Russia's spokesman for international cooperation in fighting terrorism Alexander Zmeyovsky said that Russia is "gravely concerned" about U.S. reports of Assad's chemical weapons use in Syria, according to The Voice Of Russia.

Earlier today, the Obama administration advised Moscow that it should "pull its support" from the Assad regime.

As we've already reported, there are Russian troops in Syria, and should a fight take place, those troops would be in harm's way.

Now Washington has kindly advised Moscow that a fight will take place, and, for fear of appearing aligned with chemical weapons use, Russia will likely make its exodus.

"Should the 'red line' of chemical weapon use be crossed, I think Russia will just want to be completely removed from the situation, and make sure that they retain influence in a post-Assad Syria," Ingrid Pederson, an expert in Near East and Russian geopolitics, told Business Insider.

"Russia is very self-interested and continuing to back Assad at this point does nothing for them and in fact could hurt their image with those who may come to control Syria after Assad falls," Pederson concluded.

As if to hint at the possibility of Russia leaving Syria, Zmeyovsky "stressed" that Moscow's primary concern was that any intervention aims at immediately countering the proliferation of Assad's chemical weapons.

It's no secret that the U.S. has been constructing contingency plans for the Assad regime's collapse, as well as the event of Western military intervention. Those plans reportedly give much consideration to securing Assad's chemical weapons stockpiles.

Zmeyovsky's emphasis on that point is, at the very least, an acknowledgement of American planning for removal of Assad.

SEE ALSO: Russia sending missiles to Syria should be called "Operation Human Shield"

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A senior Russian lawmaker and Syria's government are accusing the U.s. of fabricating evidence of chemical weapons use by the regime of Bashar al-Assad to justify intervention in the 27 month-old civil war.

On Thursday a U.S. official said that President Barack Obama has authorized sending U.S. weapons to Syrian rebels for the first time in light of the chemical weapons confirmation.

"Information about the use by Assad of chemical weapons has been fabricated in the same place as the lies about (Saddam) Hussein's weapons of mass destruction," Alexei Pushkov, head of the foreign policy committee in the lower chamber of the Russian parliament, reportedly said on Twitter. "Obama is taking the same path as George Bush."

A statement by the Syrian Foreign Ministry in Damascus reportedly said that the U.S. statements are "full of lies" and America is resorting to "cheap tactics" to justify Obama's decision to arm the rebels.

That being said, it's clear that chemical weapons have been used in the conflict.

On December 23 there were multiple reports the Homs attack, and doctors belonging to Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) subsequently corroborated the claims when they described a "probable" use of what chemical specialists refer to as Agent-15 (known as BZ to NATO).

And on March 19 two separate chemical weapons attacks occurred— one outside of Aleppo and the other outside of Damascus. At the time experts doubted that Syrian rebels had the capability of firing a homemade rocket 20 miles (as the government claimed) or deliver enough pungent gas to hurt dozens of people.

On the other hand, Syria and Russia do have a right to be skeptical after the WMD debacle in Iraq.

C.J. Chivers of The New York Times, who has been reporting from northwestern Syria, had this to say:

3. USG has oversold/outright fabricated rationales for past mil escalations & wars. so: if evidence is solid, show it http://t.co/eqpdzmfPGd

— C.J. Chivers (@cjchivers) June 13, 2013

It's unclear what the international response will be as the West has become increasingly concerned about the rise of al-Qaeda-linked Syrian rebels.

On Thursday The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. proposal to arm rebels included a limited no-fly zone inside Syria that would be enforced from Jordanian territory to protect Syrian refugees and rebels who train there.

SEE ALSO: Hezbollah Is Launching An Offensive That Will Profoundly Change The Syrian War

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An activist on the ground in Syria told Al Jazeera that the car bomb which reportedly killed at least 60 government soldiers in Syria was packed with 6 tons of explosives.

The target was a military complex near al-Douwairinah, Aleppo's international airport, reports Al Jazeera.

The group suspected of orchestrating the attack was Jabhat Al-Nusra, an Al Qaeda affiliated militant organization that's currently on the State Department list of terrorist groups.

The strike comes as Washington has stated its intent to arm Syrian rebels in order to defeat, and ultimately unseat President Bashar al Assad.

Many analysts remain skeptical that U.S. intelligence can properly vet the often ragtag Syrian rebels in order to keep arms out of the hands of Al Nusra.

"Already some of those weapons … have been shown in radical militants’ hands,"said Elizabeth O’Bagy, a senior research analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. "And even though the weapons are significantly better than they were before, they are still not the sophisticated kind the opposition would like.”

