04/12/12

Former Pr.Minister Saad Hariri meets a Delegation of Syrian National Coalition opposition Headed By Sheikh Ahmed Maaz Khatib. Tuesday, December 04, 2012 (The Daily Star/DalatiNohra,HO)

28/10/12

24/10/12

22/10/12

This weekend Syria’s bloody conflict went regional. The killing of Lebanon’s top security official and tensions at the borders with Jordan and Turkey prove that Bashar al-Assad’s fierce battle to hold on to power is causing wider instability. This is making the west’s posture of concerned non-intervention harder to sustain.

The west has long walked a difficult line on the Syrian conflict. It has called for Assad to go but done nothing actively to promote this end, fearing the risks of being drawn into a prolonged and messy civil war. The result unfortunately has been to encourage Assad to fight on, while simultaneously leading to the radicalisation of the opposition. The result is now a vicious stalemate in Syria, with huge loss of life. But with neighbouring states being sucked into this morass, the stakes have risen beyond the purely humanitarian concern that everyone must feel for Syrian citizens.

Exhorting Assad to change tack has been a waste of breath. While he continues to be propped up by Russia and Iran, he has every incentive to prolong the war, even if he has no chance of prevailing militarily. Russia’s split with the international community, meanwhile, also rules out any consensus on a UN-led intervention.

This, then, is a choice between unappealing options. The international community can sit back and allow the war to burn on, sucking in more radical elements and potentially sparking a series of wider regional conflicts. Or it can offer more than rhetorical support for the anti-Assad forces in Syria.

This is far from a simple option. Not only would it risk a conflict with Russia and Iran, it could also end up militarising an opposition that may contain unsavoury jihadist elements. This is particularly concerning in a situation where Assad has the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the world.

If anything is to be done to change the dynamics of this conflict, the west must prepare the ground for greater intervention. This does not mean boots on the ground. But it does mean arming the rebels. This will not happen overnight. If the west is to supply more sophisticated weaponry to the opposition, it has to establish a more formal relationship with them. There have to be safeguards on how these weapons will be used. And when hostilities are concluded, it must be possible to recover the weapons. Finally, a broader case needs to be built with regional powers, such as Turkey and the Arab world, to justify such intervention.

Non-intervention is only credible as a policy if it is respected by everyone. This is manifestly not the case in Syria. The Assad regime is receiving military and financial help from Iran and Russia. The rebels are being supplied by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The conflict is at a bloody impasse, while the policy of the international community amounts to little more than hand-wringing from the sidelines. This risks prolonging a dreadful conflict and radicalising the region. Now is the moment to change course

21/10/12

Matthew Cassel

Antakya, Turkey - The mountains melt away into the waters of the Mediterranean outside the Turkish-Alawite city of Samandag, nestled just beside the border with Syria.

Beyond the peaks is Latakia province, the ancestral homeland of the Assad family that has ruled Syria for more than four decades.

But on this side lies Hatay, Turkey’s southernmost province, which is home to most of the country’s Alawites. At around one million, they represent a small but vocal minority leading the opposition to the government’s role in the conflict in neighbouring Syria.

“When something is happening in Syria we feel it,” said 31-year-old Kemal sitting in a park in central Samandag. “We have Turkish citizenship, but our origins are Arab.”

He spoke in a Syrian dialect of Arabic, like most Turkish Alawites are able to. Although ethnically Arab, the community leaves little doubt about its strong patriotism for the modern Turkish state and its secular model of government.

When asked whether he felt more loyal to Syria or Turkey, Kemal presented his upturned forearms: “Cut open my veins and I assure you Turkish flags will pour out.”

Kemal, who declined to give his surname, was on a brief break from work as a barber in Saudi Arabia. Because of their common language, many Alawites from Turkey travel to the oil-rich Gulf for work.

Kemal says he hates living in what he described as Saudi Arabia’s ultra-conservative Muslim society. Most members of the Alawite faith, an offshoot of Shia Islam, are secular.

Opposing the opposition

But even more than living in Saudi Arabia, Kemal dislikes the country’s arming of opposition movements inside Syria. His criticism also extended to other Gulf and western governments he believes are partaking in a larger “American game” to exert further control over the Middle East.

As the effects of the Syrian conflict spill across its northern border into Hatay and other neighbouring provinces, Kemal’s views largely reflect those held by the larger Alawite community in Turkey.

