Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators...
and those of the Leb-based Hezbollah militia, a senior State Department official said Tuesday.
An unknown number of Iranians are fighting in Syria, the official said, citing accounts from members of the opposition Free Syrian Army, which is backed by the United States. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview a strategy session that Secretary of State John F. Kerry is to hold Wednesday with key supporters of the Syrian opposition.
With the British, French and American governments considering providing arms to the Syrian opposition on a scale not yet seen in the civil war, the U.S. official's allegation was a tacit acknowledgment that the two-year-old Syrian conflict has become a regional war and a de facto U.S. proxy fight with Iran.
Russia appears to be hedging its bets, as the U.S. official acknowledged Tuesday. Assad's forces are being resupplied from somewhere, the official said, and not all of the armaments can be explained away as part of a continuation of weapons contracts that predate the conflict.