SEE ALSO: Syrian rebels and U.S. Marines have more in common than you think

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France has a culture of political protest that is, to say the least, robust. 

I'm in town to report on the Paris Air Show, and walking around town this weekend, I came across three different demonstrations taking on a variety of causes.

There was support for illegal immigrants in France, the Syrian revolution, protests in Turkey, and even anarchy. 

But because "manifestations," as protests here are called, are so common, it's hard for them to get a lot of attention, and most people who aren't directly involved walk right by. 

Here's a look at the three protests we saw in as many days.

I came across this "manifestation"— or "manif"— near the Bastille. The woman's t-shirt reads, "Shut up and work."

It was hard to discern a theme. There were flags for health care, students, and anarchism.

I found out there were two protests that had somehow joined together. One was calling for better treatment of illegal immigrants.

Secretary of State John Kerry "vociferously" pushed for air strikes on Syrian airfields at a White House meeting last Wednesday, reports Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg.

Kerry was shot down by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, who said the Pentagon would not back a plan without clear entrance and exit strategies, noting that neutralizing Syrian air defense would require more than 700 sorties, according to the Bloomberg.

Dempsey also reportedly said that sequestration had hurt the Pentagon's ability to pull off such an approach.

Kerry apparently lost this battle, as on the following day the White House announced a subtler plan to supply moderate Syrian rebels with small arms and ammunition.

Meanwhile, members of Congress pressed the Obama administrationon Sunday to install a no-fly zone. That would also result in several air strikes, followed by continued action to police the skies — a tough call in a time of austerity.

Supplying the rebels with weapons presents its own problems. The vetting process for Syrian rebels is limited, and arms could easily fall into the wrong hands, such as Al Qaeda. Moreover, such a process is lengthy, and it could take months before the fighters receive new equipment.

One of Kerry's arguments, reports Bloomberg, was that air strikes would convey to President Bashar Al Assad that Washington means business.

As Goldberg notes at the end of his article, a similar approach worked for President Bill Clinton during the Serbian conflict: "President Bill Clinton eventually decided to use air power in the Balkans, and it brought the Serbian government to its knees."

SEE ALSO: U.S. Marines have more in common with Syrian rebels than you think

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In Syria, death finds those who seek it, and those who flee. It finds the loyal soldier and the rebel. It finds fathers and brothers, sisters and mothers. Sons and daughters.

The UN's "conservative estimate" is that the conflict has claimed 93,000 lives. That's more than 100 dead per day.

A March 2012 photo shows a woman crying through grief stricken green eyes. Her name is Aida.

Her face is caked in dried blood, her head wrapped in a bandage.  She was severely injured after the Syrian Army shelled her house in northern Syria. Death missed her, but took her husband and son.

The whole conflict started with bullets the Bashar al Assad regime deployed to stop protests in the spring of 2011.

Thousands had gathered in Daraa — a small town near the Jordanian border — inspired by calls for change throughout the Middle East.

“The Syrian people do not bow,” they chanted.

Witnesses said Assad's gunmen appeared on the rooftops.

Dr. Taha Sukkari was among those killed in those first days in Daraa.

He died when security officials fired upon an ambulance that arrived to care for the wounded. He was among 20 casualties reported in Daraa on April 8, 2011, according to a group that calls itself Syrian Revolution 2011.

The situation quickly deteriorated into a full-blown rebellion.

For more than two years, death for Syrians has been nimble and versatile. It’s been both systematic and indiscriminate.

Just yesterday, a car bomb packed with 6 tons of explosives detonated at a military complex near Aleppo, 60 government soldiers reportedly died. It was unclear if it was a suicide attack.

And death hasn't stopped at the national border.

Forty-six people lost their lives at a nearby town in Turkey when two vehicles exploded in a coordinated attack. There are more than 300,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey.

After the explosion, a mob of Turks took to the streets. “Kill the Syrians,” they shouted.

Earlier this year, death found at least 40 Syrian Army soldiers seeking refuge in Iraqi territory. They were ambushed, anti-regime forces killed them with gunfire, rockets, and bombs.

Death didn't ignore the hordes of foreign journalists either.

It found Marie Colvin in Homs, a city besieged by Syrian military forces. A veteran war journalist, she had lost sight in her left eye from a grenade explosion in Sri Lanka in April 2001.

She had snuck into Syria on the back of a motorcycle. She was killed alongside a French photographer named Remi Ochlik during a meeting with local Syrian journalists.

