Iran helping Syrian regime crack down on protesters, say diplomats

[Turborama]

Source: The Guardian

Claim comes as four women shot dead by security forces in first use of violence against an all-female demonstration
Simon Tisdall and foreign staff in Damascus | Monday May 9 2011

Iran is playing an increasingly active role in helping the Syrian regime in its crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, according to western diplomatic sources in Damascus.

The claim came as Syria's security forces backed by tanks intensified operations to suppress unrest in three new flashpoint towns on Sunday and it was confirmed that four women had been shot dead in the first use of force against an all-female demonstration.

A senior western diplomat in Damascus expanded on assertions, first made by White House officials last month, that Iran is advising president Bashar al-Assad's government on how to crush dissent.

The diplomat pointed to a "significant" increase in the number of Iranian personnel in Syria since protests began in mid-March. Mass arrests in door-to-door raids, similar to those that helped to crush Iran's "green revolution" in 2009, have been stepped up in the past week.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/08/iran-helping-syrian-regime-protesters

[leveymg]

1. Accusations by unnamed sources are worth squat

The Syrian secret police are sufficiently ruthless and efficient so that they don't need help from anyone.

This sort of unsupported, unsourced reporting just spreads the stench around.

[joshcryer]

2. It's impossible to verify the claims due to the media blackout in Syria...

...so the media is relying on second, even third hand reports. What will be telling is if Iran comes out with a denial as quickly as they did last time the US made this claim. Given the current shakeup in Iran and the disagreements over the security head there, it may well have some truth to it.

Without Syria Iran will become another North Korea, pretty much cut off, and Iran doesn't want that, because it would mean uprising, there.

[Turborama]

5. There are a lot of similarities between what happened in Iran in 2009 & Syria today

In fact, Syria's brutal clampdown is far more brutal. I don't remember tanks being used against civilians after the Iran election, for example.

As Syria is pretty much Iran's biggest ally in the region, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think there's a limited amount of "stench" about this one.

Iran on edge as ally Syria fights for survival
(AP) – Apr 23, 2011

CAIRO (AP) — When Syria's president visited Iran late last year, he received a heroes' medal and spoke about unbreakable bonds in a ceremony broadcast on national television. Now, a nervous leadership in Iran has imposed a media blackout on Bashar Assad's struggle against a swelling Syrian uprising and Tehran faces the unsettling prospect of losing its most stalwart ally in the region.

=snip=

For Iran, its ties with Syria represent far more than just a rare friend in a region dominated by Arab suspicions of Tehran's aims. Syria is Iran's great enabler: a conduit for aid to powerful anti-Israel proxies Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Should Assad's regime fall, it could rob Iran of a loyal Arab partner in a region profoundly realigned by uprisings demanding more freedom and democracy.

"Iran and Syria represent the anti-US axis in the region. In that respect, Iran wants to ensure that Syria remains an ally," said Shadi Hamid, director of research at The Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. "The problem is that Iran's foreign policy has become quite inconsistent."

Full article: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hwY795kg27dzUCLPfjmQqEGkJTmg?docId=6a6231b3176949e49aeae6da3e4176da

[pampango]

3. CBC: Syria widens crackdown on dissent

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/05/09/syria-protest-military-crackdown.html

The Syrian government was reported Monday to be continuing to widen its crackdown on dissidents.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, who is the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said security forces were conducting house-to-house raids across the country and detaining hundreds of people.

He said the raids were centred on Homs, in the centre of the county, Banias, on the coast, in the suburbs of Damascus and in villages around the southern city of Daraa, which has been the focal point for the anti-government movement.

Protesters are demanding the end of the rule of President Bashar Assad. Since the anti-government movement began in mid-March, an estimated 630 people have been killed, according to human rights group. Syria is closed to foreign journalists, making the reports difficult to independently confirm.

Whether any country is helping Assad or not, doesn't change the fact that this crackdown wouldn't be happening if the Syrian government didn't want it to. Assad certainly seems to have decided that a military solution to demonstrations for democracy is the preferred solution. And the Syrian military seems to have little of the reluctance to use maximum force on protesters that was present with the Egyptian and Tunisian militaries.

Gone is the talk of concessions to open up the political process that he mouthed a few weeks ago. Using tanks against demonstrators may postpone Assad's day of reckoning but it is obvious that Syrians want the same things that people everywhere want. Dictatorship is not an "accepted" form of government anywhere. It is merely an "imposed" one.

[iandhr]

4. Does it say

what country this senior diplomat is from.