The situation is even tenser 20 minutes down the road in Antakya, Hatay’s main city. Pointing to the Orontes river that runs through the city’s heart, a colleague said, “It flows north from Syria, just like the refugees.”

What began as a popular uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has since turned into a bloody conflict that has created a refugee crisis as large numbers of Syrians flee to neighbouring countries.

According to the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR), almost 350,000 Syrian refugees have registered or are waiting to register with the organisation. Turkish authorities recently said more than 100,000 Syrians have sought refuge within its borders.

When the refugees first started arriving in mid-2011, Selim Matkap, an Alawite emergency room doctor and one of the heads of the union of medical workers in Hatay, said he and other Turkish human rights organisations tried to help by requesting permission to enter the refugee camps, which are all under tight control of the Turkish army.

“We wanted to go to the camps as associations from Hatay, because if people come here [in such circumstances] then we have responsibility to take care of them,” Matkap said.

For months he said that the groups repeatedly tried to gain access to the camps through the local government, with each refusal spawning more suspicion as to why the government seemed determined to keep them out.

Outrage

Soon after, residents of Hatay were outraged when the Free Syrian Army, the main umbrella organisation fighting against the Syrian government, on its website claimed its main base to be “Hatay, Turkey”. After complaints to Turkish officials, it was later changed to “Damascus, Syria”.

The Apaydin refugee camp near Antakya houses dozens of former Syrian army generals and hundreds of army defectors, and is the suspected location of FSA commander Riad al-Assad.

“The Turkish government is not supporting a democratic transition in Syria, it’s supporting armed groups,” Matkap said.
“We believe the Syrian regime is not democratic, but using weapons and the tactic of war is not a legitimate method to oppose it.”

“It’s the poor people who will suffer from this war, not the regime.”

As time progressed, Maktap and others began organising protests in Antakya against the government’s support for the armed opposition in Syria. He admitted that the overwhelming majority of the thousands of protesters were Alawites.

Matkap said Alawites have faced persecution since the time of Selim I, a 16th century Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and today still feel marginalised in Turkish society.

When Hafez al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s father, took power in Syria in 1970, Maktap said Turkish Alawites began to feel more confident.

“It’s natural for Alawites in Hatay to think, ‘If something bad happens to me, then there is the Syrian government behind me’,” Matkap said.

After a number of large demonstrations in early September, the local governor banned all protests in Hatay as reports started to emerge of sectarian tensions between Alawites and Sunni Muslims in Antakya.

As the war in Syria drags on, fears have risen that the conflict has become increasingly sectarian, pitting Syria’s minority Alawites against the majority Sunni population.

But Ali Yeral, the head of an Alawite cultural organisation in Antakya, dismissed this characterisation.

“[Syria] doesn’t have a Sunni-Alawite problem,” he said, adding that he considers armed groups to be “terrorists” for taking up arms against the state.

“Like Turkey has the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party], Ireland has the IRA [Irish Republican Army], Syria also has this problem.”

Yeral said that at first, he was excited upon hearing calls for more democracy in Syria.

Alarmed Alawites

But he said that Alawites became turned off from the uprising when videos showed Syrian protesters chanting not only against the regime, but also against Alawites more generally.

He also pointed to the sectarian rhetoric of exiled Syrian Sheikh Adnan al-Arour. The radical Sunni cleric, who hosts a popular satellite TV show in Saudi Arabia, infamously said that Alawites should be put through the meat grinder once the regime is toppled.

Syrian opposition activists in Hatay told Al Jazeera that these views do not represent the majority of their movement, which opposes sectarianism and sees the decision to take up arms as one of self-defence.

But as the battle for Syria continues with little end in sight, reports have increased of radical Islamist fighters, including many non-Syrians, taking part in the war.

Many people in Antakya, the main hub for foreigners travelling to opposition-held areas of northern Syria, say in recent months, they have seen a greater number of Arab and other Muslims who they suspect of being foreign fighters.

“Antakya is peaceful,” Yeral said. “But now we have foreign fighters turning up on the streets.”

Yeral feels that if any anti-Alawite backlash in Syria were to spill over into Turkey, it would not only include the relatively small Alawite community, but the much larger Turkish Alevi population believed to number some 20 million.

Because they share the same name in Turkish (Alevi), Arab Alawites and Turkish Alevis are often thought to be the same religion, despite the fact that members of the respective faiths observe different religious practices and beliefs.

However, they both consider themselves followers of Ali, the prophet’s relative, from whom their name derives, setting them apart from Turkey’s Sunni-dominated ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). 

