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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran | |||||||
| Assad Secretly Deploys Joint Iranian-Syrian Units in Lebanon | |||||||
| 2005-03-07 | |||||||
| DEBKA, so add salt. They are better at reading the tea leaves in Lebanon and Syria than they were in Iraq. Syrian ruler Bashar Assad gave nothing away on Lebanon in his unscheduled address to parliament in Damascus Saturday, March 5. Repeatedly contradicting himself, he said: "We will not stay one day if Lebanese consensus asks us to leave". He then added: but we cannot desert the Lebanese president to whom we have a commitment. Assad's decision to redeploy Syrian troops eastward to the Beqaa Valley up to Syrian border sidestepped the issue. The Syrian ruler did not promise to pull a single Syrian troop or secret agent out of Lebanon. He also declared for good measure that Syria's role in the country would not end with a military withdrawal (which he did not promise.) Assad joked about the international and Arab clamor to quit Lebanon: "I know that the minute I finish this speech, they will say it is not enough. So I say it now: It is not enough." He burst out laughing and the chamber roared with him.
Disappointed Lebanese opposition leaders predictably rejected Assad's statement. We want him to "redeploy" on the other side of the Syrian border, they said. Even for the relocation of the Syrian army in the east, he has set no timetable; nor has he mentioned the removal of his secret agents. DEBKAfile's Washington sources reveal the Bush administration's decision to act for Syria's total international isolation. US National Security Council head Stephen Hadley notified European Washington-based envoys of moves to cut off Damascus' international banking ties and the flow of international funds to and from Syria through Lebanese banks. The volume of these transfers is such that it could bankrupt Syria. Hadley told the Europeans that UN Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen would take off Sunday on a 12-day tour of Europe, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Gulf emirates to finalize the US-Arab-European consensus on international sanctions against Syria. On March 17, Larsen will visit Damascus to give Assad his last chance to implement Security Council resolution 1559 in full, or else face up to UN sanctions. Chirac has already ordered French ties with Damascus severed at all government levels. DEBKAfile's Middle East sources account for the Syrian president's confident bearing when he sidestepped all demands to remove Syria's overbearing presence from Lebanon by the fact that he was acting out a pre-planned strategy. On February 25, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 195 exposed the key move he had set in motion to help him stand up to any military threat. Realizing he could not count on Arab support, Assad furnished himself with an alternative ally. Guess who? Sunday, February 20, as US Air Force One was ferrying President George W. Bush between meetings with European leaders, Iranian military transports were putting down in Damascus military airport. They were the tail end of the biggest military airlift Iran has launched in the Middle East to date. Its objective was to set up shared Iranian-Syrian safeguards against attacks on the Islamic Republic's nuclear installations and/or Syrian strategic targets. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources obtained some of the details of the new hush-hush deployment.
1. The things he left out of his speech to parliament were significant. In announcing the redeployment of his troops on the Syrian border, he omitted mention of the disposition of Syrian intelligence agents and even more pointedly of the early warning stations and the Iranian units who will stay on to man them in Lebanon. With Iranian backing and the presence of Iranian Revolutionary Guards in the south, Syria will retain its grip on Lebanon. 2. Assad saw no need to mention the mixed Syrian-Iranian units scattered in Lebanon since President Bush has only called for Syrian personnel to leave the country.
4. The Syrian ruler exploited American pressure on the Lebanon issue to invoke his secret military cooperation pact with Tehran and quietly install Iranian forces, including intelligence units, on the borders of Israel, thereby upgrading Syria's and the Hizballah's defenses and bolstering the Iranian umbrella over Hizballah's missile emplacements facing Israel. This strengthened structure also signaled the spreading Palestinian opposition to Mahmoud Abbas' leadership that aid is available from a strong Syrian-Syrian-Hizballah across the border. 5. No Israeli response was forthcoming to the new Iranian deployment in Syria and Lebanon, aside from intelligence messages speeding from Tel Aviv to Washington. This has left the Assad regime cock-a-hoop with a sense of achieving yet another coup after pulling off the February 14 assassination of the primary threat to Syria's domination of Lebanon, Rafiq Hariri. | |||||||
| Posted by:Steve |
| #11 The visual of the Marines making an actual landing enroute to kicking ass would be worth wonders when it comes time to threaten some other jerks around the world. Syria'd have the Marines to the west, the Israeli's to the south and the US army behind them. |
| Posted by: Laurence of the Rats 2005-03-07 9:49:02 PM |
| #10 TW - so they can ride in behind the air shield of the 6th Fleet aircraft carriers and make a beach landing in Lebanon and Syria. It saves the expense of taking them all the way back to the States and then bringing them back to Europe for staging. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2005-03-07 6:53:05 PM |
| #9 OP, why would the Marines be rotated to Europe before attacking Syria? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-03-07 5:18:09 PM |
| #8 OP, how about if we see Iraqis taking over control of Baghdad, cauz they're ready? |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-03-07 3:42:49 PM |
| #7 Keep an eye on Iraq. If you start to see large numbers of Army troops being rotated into Iraq, but MARINE units either not being rotated out, or being rotated to EUROPE, you know Bush has made up his mind to get rid of Assad. Consider: the US has 135,000 military troops in Iraq. The 6th Fleet is still in the Med. Virtually every troop ever assigned to a warfighting unit has gotten ground experience in Iraq or Afghanistan. Syria can import 100,000 Iranians, and it still won't make a difference. If the word is passed to "go", Assad is going to have that "a" in the middle of his name changed to an "e". Syria will be a little more difficult to destroy than Iraq, and will definitely need a preliminary barrage of airstrikes prior to an attack. The three SA-5 sites in Syria will definitely have to be taken out first. After that, the coastal anti-ship batteries will have to be destroyed. Then the Marines can land just south of Beirut and just north of Latakia, and join up with the 3rd ID from Iraq in Damascus. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2005-03-07 3:38:35 PM |
| #6 He must mean the Bekka Napalm Test Range, huh? |
| Posted by: mojo 2005-03-07 12:56:01 PM |
| #5 thanks for the comments :-) |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-03-07 12:10:14 PM |
| #4 Looks like proof enough to me of Syrian interference in Iraq. Same guy ... |
| Posted by: 3dc 2005-03-07 11:59:40 AM |
| #3 Gosh, yes 2b. They do look alike, though one looks a bit younger than the other and appears to have a more beakish nose. But what they both seem to have in common is their mood, it doesn't quite seem to fit the circumstances - almost as if they were photoshopped in. No, I'm not saying they were photoshopped, only that it looks like a normal guy in the wrong spot. As Glenn Reynolds said, the one in the middle looks like he wishes he were with the hot chicks instead. No doubt a coincidence, but thanks for sharing. |
| Posted by: so pathetic 2005-03-07 11:19:52 AM |
| #2 There certainly is a strong resemblence, BS. Assad, on the other hand, is playing his culture's final card -- loud bluster proclaiming invincibility. But, being the poor relative, he doesn't have a Baghdad Bob spokesman, and has to do his own blustering. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-03-07 11:14:36 AM |
| #1 since nobody answered me on the other thread, I'll try again here: Look at this photo from Instapundit today ...notice the guy in the middle link now look at this one: (scroll down to last picture, guy on the left link don't they look like the same guy? PS..I used the troll hat so I could get a little attention here! 2b |
| Posted by: Bush Sux 2005-03-07 10:54:41 AM |