They were running to go get their shoes — removed during the meeting, a Middle Eastern custom — so they could flee for more hardened cover.

Their deaths shocked the media community, Colvin because they thought she was unkillable, and Ochlik because he was so young.

The end also found Anthony Shadid, a Pulitzer-prize-winning writer for the New York Times. Shadid survived Iraq, was shot in Beirut, kidnapped in Libya.

Death finally came for him in Syria.  

It was nighttime, in a desert in northern Syria, as he was trying to sneak across the border into Turkey. He met his end in the form of a severe asthma attack, brought on by an allergy to horses.

Tyler Hicks, a photographer for the New York Times, carried his body into Turkey.

In one photo, from Pulitzer-prize-winning Spanish photographer Manu Brabo, a father holds his son’s body in his arms. The boy is bloody. Barefoot, his jeans cuffed neatly at his ankles. Torn over his left knee. It was October 2012.

The U.N. estimates that 6,000 of those killed are children.

A young Shiite child in Damascus was reportedly hanged by rebels after they killed his family.

Of the 6,000 children killed in Syria, nearly 2,000 of them were younger than 10 years old.

Another photo shows a Syrian rebel crying as he carries his slain friend over his shoulder. With a closed fist, he grips his friend’s blue jeans and runs for cover. The man was reportedly killed by a sniper.But perhaps the most egregious instance of violence occurred with the death of a Syrian soldier. A video that’s not appropriate to show in any setting depicts a rebel fighter cutting open the chest of a Syrian soldier, extracting the man’s heart, and taking a bite.

“I swear to God, we will eat your hearts out, you soldiers of Bashar the dog,” he says.

Off camera, his comrades shout “God is great.”

That's not to mention Assad's bombing campaign against rebel-held towns.

SEE ALSO: This is What A Syrian Airstrike On A Small Town Looks Like

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Jeffrey Goldberg makes a questionable assertion on Iran and Syria:

Whether we like it or not, we are in a conflict with Iran, and our credibility is on the line.

It’s true that many American politicians and pundits assume that the U.S. and Iran must be in conflict, and many of them seem to want us to be in a conflict with Iran, but actively engaging in a proxy war against Iran and its allies in a bitter civil war is something that the U.S. has chosen to do even though it didn’t have to.

The idea that “our credibility is on the line” in this conflict with Iran is exactly the kind of argument that we were bound to hear once the U.S. committed itself to aiding the opposition, but even now the “credibility” argument is just so much hot air.

Backing into an unnecessary war because we feel that we are forced to in order to save face will only make the U.S. look foolish and confused. Unfortunately, because so many people will insist that our “credibility” is now at stake, we will be hearing even more demands for greater military involvement. It’s important that the administration ignore them and avoid compounding its latest error with more mistakes.

David Barno explains why:

If it fails to save the rebels, pressure on the United States to impose a no-fly zone over Syria will be immense. But despite the tragic loss of life, U.S. interests are far better served by exercising restraint, supporting Syria’s neighbors, and performing a humanitarian role. After 10 years of bloody and inconclusive U.S. involvement in the wars of this region, slipping into another military intervention in this part of the world defies both common sense and broader U.S. vital interests.

Barno is right: the U.S. is much better-served by exercising restraint here. I worry that our government and our political leaders are simply incapable of this, but I’d be happy to be wrong about that.

SEE ALSO: U.S. Marines and Syrian rebels have more in common than you think

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“Prison is for real men” is an old saying we have in Syria, and one that I kept repeating to myself as I paced anxiously back and forth across my small, dingy cell in an almost hypnotic trance of meditation. Time seemed to melt and mold in that dungeon; it was an abstract entity that only existed in the world of mortal men as they went about their normal lives and daily routines. For us, the condemned and the damned, time had no meaning. The only way we measured it was in intervals of going to the interrogation room or bathroom breaks. Everything else was a fuzzy haze of being in a cell and sometimes out of it. It was a room where time stood still yet slowly oozed away. Yes, this was the edge of madness, the edge of the abyss, and I was right there on the brink.

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The CIA and US special operations forces have been training Syrian rebels for months, since long before President Barack Obama announced plans to arm the opposition, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

Training for rebel forces covers the use of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons and has been carried out at bases in Jordan and Turkey since late last year, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed US officials and rebel commanders.

The two-week courses, for about 20 to 45 fighters at a time, began last November at a new US base in the desert in southwest Jordan, it said.

The report came days after the Obama administration announced it had approved the arming of Syrian rebels, though analysts said the United States likely would avoid providing sophisticated guided anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapons.