But while Turkish Alevis are spread throughout the country and harder to define as a coherent political group, Alawites are mostly concentrated in Hatay, a region with its own unique history.

‘Betrayed’

After the Ottoman Empire collapsed during WWI, France, then in control of Syria, helped Turkey gain control over Hatay in the 1930s. The region had been considered part of Syria, but France was eager to win Turkey over to the allies’ side in WWII.

Furious by what they felt was the theft of much of their Arab territory, many Alawites and other Arabs left the area for Syria.

The Alawites who stayed behind became part of the Turkish state, founded on the strong secularism of Kemal Ataturk, its first president, whose ideology they still subscribe to.

But today, Alawites in Turkey feel betrayed by a government they say is acting against their interests by supporting armed groups.

“We are Turkish citizens and the owners of this land, we have to ask why we’re not getting support from our government [like the Syrian opposition is],” Maktap said.

“Instead we see rebels firing bullets at the government that has supported us.”

When asked what would happen to Turkish Alawites if the Assad regime in Syria falls, Matkap replied, “It’s going to be difficult.

“We never really felt we belonged to this state. It will be the same way if the regime goes.”

19/10/12

The United States posted a reward of up to $12

million on Thursday for help in tracking down two

Iran-based al-Qaeda financial backers accused of

funneling money to extremists in Syria

15/10/12

If hard evidence emerges of the Shiite militant

group’s involvement, it would increase tensions in

Lebanon where armed partisans on opposite sides

live in close proximity.

By Nicholas Blanford | Christian Science Monitor

A member of the Free Syrian Army inspects damaged houses in Bustan al Basha in Aleppo city in northern Syria October 12, 2012. REUTERS/Zain Karam (SYRIA - Tags: CIVIL UNREST POLITICS)

Beside the arrow-straight road between the northern Lebanon town of Qaa and the border with Syria stands a small, bland mosque decorated with the yellow flags of the militant Shiite group Hezbollah.

The mosque is the lone Hezbollah bastion amid a flat agricultural landscape populated mainly by Sunni Lebanese and used as a safe haven by Lebanese and Syrian members of the Free Syrian Army. But parked discreetly – and incongruously – in the shade of a tree beside the mosque is an ambulance waiting to transport wounded Hezbollah fighters returning from fighting against the FSA over the border, says Syrian fighter Hussein, a former irrigation engineer who today heads a small unit of the FSA’s Jusiyah Martyrs’ Brigade, named after the nearby Syrian border village.

Accusations of Hezbollah involvement in Syria have strengthened in recent weeks amid reports of fighters killed in combat being returned to Lebanon for quiet burial. Hezbollah, along with its patron Iran, are key allies of the Assad regime, together forming an “axis of resistance” to confront Israel and Western ambitions for the Middle East that spans the region.

RELATED – Hezbollah 101: Who is the militant group, and what does it want?

If hard confirmation arises that Hezbollah is playing a role in Syria it will increase tensions in Lebanon, which is already attempting to distance itself as much as possible from the reverberations of the bloody conflict roiling its larger neighbor. The Lebanese government – which is dominated by allies of Hezbollah – formally follows a policy of disassociation from the Syria crisis, although it has merely averted its eyes as Syrian rebel fighters turn parts of the territory along the border into a de facto safe haven from the fighting.

GROWING EVIDENCE

In response to intensifying speculation over Hezbollah’s alleged activities in Syria, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the party’s leader, said last week that the Assad regime had not asked him for military assistance.

He acknowledged, however, that the were more than two dozen villages and farms located just inside Syria, north of the border with Lebanon, that are home to around 30,000 Lebanese, many of whom are Shiites and members of Hezbollah. Mr. Nasrallah said that they had been coming under threat from “armed groups” and had chosen to defend themselves.

“Some of them decided to flee the area, but most of them stayed in their towns and started to arm themselves,” he said. “The residents of these towns took the decision to stay and defend themselves against armed groups and did not engage in battle between the regime and the opposition,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech.

Nearly two weeks ago, Hezbollah held a prominent funeral for Ali Nassif, a senior commander who died “while performing his jihadi duties”, a standard phrase used by the group when announcing deaths of fighters in circumstances other than direct combat with Israel, such as training accidents. The Jusiyah Martyrs’ Brigade militants claim that Nassif was killed in the border village of Rableh and was deliberately targeted for assassination.

