongholds are mostly along the coastal region, some of whose communities rely on the Shabbiha for their livelihood.
Ryan Mauro: FrontPage Mag: “The Mullahs Rescue Assad”
Continue reading here.“ The Reform Party of Syria, a U.S.-based democratic opposition group, says that as of Monday, April 4, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps stationed in Syria (which it said is 10,000-strong) had gained authority over the efforts to put an end to the uprising. All of the top Syrian generals now report to the IRGC operating out of a command-and-control center inside a military base in Homs Province. The Iranians are said to be closely monitoring military and security leaders, especially Allawite generals that could lead a military coup.
The RPS also says that the IRGC is responsible for footage of alleged attacks on Syrian security personnel that was shown on state television. Assad is denying that his security forces are responsible for the deaths of protesters, instead attributing it to “armed gangs.” The regime has since claimed that these “gangs” are killing both protesters and members of the security forces — a lie meant to justify the use of force and deny responsibility for the death toll.
“In essence, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps now occupies Syria and has become its de facto ruler. Syria has become the 32nd province of Iran,” Farid Ghadry of the Reform Party of Syria said in a press release.
There were strong indications of Iranian involvement in the crackdowns on the protests when the uprising first gained steam. Eyewitnesses in Daraa, where the revolution began, said that some attackers were speaking in Farsi and others said they heard southern Lebanese accents, indicating the involvement of Hezbollah. On March 21, Turkish officials intercepted a secret Iranian arms shipment to Aleppo, Syria. The huge stockpile included “60 Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles, 14 BKC/Bixi machine guns, nearly 8,000 rounds of BKC/AK-47 ammunition, 560 60-mm mortar shells, and 1,288 120-mm mortar shells.”
There is good reason for Assad to be worried enough to request Iranian intervention. The regime consists of Allawites, a minority that represents only 6 to 12 percent of the population. The 4th Armored Division, commanded by Maher Assad, Bashar’s brother, is the only unit fully staffed by Allawites. There are unconfirmed reports of clashes between Assad’s Allawite tribe and that of Ghazi Kanaan, the Interior Minister assassinated in 2006 who comes from a more powerful Allawite tribe.
Video has surfaced of a Syrian soldier in Banias who was shot by the security forces, and eyewitnesses have reported the shooting of soldiers who refused to attack protesters in the city. On April 11, 10 soldiers and officers were hung for disobeying orders to fire on citizens in Banias. State television predictably said they were killed by “armed gangs.” There have been unverifiable reports of friendly encounters between soldiers and protesters, and video has been posted of these positive interactions in Daraa. There is also footage of this happening in Inkhil and Jassem in late March.”
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