The Central Intelligence Agency typically leads covert training and arming of fighters in foreign conflicts, while military special operations forces can be assigned to covert missions overseen by the spy agency.

The CIA and the White House declined to comment on the report.

Rebels from the Free Syrian Army were being trained on Russian-designed 14.5-millimeter anti-tank rifles, anti-tank missiles, and 23-millimeter anti-aircraft weapons, according the report, citing an unnamed rebel commander in the Syrian province of Dara helping with weapons acquisitions.

"Those from the CIA, we would sit and talk with them during breaks from training and afterward, they would try to get information on the situation," the commander was quoted as saying.

US special operations troops selected the rebels to be trained as the American military was setting up supply lines in the region to channel non-lethal items, such as uniforms and radios, to the opposition forces.

The rebels were promised powerful anti-tank weapons and other arms but shipments from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states took months to arrive and failed to live up to the expectations of the opposition, the commander told the paper.

But on Friday a rebel spokesman said the opposition fighters have received new types of weapons that could "change the course of the battle."

The announcement came a day before a meeting in Qatar of the "Friends of Syria" group of nations that support the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"We've received quantities of new types of weapons, including some that we asked for and that we believe will change the course of the battle on the ground," Free Syrian Army spokesman Louay Muqdad told AFP.

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IN 2009 Iran was on the verge of electing a reformer as president. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, subverted the vote and crushed the ensuing protests. Last week the same desire for change handed a landslide victory to Hassan Rohani—and Mr Khamenei hailed it as a triumph.

When a country has seen as much repression as Iran, outsiders hoping for a better future for the place instinctively want to celebrate along with all those ordinary Iranians who took to the streets. The smiling Mr Rohani’s public pronouncements encourage optimism, for he sounds like a different sort of president from the comedy-villain, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who precedes him. Yet even if his election bodes well for Iranians, it does not necessarily hold equal promise for the rest of the world. Iran’s regional assertiveness and its nuclear capacity mean that it is a more dangerous place than it ever was before.

Given the country’s obvious weaknesses, that sounds implausible. Inflation is running at over 30%, and the economy shrinking. Inequality is growing, with 40% of Iranians thought to be living below the poverty line. Sanctions restricted May’s oil exports to just 700,000 barrels a day, a third of what they used to be; as a result there are shortages of basic goods and growing unemployment caused by factory closures.

Yet the Persian lion has not lost its claws, nor has the theocracy suddenly become a democracy. Mr Rohani was indeed the most reformist of the candidates on offer at the election, but in much the way that Churchill was more of a teetotaller than George Brown. The 64-year-old cleric has been a loyal servant of the Islamic Republic from its inception. For years he headed the national security council (seearticle). He is constrained by a system that deemed just eight people fit to stand in the recent election and rejected 678 others (including a former president). The president’s power is limited by Iran’s other institutions, many of which are in conservative hands.

While Iran’s politics have probably changed less than Mr Rohani’s election suggests, the balance of power between Iran and the rest of the world has been shifting in Iran’s favour for two reasons. First, thanks to heavy investment in nuclear capacity by the mullahs, and despite attempts by the West and Israel to delay or sabotage the nuclear programme, Iran will soon be able to produce a bomb’s worth of weapons-grade uranium in a matter of weeks (see briefing). Iran has installed more than 9,000 new centrifuges in less than two years, more than doubling its enrichment capability. It is a short step from the 20% enriched uranium that the country’s facilities are already producing at an increasing rate to conversion into the fissile material needed for an implosion device. Although Western intelligence agencies think Iran is still at least a year away from being able to construct such a weapon, some experts believe that it could do so within a few months if it chose to—and that the time it would take is shrinking.

This makes a nonsense of Western policy on Iran. Round after round of negotiations to try to persuade Iran not to get a bomb have been backed up by the implicit threat that armed force would be used if talks failed. But now it looks as though Iran will soon be in a position to build a weapon swiftly and surreptitiously. Should the West decide to use force, Iran could amass a small arsenal by the time support for a military strike was rallied.

Against that background, a friendlier president becomes a trap as well as an opportunity. He may offer the chance of building better relations through engagement and the gradual lifting of sanctions. But Iran could take advantage of this inevitably slow process to build a weapon.