“We waited for him to emerge from a school which they use as a command post. When we saw a black Grand Cherokee with tinted windows leave the school, we guessed it was him and hit it with an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade],” says Hussein.

Sunni and Shiite Islam: Do you know the difference? Take our quiz.

He and other members of the Jusiyah Martyrs’ Brigade interviewed over a 24-hour period while resting in Masharih al-Qaa claim that their most formidable foes across the border in Syria are not Syrian Army soldiers, but battle-hardened veteran Hezbollah fighters. They say the Hezbollah men are helping the Assad regime regain control of a cluster of villages and towns in the vicinity of the Syrian town of Qusayr, five miles north of the border.

“The regime’s soldiers are cowards against us. But we fear the Hezbollah men,” says Hussein.

He added that he had encountered some Hezbollah fighters on the road beside the border in Jusiyah and had approached them with bottles of water, pretending to be a supportive civilian.

“None of them were under 35 years old. They were very professional and tough fighters. You can tell they are superior fighters from the way they move in battle and how they fight,” he says.

SELF-DEFENSE

Accusations of Hezbollah involvement in Syria have been aired by opponents of the Assad regime since protests erupted in March last year. Many of the early accounts were less than convincing. Similarly, YouTube videos purporting to show Hezbollah fighters in Syria were inconclusive and often posted by people politically opposed to the party.

But in recent months there have been persistent reports of Hezbollah assisting the Assad regime with combat advice and passing on the group’s formidable guerrilla skills to the pro-regime Shabiha militia, with the goal of turning them into an effective paramilitary force.

Hezbollah views the conflict in Syria as a confrontation with strategic consequences for the region. The collapse of the Assad regime and its replacement with a Sunni-dominated regime moderate in its foreign policy and more closely aligned with Turkey and Saudi Arabia would tear out the geo-strategic heart of the “axis of resistance.”

“Hezbollah has no choice but to be there,” says a prominent member of a Shiite clan in the Bekaa Valley who is close to Hezbollah. “The opposition has fighters from Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia helping them, so why shouldn’t the Assad regime receive the help of Hezbollah?”

Furthermore, Hezbollah is not the only Lebanese entity accused of partisan involvement in Syria. Several hundred Lebanese Sunnis have volunteered for the Free Syrian Army, joining other Arab nationals drawn to the conflict, according to Lebanese supporters of the Syrian opposition. Others provide shelter for the FSA in north Lebanon, allowing militants to rest, regroup, and plan. There have been several media reports – the latest in yesterday’s edition of the British newspaper The Guardian – that Okab Saqr, a Lebanese parliamentarian allied to former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, is in Turkey organizing the transfer of Saudi-funded arms to the Syrian opposition. A Washington-based analyst who recently visited the Turkish border area with Syria said that Saqr’s name “is all over the place.”

Nowhere is the divergence between Hezbollah support for the Assad regime and Lebanese Sunni backing for the Syrian opposition more starkly illustrated than in the northern Bekaa Valley. The western flank of the valley is a Hezbollah stronghold and allows access for fighters to the Shiite-populated villages just over the border in Syria.

The eastern flank, including Masharih al-Qaa, contains a sizeable Sunni population – some of whom are FSA volunteers and almost all of whom are sympathetic to the Syrian opposition. That has created an unusual situation: Just north of the border, Hezbollah fighters and Syrian troops battle Lebanese and Syrian FSA militants, while just south of the frontier, the two foes eye each other warily, but peacefully, from their respective corners of the northern Bekaa.

Even the lone Hezbollah mosque, despite being surrounded by hostile FSA elements, has been left untouched. Similarly, Hezbollah has made no effort to engage the FSA in Masharih al-Qaa.

“If Hezbollah decided to come after us here, it would start a civil war,” says Ismael, a Lebanese resident of Masharih al-Qaa who serves with the Jusiyah Martyrs’ Brigade. “And nobody wants that.”

15/10/12

The majority of weapons secretly shipped to Syria at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar go to hardline Islamic rebel groups rather than more secular organizations favored by the West, The New York Times reported Monday.

Citing unnamed officials, the newspaper said this was the conclusion reached in classified reports presented to President Barack Obama and other senior officials.

This situation has prompted officials to voice frustration over the fact that there is no central clearinghouse for the shipments and no effective way of vetting the groups that receive them, the report said.

Because of this, Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus traveled secretly to Turkey last month in a bid to steer the supply effort, the report said.

The CIA has not commented on the trip.

