Video - President Assad attended the unveiling of a statue to "martyrs" at Damascus University on Saturday.

President Assad attended the unveiling of a statue to "martyrs" at Damascus University on Saturday.
"President Bashar al-Assad joined thousands of students and the families of martyred students at the unveiling of a statue to the memory of the martyrs of Syria's universities at the University of Damascus," State TV reported.
A photo showed Assad being greeted by enthusiastic students.
On Wednesday, Assad visited a Damascus electrical plant on Workers' Day. His last reported appearance before that was on 20 March.HT: EAWorldview.

Escalation in Syria coming out of the shadows.

Escalation in Syria coming out of the shadows.HT: Essential Intel.The Shadow war in greater Syria we described yesterday continues to escalate by the hour during this weekend of early May 2013. According to American sources the Israeli air force carried out strikes against a number of targets in Syria.
Allegedly this was done remotely using standoff weapons from Lebanese air space starting Friday and continuing up until early Saturday, May 3. Israeli officials confirmed the attack during Saturday, May 4, and claimed the target was a convoy of advanced missiles meant to be shipped over to Hezbollah in Lebanon. This repeats the pattern of the previous raid in late January on the Jamaria biochemical complex near Damascus, when the raid on a Hezbollah missile convoy was used as a distraction for the more important raid on the high value fixed target in Jamaria.
Rumors continued to surface regarding the use of chemical weapons by either side of the Syrian civil (war which is in fact a proxy war between NATO and the SCO), which has become a hot potato recently due to purely political reasons emanating from the foolish 'murky red lines' policy of both the American and Israeli governments who publicly committed themselves to actions they knew would be very difficult to implement if push comes to shove regarding Either Iran's nuclear program or Syria's chemical stockpiles. This explains the bizarre skirmish between the Israeli military Intelligence and senior US officials regarding the alleged use of chemical agents in Syria following defense secretary Hagel's visit in Israel recently (which according to some sources was meant to dissuade the Israelis from a unilateral strike on Iran).

Obama's recent declaration that he has no serious intention to invade Syria conforms with his policies so far of using regional proxies as cannon fodder , thus all the speculations about a repeat of the Iraqi scenario seem detached from reality, as this would contradict the modus operandi of the Trilateral faction which controls Obama till date. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Obama is interested in letting the particular fractal of this war, namely the Iranian-Israeli one, come out of the shadows at this point in time, while the wider context of the American-Russian power play in the Levant is pushed aside for the moment.

Lebanese sources continued to report during Saturday about IDF ground movements in the vicinity of the border triangle, confronting the recent deployment of several brigades of Iranian Basij troops in the area (the Basij is an ideologically motivated elite militia of the Ayatollah regime, roughly comparable to the Nazi SS or the Soviet NKVD during WWII). This is done under the cover of the current division level reservist mobilization drill which should expand to live fire maneuvers in the beginning of the coming week. Further to these developments, the IDF has recently reactivated deserted outposts in the Golan front, following a long overhaul of the fortifications in that front and the installation of a new and improved border fence. While the Golan deployment seems defensive in nature (supposedly vs. further attempts by FSA to drag Israel into a direct ground war against the Syrian army by conducting border provocations), actual ground skirmishes are more likely to happen either in Southern Lebanon or in the border triangle, which might escalate to a direct confrontation between IDF and Basij troops.

Another possibility which can't be ruled out is a chemical attack by Hezbollah on Israel (either real or staged by a "mysterious" third party (like the drone incident last week), compounded by the failure of Israel to defend itself that would lead to a rigged 'invitation' for further western military intervention, i.e. extending the French presence in the Lebanon towards its re-occupation by France, likewise NATO's naval presence in the vicinity of Lebanon's offshore gas fields which was jump started by the rigged Israeli defeat in Lebanon in summer 2006.

It's not clear at this point why the Israeli defense establishment agrees to be used as cannon fodder by the American strategists. Perhaps this is based on the vain hope that eventually this will lead to an American attack on Iran or at least to a green light for an Israeli raid with American back-up. However this seems to go against the developing American trend of engaging the Mullah regime in prolonged diplomatic tango (probably a covert backroom deal) of allowing them to push forward with the nuclear program undisturbed so as long as they don't conduct a nuclear test and don't declare themselves to be a military nuclear power(by the way, this is precisely how the Nixon administration dealt with the Israeli nuclear program back at the time). This shouldn't matter much to the Mullahs because these functions are already taken care of on their behalf by North Korea. Further developments in this highly volatile sector remain to be seen during the coming days and weeks.Read the full story here. 

Iranian think tank head: The Loss Of Syria Will Lead To The Loss Of Tehran Itself.

Iranian think tank head: The Loss Of Syria Will Lead To The Loss Of Tehran Itself.HT: Memri.By: Y. Mansharof.