The other development that threatens the West’s interests is happening around Iran. Despite its economic troubles, the Iranian state is a powerful beast compared with its neighbours, and is keen to assert itself abroad. The Iraqi government is now its ally. It has sway over chunks of Lebanon through Hizbullah, the Shia party-cum-militia it finances. And it has sent Hizbullah into Syria, where its fighters have joined Iranian advisers, money and special forces to help turn the tide of the war in Bashar Assad’s favour. Ostensibly the reason why Barack Obama agreed last week to arm the rebels in Syria (see article) was Mr Assad’s use of chemical weapons; but many believe that the greater reason was his reluctance to see Mr Assad hold on to power as a client of Iran’s.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst

This analysis may be too gloomy. It is possible that Mr Rohani’s arrival heralds a more pragmatic and less aggressive position. The new president used to serve as Iran’s main nuclear negotiator, and during his campaign made clear the link between Iran’s economic weakness and the nuclear sanctions, and called for better relations with the West. The West should reciprocate, making it clear that it has no intention of impeding Iran’s peaceful development. At the same time, it should continue to push for progress on the nuclear negotiations.

But it must do so warily. Any deal offered to Iran should include restraints draconian enough, and inspection intrusive enough, to prevent it from building a weapon surreptitiously, otherwise it would be worse than not doing a deal at all. And such a deal would very likely be unacceptable to Iran.

The growing risk of a nuclear Iran is one reason why the West should intervene decisively in Syria not just by arming the rebels, but also by establishing a no-fly zone. That would deprive Mr Assad of his most effective weapon—bombs dropped from planes—and allow the rebels to establish military bases inside Syria. This newspaper has argued many times for doing so on humanitarian grounds; but Iran’s growing clout is another reason to intervene, for it is not in the West’s interest that a state that sponsors terrorism and rejects Israel’s right to exist should become the regional hegemon.

The West still has the economic and military clout to influence events in the region, and an interest in doing so. When Persian power is on the rise, it is not the time to back away from the Middle East.

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US ambassador Susan Rice left the United Nations on Tuesday slamming the Security Council's failure to act over the worsening Syria conflict as a "moral and strategic disgrace."

But while Rice criticized Russia and China for their veto of resolutions on the Syria war, she said it was not inevitable that relations with Russia would continue to sour.

Rice, who now moves to become President Barack Obama's national security advisor, said: "The repeated failure of the Security Council to unify on the crucial issue of Syria I think is a stain on this body and something that I will forever regret."

"The council's inaction on Syria is a moral and strategic disgrace that history will judge harshly," Rice told reporters after making her farewells to other UN envoys after four and a half years as US ambassador.

Russia and China have three times used their vetos as permanent members of the Security Council to block western-proposed resolutions that would have increased pressure on President Bashar al-Assad.

Rice stressed that there were no sanctions or threats of force in the proposed resolutions which she called "very mild."

"Yet we have been paralyzed, and I don't know how in any circumstance one could ascribe that to a failure of US policy or US leadership, when the vast majority of the council was ready and willing to move ahead."

Russia and China accused the United States, France and Britain of only seeking regime change in Syria, where the United Nations says more than 93,000 people have been killed in the past 27 months.

Rice said tougher sanctions against Iran and North Korea had been a Security Council success and showed it was possible to work with Russia, which could become a key dossier in her new White House job.

Russia is a "complex" relationship, the ambassador acknowledged.

"While there are certainly important points of divergence, and there have been points of friction and there undoubtedly will be in the future, I am not prepared to predict that that is inevitable," she said.

"On issues as important as Iran and North Korea, and many others, we have been able to find common ground and effect outcomes that have been beneficial," Rice said.

Samantha Power, a White House advisor, has been named as the new UN ambassador and is going through Congress confirmation.

SEE ALSO: The West should intervene in Syria for many reasons

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Judging from the diary of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, it's incredible that there wasn't more security at the embassy in Benghazi.

Last year, on the anniversary of 9/11, Libyan militants launched an attack on the diplomatic consulate in Benghazi that ultimately claimed the lives of four Americans, including Stevens.

Stevens' personal diary was recovered on the scene, and kept in secret until now.

Brandon Webb and Jack Murphy flexed their contacts in the State Department to get a hold of Stevens diary pages, which contain some chilling revelations.

On Sept. 6th, five days before the attack, Stevens wrote — “Militias the prime power on the ground. Weak state security institutions. As a result, dicey conditions, including car bombs, attacks on consulate, British embassy, and our own people. Islamist 'hit list' in Benghazi. Me targeted on a prominent [Qa] website (no more off-compound jogging).”

Webb notes that Stevens had a good rapport with the locals, and an in-depth knowledge of the human landscape of eastern Libya, the location of Benghazi. This understanding might have added to his confidence despite the known threats.