Petraeus’s goal was to oversee the process of “vetting, and then shaping, an opposition that the US thinks it can work with,” the paper quoted an unnamed Middle Eastern diplomat as saying.

The CIA has also sent officers to Turkey to help direct the aid, but the agency lacks good intelligence about the many rebel figures and factions operating in Syria, The Times noted.

-AFP

13/10/12

This is Mr Brahimi’s second visit to the region since his appointment in September

The UN-Arab League envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, is due to hold talks in Turkey, amid rising tensions between Ankara and Damascus.

Mr Brahimi will hear Turkey’s perspective on the raging crisis from Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Several days of cross-border firing followed the killing of five Turkish civilians by Syrian shelling last week.

Earlier this week, Turkey intercepted a Syria-bound plane amid reports it had Russian-made defence equipment aboard.

Syria has dismissed the claim as a lie, challenging Turkey to show any evidence.

And in Syria itself, activists said on Friday that rebel fighters had seized a government air defence base near the embattled north-western city of Aleppo.

The claim has not been independently verified.

‘No obvious plan’

Mr Brahimi is due to meet Mr Davutoglu in Istanbul later on Saturday. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, will also have talks with his Turkish counterpart.

“It is important that no one pours oil on the fire. We are counting on moderation and de-escalation,” the German minister said, according to news agency AFP.

Turkey may not be at war with Syria, but it is now increasingly involved in its neighbour’s conflict, the BBC’s James Reynolds in Turkey reports.

The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accuses Turkey, along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, of arming the rebels.

However, Syria has said it is ready to set up a joint committee to oversee security on the border.

Its foreign ministry said it had been discussing with diplomats from Russia, a key ally, the idea of a Syrian-Turkish security committee to avoid misunderstandings at the border, which would establish a “mechanism for surveillance of the border while respecting national sovereignty”.

‘Hazardous’ aftermath’

Mr Brahimi’s visit comes a day after he met senior Saudi officials in the city of Jeddah.

Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Prince Abdel Aziz bin Abdullah was quoted as urging “an immediate halt to the bloodshed of the Syrian people”.

However, the envoy’s visit to the region carries no immediately obvious peace plan, our correspondent says.

He adds that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has suggested Mr Brahimi may head to Damascus next week if his meetings in the region go well.

But speaking on Saturday, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan, criticised the UN Security Council for being ineffective in dealing with the conflict in Syria.

“If we leave the issue to the vote of one or two members of the permanent five at the United Nations Security Council , then the aftermath of Syria would be very hazardous and humanity will write it down in history with unforgettable remarks,” he said.

“It’s high time to consider a structural change for international institutions, especially for the UN Security Council.”

12/10/12

A Syrian man, wounded by Syrian Army shelling, cries while the bodies of his relatives lie on the street near Dar El Shifa hospital in Aleppo, Syria, Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012. (AP Photo/ Manu Brabo)

11/10/12

The UN’s chief humanitarian coordinators for Syria, on a Gulf tour to seek aid, have warned that already scarce resources for the growing number of displaced in the war-torn country are quickly drying up.

The UN’s regional refugee coordinator, Panos Mumtzis, told AFP in Dubai that the aid effort was hit by a “significant funding shortfall,” adding that financial support is needed for shelter, winter preparation, health and water.

The UN estimates some half a million Syrians have fled the country. About 335,000 of them are registered refugees who have escaped to neighboring Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq.

By the end of the year, the UN expects the number to registered refugees to more than double to around 710,000 refugees.

Inside Syria, there are an estimated 1.2 million displaced Syrians living in ill-equipped public buildings.

“This is no longer business as usual. We have moved into an emergency situation. It is a crisis,” said Mumtzis of the 18-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime that shows no signs of abating.

“When we get 2,000 to 3,000 refugees per day crossing the border continuously now for two months, this is really serious.”

The UN has requested $488 million for Syrian refugee assistance alone. So far $142 million, only 29 percent, has been provided.

The situation is just as grim for the UN’s humanitarian agencies assisting Syria’s internally displaced and other vulnerable populations within the country.

A UN call for $348 million for those still trapped within the country’s war-ravaged borders is only 38 percent funded.

The biggest reason for the funding shortage is that the Syrian crisis is unfolding “a lot faster than anyone had thought,” Mumtzis added.

The UN has been forced to revise its humanitarian appeals on three separate occasions in the past six months.

The “speed [of escalation] is reaching levels where we need to have an equally speedy funding mechanism,” said Mumtzis.

