Assad Warns Israel, Claiming a Stockpile of Russian Weapons
By ANNE BARNARD and NEIL MacFARQUHAR
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria spoke confidently in an interview
with Hezbollah-owned television as his opposition appeared to be
fracturing further.
Rami Bleible/Reuters
Forces of the Syrian
president, Bashar al-Assad, in Qusayr on Thursday. Syrian rebels under
siege near the Lebanese border pleaded for help.
By ANNE BARNARD and NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: May 30, 2013
BEIRUT, Lebanon — President Bashar al-Assad of Syria displayed a new
level of defiance on Thursday, warning Israel that he could permit
attacks on the Golan Heights and suggesting that he had secured plenty
of weapons from Russia — possibly including an advanced missile system —
as his opponents faltered politically and Hezbollah fighters infused
force into his military campaign to crush the Syrian insurgency.
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SANA, via Associated Press
President Bashar al-Assad was interviewed Thursday on
Al-Manar television, owned by Hezbollah, in Damascus.
Aref Hretani/Reuters
A Free Syrian Army fighter kept watch in Aleppo for snipers.
Readers’ Comments
"I think we Russians and you Westerners have a common interest in Syria: to prevent the Sunni Islamists from coming to power."Dmitry Varnavin, Moscow
Mr. Assad spoke in an interview broadcast on Al-Manar television,
which is owned by his ally Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese Shiite
militant group, further punctuating his message of growing confidence
that he could prevail over an insurgency that is now more than two years
old and has claimed more than 80,000 lives.
Asked about Russian weapons deliveries, Mr. Assad said: “Russia is
committed with Syria in implementing these contracts. What we agreed
upon with Russia will be implemented, and part of it has been
implemented over the recent period, and we are continuing to implement
it.”
He was vague on whether Russia’s deliveries had included a sophisticated
S-300 air missile system — of particular concern to Israel because it
could compromise its ability to strike Syria from the air and because
those missiles can hit deep inside Israeli territory. The Israelis have
said they would not abide a Syrian deployment of S-300s, suggesting they
would use force to destroy them.
Before the broadcast, Al-Manar sent out text messages that paraphrased
Mr. Assad as saying Syria had already received a first shipment of the
S-300 missiles.
It was unclear why Al-Manar said before the broadcast that Mr. Assad had
spoken about the missile system when it was not directly mentioned in
the televised interview. Al-Manar later said it mischaracterized what
Mr. Assad had said. But American and Israeli officials have been
pressing Russia to defer the S-300 system delivery to Syria, and there
were other indications that the paraphrased comments may have been a
premature boast or bluff.
Israeli officials and Western diplomats in the region said they did not
believe such a system had yet arrived in Syria, with some saying any
delivery could be at least a few weeks away. Even so, the possibility
presented a new risk that the Syrian war could expand into a broader
conflict.
“We’re in stormy waters indeed,” said Jonathan Spyer, a senior research
fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. “Somebody or
other has to not do what they have openly claimed they would do.
Somebody has to lose serious face, and governments don’t like to lose
face at the moment of serious confrontation.”
Mr. Assad spent considerable time in the interview to warn Israel, which
attacked what it suspected were weapons caches in Syria this month that
the Israelis suspected were bound for Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.
“We will retaliate for any Israeli aggression next time,” Mr. Assad
said. He also suggested the possibility of renewed fighting in the Golan
Heights, the disputed border area occupied by Israel, which has been
largely quiet for more than 40 years.
“In fact, there is clear popular pressure to open the Golan front to
resistance,” Mr. Assad said. The Syrian government, he said, had
received “many Arab delegations wanting to know how young people might
be enrolled to come and fight Israel.”
Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, said Mr. Assad’s comments on the Golan were worrisome in
the context of other recent statements from Syria, particularly its
assertion that Israel had violated the 1974 agreement that has allowed
for the calm along the cease-fire line.
“It’s a very sensitive, explosive situation being created by the new
level of rhetoric,” Mr. Yaari said. “You ask yourself whether the
rhetoric is not going to lead to actions at some point.”
Mr. Assad reiterated the Syrian government’s intention to attend a
United Nations peace conference on Syria, which Russia and the United
States have been seeking to convene in Geneva in coming weeks despite
their own differences over the conflict. But he said any agreements that
might result from such a conference would have to be approved by
Syrians in a referendum.
Even as Mr. Assad’s interview was broadcast, fissures within the Syrian
opposition widened, with rebel military commanders demanding a
significant new role in the main exile organization.
The disparity underscored the fact that Mr. Assad appeared to be
consolidating his position, buttressed on both military and political
fronts by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, while the Western-backed
opposition stumbled toward ever more serious disarray.
All week, the 63-member Syrian Coalition, the main rebel group, has been
entangled anew in petty disputes over how many seats to add. Its
leadership announced Thursday that it would boycott the peace
conference. It attributed the boycott to Iranian and Hezbollah
interference in Syria, but analysts saw it as a position born of
weakness and the inability to forge a strong, united bargaining front.
“This is a low point,” said Amr al-Azm, a Syrian-born history professor
at Shawnee State University in Ohio who tracks the opposition. “Unlike
earlier screaming matches, you have a bad military situation on the
ground and Geneva is looming and the opposition has nothing to play.
This is as bad as it gets.”
Both the United States and Russia face difficult prospects in getting
the Geneva talks even to begin. Representatives of the organizers are
expected to meet in Geneva on June 5 to discuss details, including a
concrete date.
Moscow faces the challenge of getting Mr. Assad to send a strong enough
delegation to make real decisions about a cease-fire and a political
transition — essentially a delegation that will agree to limit his
power. The ministers he has named to the delegation so far are political
appointees with no real power and no role in the inner circle.
It will be tough to convince Mr. Assad because he feels that he is
negotiating from a position of strength, analysts said. The thud of
artillery has diminished around Damascus, and there are few checkpoints
in the past couple of weeks, according to recent visitors. With a fresh
infusion of Hezbollah fighters, government forces might soon expel the
opposition from the important crossroads town of Qusayr, which they have
held for months.
That would mean Mr. Assad controls all the territory he cares about
most, analysts said, namely the area around the capital and the key
route to the coastal stronghold of his Alawite minority, which dominates
the government.
For the United States and its allies, the first challenge is creating a
united delegation from an opposition that has always been anything but
united.
The Syrian Coalition has been plagued by internal turmoil since its inception in late 2011.
The group has failed to deliver on most of its promises, ranging from
distributing humanitarian aid to areas outside government control, to
creating a unified military command, to becoming a serious
government-in-exile.
Instead the uneasy, distrustful members — dominated by long-exiled
members of the Muslim Brotherhood, academics living abroad for decades
and political activists fleeing Syria — have spent most of their time in
luxury hotels arguing over which faction should claim what
responsibility.
The coalition’s problems have not been lost on Mr. Assad, who spoke
contemptuously of his political adversaries in the Al-Manar television
interview, describing them as exiles and paid stooges of hostile foreign
governments — another indication that prospects for the Geneva
conference are dim.
“We will attend this conference as the official delegation and
legitimate representatives of the Syrian people,” he said. “But, whom do
they represent? When this conference is over, we return to Syria, we
return home to our people. But when the conference is over, whom do they
return to — five-star hotels?”
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