"It Is Only Israel That Wants To Destroy [Iran], Because We Have Said From The Outset That We Do Not Want Israel To Exist"

Iranian Official: The Loss Of Syria Will Lead To The Loss Of Tehran Itself.Syria Is An Iranian Province; Iran Has Formed A 60,000-Strong Syrian Basij; Israel Is Our Only Threat.

On February 13, 2013, Mehdi Taeb, the head of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's Ammar Base think tank and the brother of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence bureau director Hossein Taeb, delivered a speech at a Basij conference in Mashhad, Iran, on Syria's importance to the Iranian regime.

In his speech, he defined Syria as a strategic Iranian province, and said that preserving the existence of the Syrian regime was even more important to the Iranian regime than preserving the oil-rich southern Iranian province of Khuzestan – despite the latter's strategic and economic importance.

Taeb also stressed that if Iran's enemies were to attack both Syria and Khuzestan, Tehran would prefer to preserve Syria, since its loss would lead to the loss of Tehran itself. He added that that Iran had helped to establish a 60,000-man Basij force in Syria which is fighting the rebels alongside the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

Reviewing regional and superregional threats to Tehran, Taeb assessed that right now, Israel – not the U.S. – constitutes the only serious threat.
Tehran, he says, is successfully hobbling Israel by means of Hizbullah, and added that the U.S. will never attack Iran because it lacks the military manpower to do so, and also because of its shaky economy.

Taeb's view of Syria's strategic importance to the Iranian regime was earlier expressed by Ali Akbar Velayati, advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, on February 8, 2013: "Iran has planned its defensive positions outside its own borders, and has linked its fate to the fate of the Islamic countries; this is why it will support those such as [Syrian President] Bashar Al-Assad to the end..."

Taeb's statements triggered harsh criticism from conservative and reformist circles alike; they claimed that he is harming Iranian sovereignty with his willingness to relinquish precious parts of the homeland and that his statements support the Arab claim that Khuzestan is not part of Iran. They also said that his statements support the claim by enemies of Iran that the Iranian regime is oppressing its own citizens at home using the Basij, and that the statements confirm claims that Iran is now supporting the oppression of civilians in Syria.

In response to the criticism, Taeb said in three separate interviews with Iranian media that his statements had been distorted, but did not retract them: "The foreign media and the anti-[Iranian] regime media are helpless to deal with the Iranian regime, and therefore they distort statements made by Iranians... Iran's position regarding the developments in Syria is completely clear, and my statement was a political and strategic analysis."

Following are excerpts from Taeb's statements on Syria's strategic importance to Iran:

Syria – A "Strategic Province" Of Iran.

"Syria is [Iran's] 35th province, and it is a strategic province for us. If the enemy attacks us and wants to take Syria or Khuzestan, our top priority will be to preserve Syria. By preserving Syria, we will be able to retake Khuzestan – but if we lose Syria, we will not be able to preserve Tehran...

"Syria has an army, but it cannot wage the war within Syria's cities. This is why Iran proposed establishing a Basij force, to conduct the fighting in the cities. [So] the 60,000-strong 'Syrian Basij' was established; it has taken over the fighting in the streets from the army..."

"It Is Only Israel That Wants To Destroy [Iran], Because We Have Said From The Outset That We Do Not Want Israel To Exist"

"Today, there is only one threat to us, and that is the Zionist regime. It has the motivation and the capability to attack [Iran], and there is nothing preventing it from doing so. 

None of our neighboring countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, or Saudi Arabia – has either the money or the [military] strength [to attack us]; thus, we are not facing any regional threat. "[However,] in the superregional arena, we see the U.S. as an enemy that would like to attack us but has neither the funds nor the [military] strength to do so... and it has no manpower to wage a war.

"To examine the economic state of a particular country, we must look at its budget proposal... During the Romney-Obama presidential debates, Romney told [Obama]: 'You have ruined the American economy, and amassed $16 trillion in debt – and Iran is now using this economic situation as a club to beat us with.' Obama responded, 'This debt is not my fault, but rather the fault of the American system...'

"During [the November 2012 Gaza conflict], the U.S. was in the Mediterranean, but did not come to [Israel's] aid. This is because if even one [Gaza] rocket had hit one of its warships, the wages of that ship's crew would have automatically doubled. [The U.S.] will never initiate a war against us.

"It is only Israel that wants to destroy us, because we have said from the outset that we do not want Israel to exist. Israel has as many nuclear warheads as we do provinces and towns; if they attack us, they will be accountable to no one in the world. 

"[As to why we have not targeted Israel's nuclear warheads] – this is because we have completely locked up [Israel] with Hizbullah. During the 2006 Lebanon war, the Zionist regime tried to break this lock [i.e. Hizbullah], but after 33 days [of fighting], it gave up, and left [Lebanon]. According to [Hizbullah secretary-general] Hassan Nasrallah, Israel has said that in that war, it used 100% of its capability, while [Hizbullah] used only 4% of its capability."Read the full story here.