On Sept. 9th, two days before the attack, Stevens wrote, “Stressful day. Too many things going on everyone wants to bend my ear. Need to pull above the fray.”

On Sept. 11, the day of the attack, after thanking several friends for welcoming him into Benghazi, the last words Stevens wrote, “Never ending security threats … ”

Webb writes that Benghazi had the highest risk rating of any diplomatic mission in the world at the time and should have been automatically issued more security resources.

He also notes that there were several reasons why Stevens would be a target. Benghazi was a web of competing militias, each vying for power in the vacuum Gaddafi left behind.

While the Obama administration picked a few of the more powerful tribes to head the country's military, the CIA, Webb writes, was almost certainly using some of these smaller militant organizations to help find and funnel weapons to Syria.

Meanwhile, elements of Joint Special Operations Command were conducting targetted strikes all around the eastern Libya area of operations.

"All sorts of Gaddafi associates have been dropping dead, along with others who may be involved in unseemly activities," writes Webb.

From Webb:

In response, they launch an assault on the State Department compound which was successful far beyond their hopes because of grossly inadequate security. Emboldened by their success, they rally and bring the fight to the CIA compound, kill two more Americans and critically wound two more agents (one CIA, and one State).

SEE ALSO: Read the full SOFREP post here

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Four members of the elite security team stationed at the CIA annex in Benghazi are being paid $3 million to write a book about the tragic night of September 11, 2012, Keith Kelly of The New York Post reports.

There are plenty of gaps in America's understanding of what happened when Libyan militants attacked a U.S. mission, leading to the death of U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and  information management officer Sean Smith.

A subsequent skirmish at the annex claimed the lives of former Navy SEAL and CIA security contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

A Republican-led investigation focused on potential missteps by the White House and came away with nothing significant.

In November The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. mission in Benghazi "was at its heart a CIA operation," and the annex is where the agency set up shop.

And there is circumstantial evidence that suggests the CIA was running heavy weapons from the annex to rebels in Syria.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said that the CIA was leading a "concerted effort to try to track down and find and recover ... MANPADS [man-portable air defense systems]" looted from the stockpiles of toppled Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi.

In October we reported the connection between Stevens and a reported September shipment of SA-7 MANPADs and rocket-propelled grenades from Benghazi to Syria through southern Turkey.

That 400-ton shipment — "the largest consignment of weapons" yet for Syrian rebels — was organized by Abdelhakim Belhadj, who was the newly-appointed head of the Tripoli Military Council.

In March 2011 Stevens, the official U.S. liaison to the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan rebels, worked directly with Belhadj while he headed the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

Stevens' last meeting on Sept. 11 was with Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, and a source told Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi "to negotiate a weapons transfer in an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of Libya-based extremists."

The book, the authors of which were not named,  is scheduled to be released in 2014.

SEE ALSO: It's Time To Discuss The Secret CIA Operation At The Heart Of The US Mission In Benghazi

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President Bashar al-Assad's forces pounded Sunni Muslim rebels in the city of Homs with artillery and from the air on Sunday, the second day of an offensive to expand loyalist control over Syria's strategic centre, activists said.

They said rebels defending the old centre of Homs and five adjacent Sunni districts had largely repelled a ground attack on Saturday by Assad's forces but reported fresh clashes and deaths within the city on Sunday.

The offensive follows steady military gains by Assad's forces, backed by Lebanese Hezbollah militants, in villages in Homs province and towns close to the Lebanese border.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Assad must halt his "brutal assault" on Homs. Gulf countries, which back the rebels, urged Lebanon to stop "parties" interfering in the Syria conflict, a reference to Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

Opposition sources and diplomats said the loyalist advance had tightened the siege of Homs and secured a main road link to Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon and to army bases in Alawite-held territory near the Syrian coast, the main entry point for Russian arms that have given Assad a key advantage in firepower.

At least 100,000 people have been killed since the Syrian revolt against four decades of rule by Assad and his late father erupted in March 2011, making the uprising the bloodiest of the Arab Spring popular revolutions against entrenched autocrats.

The Syrian conflict is increasingly pitting Assad's Alawite minority, backed by Shi'ite Iran and its Hezbollah ally, against mainly Sunni rebel brigades supported by the Gulf states, Egypt, Turkey and others.

Sunni Jihadists, including al Qaeda fighters from Iraq, have also entered the fray.

ALARM

The loyalist advances have alarmed international supporters of the rebels, leading the United States to announce it will step up military support. Saudi Arabia has accelerated deliveries of sophisticated weaponry, Gulf sources say.

