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Is Syria’s Assad Ready to Let Damascus Fall?

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JERUSALEM, Israel -- Hezbollah spiritual leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said if Syrian President Bashar Assad goes down, Hezbollah and the "axis of resistance" will go down with him, the Lebanese daily al Akhbar reported.

According to some Israeli intelligence experts, Assad may be willing to let his capital, Damascus, fall to Syrian rebels to secure territory in another part of the country.

"The president's first priority seems to be maintaining the Alawite enclave in the north; control of Damascus comes only second. With his back to the wall, according to Israeli assessments, the Syrian dictator might even give up his capital," the Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported.

Assad belongs to a sect called the Alawites, which allies itself with Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

Iran has poured millions of dollars into military equipment for Hezbollah, which in turn has dispatched thousands of soldiers to bolster Assad's besieged regime. It seems a battle to the death.

There has been fierce fighting recently between Hezbollah and Syrian opposition forces along the mountainous Qalamoun region near the Lebanon's eastern border. Syrian rebel forces reportedly launched a pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah as it prepared for a major military offensive in the area. A senior Hezbollah field commander was among the casualties.

"Fierce clashes raged from Monday morning between Hezbollah, regime and National Defense Force troops on one side and Islamist battalions, including al-Nusra Front, on the other in Qalamoun," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported earlier this week.

Last week, Syrian Defense Minister Gen. Fahd al-Freij, spent two days in Iran "strengthening coordination and cooperation between the two allied militaries," AFP reported.

In the four years since anti-government protests in Syria grew to all-out civil war, more than 220,000 have been killed and as many as 11 million Syrians displaced, according to UNHRC assessments.

Iran has remained a staunch supporter of Assad. Despite evidence to the contrary, Assad claims there are no Iranian troops in Syria.

"They're not here," he said in an interview on French television. "They didn't send any troops."

Last January, six Iranian Revolutionary Guards troops, a senior Iranian general and six Hezbollah fighters were killed in an airstrike on a convoy of SUVs near Syria's Quneitra crossing with Israel. Some speculated the plan was to set up a military base close to the Golan Heights.

The Syrian president also denies an Amnesty International report accusing him of using barrel bombs on schools, mosques, markets, and hospitals in Aleppo and the Yarmouk refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, killing more than 3,000 civilians and terrifying the population.

Aircraft drop the barrels, filled with explosives and shrapnel, which Amnesty International described "in some cases" as crimes against humanity.

Assad says Iran and Syria have maintained "regular relations" since the 1980s.

"We have commanders, officers coming and going between the two countries. This is the kind of cooperation that existed for a long time. This is different from fighting."

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About The Author

Tzippe
Barrow

From her perch high atop the mountains surrounding Jerusalem, Tzippe Barrow tries to provide a bird’s eye view of events unfolding in her country. Tzippe’s parents were born to Russian Jewish immigrants, who fled the czar’s pogroms to make a new life in America. As a teenager, Tzippe wanted to spend a summer in Israel, but her parents, sensing the very real possibility that she might want to live there, sent her and her sister to Switzerland instead. Twenty years later, the Lord opened the door to visit the ancient homeland of her people.