Syria chessboard and rumored moves by Iran , NATO , Saudis and Russia .......the next two months should be interesting !

http://www.infowars.com/nato-plot-to-use-ambulances-as-cover-for-humanitarian-invasion-of-syria/

NATO Plot To Use Ambulances As Cover For Humanitarian Invasion of Syria

False flag chemical weapons attack to frame Assad finalized

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Wednesday, August 29, 2012

A source claims that NATO powers in coordination with Saudi Arabia are putting the finishing touches to a false flag plot to frame President Bashar Al-Assad’s forces for launching a chemical weapons attack as a pre-cursor to a NATO intervention which will use ambulances as humanitarian cover for a military assault.

The source told Syrian news channel Addounia that a Saudi company had fitted 1400 ambulance vehicles with anti-gas & anti-chemical filtering systems at a cost of $97,000 dollars each, in preparation for a chemical weapons attack carried out by FSA rebels using mortar rounds. A further 400 vehicles have been prepared as troop carriers.

The attack, which will involve the use of white phosphorus, sarin and mustard gas, will be launched on a heavily populated town near the Syria/Jordan border, possibly Daraa, after which the vehicles will pour in under the cover of humanitarian aid.

The ambulances, emblazoned with the slogan “Syrian People’s Relief,” will operate under the guise of an aid mission to help the victims of the chemical weapons attack, but in reality are nothing short of armored personnel carriers.

Traveling from Riyadh to the Jordanian capital Ammam before entering Syria, the vehicles will be used to create a buffer zone that will lead to a NATO military intervention under the pretext of punishing Assad’s regime for the atrocity, the source claims.

The company providing the ambulances is based in Riyadh and is also currently negotiating with the Yemeni government to manufacture military vehicles for the Yemeni Army.

According to the source, a meeting between the head of Saudi news channel Al Arabiya and a U.S. diplomat took place at the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates. The purpose of the meeting was to agree upon a conditioning program to prepare the public for the likelihood that Bashar Al-Assad’s forces would use chemical weapons. Shortly after the meeting, Al Arabiya began running news segments depicting the inevitability of a chemical weapons attack carried out by Assad’s forces.

The report coincides with public statements in recent days from both President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande threatening Syria with military action outside the auspices of the UN Security Council if it uses chemical weapons.

During an annual foreign policy speech to French ambassadors on Monday, Hollande warned Assad that any instance of the Syrian Army using chemical weapons against insurgents “would be a legitimate reason for direct intervention” by NATO powers. He went on to assure FSA rebels that France would not hesitate in recognizing them as the legitimate government of Syria.

On August 20, Obama cautioned that any attempt to deploy or even move Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons would represent a “red line” and result in direct U.S. military action.

“That would change my calculus; that would change my equation,” said Obama.

Up to 60,000 U.S. ground troops have apparently been prepared as part of a “worst-case scenario” wherein troops would “go into Syria to secure chemical and biological weapons sites following the fall of the Assad government.”

Observers have been warning for months that NATO-backed rebels, with the aid of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, were preparing to launch a chemical weapons attack that would be blamed on Assad, noting how rebels had been supplied with gas masks.

In addition, as far back as November it was reported that Libya’s new NATO-backed transitional government had agreed to send chemical weapons to Syrian rebels. In June it was reported that FSA fighters had now acquired those weapons are were training to use them at facilities in Turkey.

The FSA also recently announced that they had taken over a missile site equipped with chemical weapons under the justification that they wanted to prevent the weapons being used by the Syrian government.

It wouldn’t be the first time that a “false flag” attack has been used to demonize the Syrian government in order to grease the skids for military intervention.

As the respected German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reported, the Houla massacre, which was immediately blamed on Assad’s forces by the establishment media, was in fact carried out by anti-Assad Sunni militants.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/08/28/Iran-said-to-supply-Syria-with-elite-force/UPI-30821346135400/

Iran said to supply Syria with elite force

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Iranian Army soldiers march in front of the mausoleum of the Iran's late leader Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran, Iran on April 17, 2012. UPI/Maryam Rahmanian

DAMASCUS, Syria, Aug. 28 (UPI) -- Iran has begun supplying Syria with an elite force trained in obliterating military uprisings, force members said after Iran promised to help Syria if it asked.
The quiet shipment of hundreds of members of Iran's 125,000-man Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, or the Revolutionary Guards, to Syria is in addition to Tehran's stepped-up efforts to aid Syrian President Bashar Assad's military with cash and arms, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
It is also part of an initiative in which Iran replaces low-ranking Syrian soldiers who defected with Iranian troops, furnishes Syria with a paramilitary volunteer militia that could support Syria's Alawite paramilitary semi-criminal militia gangs known as shabiha, and provides an unconventional-warfare special-operations Quds Force to spearhead military cooperation with Assad forces, the Journal said.
The Quds Force, which reports directly to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is generally tasked with training proxy militants and exporting Iran's Islamic ideology.
Washington blames the force -- whose size was estimated by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2007 at 15,000 troops and operatives -- for terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Revolutionary Guards corps, whose official constitutional duties are to protect Iran's Islamic system, are actually fearsome preventers and eliminators of internal dissident and military uprisings, the International Institute for Strategic Studies says.
"Today we are involved in fighting every aspect of a war, a military one in Syria and a cultural one as well," Gen. Salar Abnoush, a guards unit commander, told volunteer trainees in a speech Monday.