The Sham News Network opposition monitoring group said fighters belonging to the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front had killed five loyalist troops in fighting in the Bab Hud district of Old Homs on Sunday.

Activists said one woman and a child had been killed in an airstrike on the old city, home to hundreds of civilians.

Video footage taken by the activists, which could not be immediately verified, showed the two bodies being carried in blankets as well as a man holding a wounded child with a huge gash in his head.

Rebel fighters also fought loyalist forces backed by tanks in the old covered market, which links the old city with Khalidiya, a district inhabited by members of tribes who have been at the forefront of the armed insurgency.

"After failing to make any significant advances yesterday, the regime is trying to sever the link between Khalidiya and the old city," Abu Bilal, one of the activists, said from Homs.

"We are seeing a sectarian attack on Homs par excellence, The army has taken a back role. Most of the attacking forces are comprised of Alawite militia being directed by Hezbollah."

The Alawites are an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam that have controlled Syria since the 1960s, when members of the sect took over the army and the security apparatus which underpin the power structure in the mainly Sunni country.

URBAN WARFARE

Located at a major highway intersection 88 miles north of Damascus, Homs is a majority Sunni city. But a large number of Alawites have moved into mostly new and segregated districts in recent decades, drawn by army and security jobs.

Lebanese security forces said Hezbollah appeared to be present in the rural areas surrounding Homs but there was no indication that it was fighting in the labyrinth streets of Homs, where it could take heavy casualties.

Anwar Abu al-Waleed, an activist, said rebel brigades were prepared to fight a long battle, unlike in Qusair and Tel Kalakh, two towns in rural Homs near the border with Lebanon that fell to loyalist forces in recent weeks.

"We are talking about serious urban warfare in Homs. We are not talking about scattered buildings in an isolated town but a large urban area that provides a lot of cover," he said.

Britain's Hague expressed concern over the escalation of fighting in Homs, saying in a statement: "I call upon the Assad regime to cease its brutal assault on Homs and to allow full humanitarian access to the country."

The Syrian conflict has aggravated neighbouring Lebanon's own complex sectarian rivalry, triggering fighting between Alawite pro-Assad and Sunni anti-Assad militia in the northern city of Tripoli that has killed dozens.

Gulf foreign ministers meeting in Bahrain urged the Lebanese government to "commit to distancing itself from the Syrian crisis and to prevent any Lebanese parties from interfering in (Syria) in order to enable it to confront the brutal attacks and crimes conducted by the regime and its allies."

Additional reporting by Angus McDowall and William Maclean in Dubai

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Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham think attacking Syria to establish a no-fly zone will somehow stem Iranian nuclear ambitions, while Dr. Robert Gates says the whole mess is like"sticking your hand in a tornado."

Gates, both a former Secretary of Defense and a former CIA director, says involvement in Syria is a slippery slope that will only lead to deeper, riskier commitments.

"The question about the involvement in Syria is, can you put just a few fingers into the tornado? And at what point, when that fails, do the pressures to do more gradually draw you in further and further?" Gates said during a talk at the Hearst Tower Sunday.

For Gates, even arming Syrians is risky business. Certainly he would help them "indirectly" through training in Jordan and possibly Turkey. He might arm them with "antiarmor" (anti-tank) weapons, but not anti-air missiles.

"The danger of those surface-to-air missiles, mainly from Qaddafi's arsenals, falling into the hands of the wrong rebel I think is too great," said Gates.

There's evidence to support his claim. Vetting these rebels is incredibly difficult, and McCain himself on a recent jaunt to Syria took pictures with a couple militants who stand accused of kidnapping Lebanese pilgrims.

Needless to say, McCain's approach is markedly different from Gates'.

McCain said to Army Radio on a recent visit to Israel, "There's no good option. Would you rather have these weapons — perhaps some of them — in the hands of the wrong people, or would you rather have [Syrian President] Bashar Assad prevail and then encourage Iran to further their ambitions on nuclear weapons?"

McCain and Graham both claim that making good on the "red-line" promise to Bashar Al-Asad will show Iran that Washington's threats are credible, while not doing so would encourage Iran to buck any nuclear "red-line" Washington might give in the future.

Dan Trombly, a popular conflict and strategy blogger, took to Twitter to criticize that idea,"Credibility again! We have to undertake risky war now so we can continue to make vague threats in the future."

"Being a superpower means you get to bluff. Starting half-measure wars is not good for credibility. Airstrikes don't 'fill the vacuum,'" Trombly concluded.

Gates, who opposed intervention in Libya, draws upon the Qaddafi intervention to show how it's rarely as simple as shooting down a few helicopters or arming a few rebels.