But time is one thing the aid agencies don’t have.

Winter is fast approaching, refugee numbers are rising every day and funds are being depleted at an ever-faster rate.

Even more alarming is the fact that at least three quarters of the refugees are women and children, raising fears that a persistent shortage of funds could put the conflict’s most vulnerable populations at even greater risk.

The most urgent need right now is “to be ready for winter,” the UN’s regional humanitarian coordinator Radhoune Nouicer told AFP, adding that the aid community’s level of preparedness “will depend on funding.”

In total, more than 2.5 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian assistance. So far, more than 32,000 people have been killed in the revolt, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“Today we are coping… from hand to mouth,” said Mumtzis, who warned the UN “absolutely [does] not” have enough for the increasing demands of the deadly conflict.

“The funds are going out very very quickly because more and more people keep on coming [for help],” said Mumtzis.

The largest donors through the UN system are the United States and the European Union. Arab countries have been primarily donating through local and regional charities, or bilaterally.

Few of the Arab donations, with the exception of a million-dollar pledge by Kuwait and a $7.5 million pledge by Saudi Arabia, have gone through UN agencies.

Saudi Arabia also held a five-day public fundraiser in July raising more than $72.33 million, $5.3 million of which was from King Abdullah himself, though most of it has yet to be allocated and it remains unclear how much of it will go through the UN.

The UN coordinators said they hoped their tour of the oil-rich Arab states of the Gulf which will include Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia will result in pledges of both aid and greater cooperation.

-AFP

08/10/12

Riyadh considers that going ahead with the initiative is not productive

Dubai: Saudi Arabia has reportedly opted out of the initiative launched by Egypt to tackle the Syrian crisis.

07/10/12

The Sunday Times’ reports Iran has withdrawn 275 

members of elite brigade from Syria in face of

domestic economic crisis.

Photo: Raheb Homavandi/Reuters

Iran has withdrawn 275 members of its elite Qods Force from Syria in the face of its domestic economic crisis, The Sunday Times reported on Sunday.

The members belong to a brigade known as Unit 400, which fought alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad against Sunni rebels, the report quoted a western intelligence officer as saying. According to The Times, the unit flew out of Syria last week. The report added that the information was confirmed by a relative of a Unit 400 officer.

The withdrawal of Iranian troops from Syria was seen by some as an indicator of waning confidence among Iran’s Shi’ite leaders in Assad’s ability to survive the uprising.

According to The Times, there have been loud complaints about an estimated $5 billion of Iranian money spent to prop up the Assad regime in Damascus.

There are signs that Iran’s oil wealth, which pays for its nuclear program and support for Assad, is eroding. Iran faces new sanctions for failing to cooperate with Western concerns about its nuclear program, and the sanctions are taking its toll, evident in the fall in the value of the rial and soaring food prices.

Last week, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz predicted that Iran’s economy is edging towards collapse due to international sanctions over its controversial nuclear program.

“The sanctions on Iran in the past year jumped a level,” Steinitz said. “The Iranians are in great economic difficulties as a result of the sanctions,” he added.

A Foreign Ministry document leaked last week also said sanctions had caused more damage to Iran’s economy than at first thought and ordinary Iranians were suffering under soaring inflation.

On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Iran that the international community is ready to impose more sanctions if the country does not begin to address concerns about its nuclear program.

The first official acknowledgement from a senior military commander that Iran has a military presence on the ground in Syria came last month. Commander-in-chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Mohammad Ali Jafari admitted: “A number of members of the Qods Force are present in Syria.”

However, he denied the existence of on the ground assistance, stating, “the IRGC is giving intellectual help and even financial assistance but there is no military presence.”

“We all have a responsibility to support Syria and not allow the line of resistance to be broken,” Fars news agency, which claims to be independent but which is widely known to have close ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, quoted Hossein Taeb, the intelligence unit head, as saying.

Following the admission, Western members of the UN Security Council blasted Iran for providing Assad with weapons to help him crush an 18-month-long uprising by rebels determined to topple his government.

“Iran’s arms exports to the murderous Assad regime in Syria are of particular concern,” US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told the 15-nation council during a meeting on the world body’s Iran sanctions regime.

A UN Security Council panel of independent experts that monitors sanctions against Iran has uncovered several examples of Iran transferring arms to Syria’s government. Damascus has accused Qatar and Saudi Arabia of arming rebels determined to topple Assad’s government.

01/10/12

30/09/12