His remarks were reported by Iran's Daneshjoo news agency, run by regime-aligned students, and could not be independently verified.
Top Iranian officials previously said the country wasn't involved in the conflict.
But Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi, a former Revolutionary Guards commander, said Thursday if Syria asked for military assistance to put down the anti-Assad uprising, Iran would provide it based on "our mutual defense-security pact."
That promise was followed Monday by Syrian National Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar telling several Iranian officials at the summit of Non-Aligned Movement nations in Tehran how grateful Syria was for Iran's support.
"The people of Syria will never forget the support of Iran during these difficult times," Iranian media cited by the Journal quoted Haidar as saying.
On the other side of Syria's conflict, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are reported to have funded and armed opposition rebels, while Turkey has allowed rebel forces to keep an unofficial base near Syria's border.
Foreign Arab fighters, including extremist jihadist, also fight alongside rebels, the Journal said.
In Damascus Monday a Syrian military helicopter crashed in flames amid sounds of rebel fire.
Syrian state-run media reported the crash but gave no details.
Opposition activists said the Free Syrian Army shot down the helicopter, whose spinning flame-engulfed nosedive was videotaped. Several video clips uploaded to opposition activist channels on YouTube were monitored by United Press International.
Rounds from apparent anti-aircraft guns could be heard on the videos and cheers of "God is great" erupted on some of them as the helicopter plummeted to the ground trailed by thick black smoke.
The crash came on a day when Syrian forces intensified their air campaign against presumed opposition targets, with attacks by jet fighters killing at least 60 people in Damascus's eastern suburbs, opposition groups said.

The Local Coordination Committees of Syria reported at least 148 people were killed in Damascus and its suburbs Monday -- some summarily executed -- and at least 231 were killed people nationwide.

Iran stepping up as Russia steps aside ? 

Russia is disengaging from Syria: Arms shipments stopped, warships exit Tartus

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report August 29, 2012, 4:44 PM (GMT+02:00)

Tags:  Russia   Syria   Tartus   arms shipment   Vladimir Putin 

Russian Navy in Tartus

Russian naval vessels have unexpectedly departed the Syrian Mediterranean port of Tartus and Russian arms shipments to Syria have been suddenly discontinued. DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal that those and other steps indicate that the Russians are rapidly drawing away from the Syrian arena to avoid getting caught up in the escalating hostilities expected to arise from military intervention by the US, Europe and a number of Arab states. Russian intelligence appears to have decided that this outside intervention is imminent and Moscow looks anxious to keep its distance for now.

According to our military and Russian sources, these drastic steps must have been personally ordered by President Vladimir Putin. He is believed to have acted over the objections of some of his army and naval chiefs. This would explain the mixed statements issuing from Moscow in recent days about the disposition of Russian personnel at the naval base in Tartus and Russian military personnel in Syria.

Wednesday, Aug. 22, Commander of the Russian Navy Vice Adm. Viktor Chirkov said that if the fighting in Syria reached Tartus, Moscow may decide to evacuate the base. He stressed that this decision would have to be taken on the authority of President Putin. He was the first Russian official to suggest the possibility of an evacuation.
A week later, Aug. 28, Russian chief of staff Gen. Nikolai Makarov denied anything had changed in the working procedures of Russian military personnel in Syria or that there were any plans to evacuate the Russian naval base in Tartus:

"I think it's too early to draw conclusions [from the situation in Syria]," said the general. "No one is running away from there.”

When a Russian journalist pressed the general and ventured to ask whether Moscow was terminating its military involvement in Syria, Marakov retorted, “Why are you so worried about Syria?"
But he didn’t answer the question.

DEBKAfile's military sources disclose that the Russians have taken five significant military steps with regard to Syria in the last two weeks:

1. They cancelled a large-scale naval exercise dubbed “Caucasus 2012” scheduled to start mid-August in the eastern Mediterranean opposite the Syrian coast;

2. Warships from three fleets - the Northern, Baltic and Black Sea – concentrated opposite Syria have dispersed and returned to their bases;

3. Syrian President Bashar Assad was notified that Moscow was halting military aid to his army - except for intelligence updates and advice on logistics from Russian military advisers;

4.  Moscow has not clearly announced a freeze on arms shipments, including replacement parts for Russian weapons, which make up the bulk of the Syrian army's weaponry. Officials have only said, “There are no large Russian weapons shipments planned in the near future to Syria."

5. The only Russian naval ship left in Tartus - a floating Russian Navy PM-138 shipyard – is also under orders to depart Tartus and return to the Black Sea in September.
A Russian source disclosed that all the remaining Russian personnel in Tartus have gathered on the floating shipyard, except for two officers on shore. This vessel and the remaining personnel are evidently packed up and ready to sail at any moment out of the Syrian port.