"It's like pretending you can stick your hand into the vortex of a tornado and pull it out whole, or not get the rest of yourself sucked into it. And we saw that happen . . . in Libya, where what began as a humanitarian mission to protect the people of Benghazi was broadened steadily day by day with broader and broader target lists," said Gates.

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BEIRUT (AP) — Syria's President Bashar Assad claimed in an interview published Thursday that his opponents have "used up all their tools" and failed to overthrow his regime. The remarks came as Western-backed Syrian opposition figures gathered in Turkey for talks on electing a new leadership.

In comments to the state-run Al-Thawra newspaper, Assad rejected the idea that what has been happening in Syria since more than two years is a revolution. Instead, he insisted it is a conspiracy by Western and some Arab states to destabilize his country.

In the same interview, Assad praised this week's massive protests by Egyptians against their Islamists leader and said the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi meant the end of "political Islam."

In Syria, more than 93,000 people have been killed since the crisis erupted in March 2011. The conflict began as peaceful protests against Assad's rule, then turned into civil war after some opposition supporters took up arms to fight a brutal government crackdown on dissent. Millions of Syrians have been forced to flee their homes.

Throughout the crisis, Assad has insisted that his government is not faced with a popular rebellion, but a Western-backed conspiracy against Syria, accusing the rebels fighting to topple his regime of being terrorists, Islamic extremists and mercenaries of the oil-rich Arab Gulf states that are allies of the United States.

"The countries that conspire against Syria have used up all their tools and they have nothing left except direct (military) intervention," Assad said in the interview, adding that such an intervention would not happen.

The comments coincided with a meeting of the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition in Istanbul in the second attempt in as many months by Assad's opponents to unify their ranks.

The opposition bloc is mostly made up of exiled politicians with little support from Syrians trying to survive the third summer of conflict in the country that has been devastated by the fighting.

Sarah Karkour, a spokeswoman for the SNC, said that acting leader George Sabra and senior opposition figures Louay Safi and Mustafa Sabbagh are topping the list of candidates for the new leadership, including an interim government.

In late May, the opposition leaders met for more than a week in Istanbul, but failed to elected new leaders or devise a strategy for possible peace talks that the U.S. and Russia have been trying to convene in Geneva.

Assad has repeatedly dismissed his political opponents as foreign-directed exiles who don't represent the people of Syria. He has also shrugged off calls to step down, saying he will serve the rest of his term and could consider running for another one in next year's presidential elections.

The paper, Al-Thawra, also quoted him saying his opponents failed because they tried to bring religion onto the battlefield. Assad insisted he still enjoys the support of the majority of Syrians, who have stood against Islamic radicals who have emerged as the most effective force on the opposition's side.

Members of Syria's Sunni Muslim majority have dominated the rebel ranks, while Assad's regime is mostly made up of Alawaites, an offshoot sect of Shiite Islam.

"Whoever brings religion to use for political or factional interests will fall anywhere in the world," Assad said in the interview, again citing Morsi's overthrow by the military in Egypt.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rebels clashed with an opposition unit linked to al Qaeda in northern Syria, activists said on Saturday, in a deadly battle that signals growing divisions among rebel groups and rising tensions between locals and more  radical Islamist factions.

The rebel infighting comes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have made gains on the battlefield and drawn comfort from the downfall this week of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which under ousted President Mohamed Mursi had thrown its weight behind the Syrian opposition.

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the new al Qaeda franchise announced by the head of global network's Iraq leader, has been quickly working to cement power in rebel-held territories of northern Syriain recent months.

ISIS units have begun to impose stricter interpretations of Islamic law and have filmed themselves executing members of rival rebel groups whom they accuse of corruption, and beheading those they say are loyal to Assad.

Syria's two-year revolt against four decades of Assad family rule has degenerated from a peaceful protest movement into a bloody civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people.

As fighting drags on and resources grow scarce, infighting has increased both among opposition groups and militias loyal to Assad, leaving civilians trapped in increasingly volatile and fragmented areas.

The latest internecine clashes happened in the town of al-Dana, near the Turkish border, on Friday, local activists said. The oppositiongroup known as the Free Youths of Idlib said dozens of fighters were killed, wounded or imprisoned.

A report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group, said that the bodies of a commander and his brother, from the local Islam Battalion, were found beheaded. Local activists working for the British-based group said the men's heads were found next to a trash bin in a main square.

The exact reason for the clashes have been hard to pin down, but many rebel groups have been chafing at ISIS's rise in power. It has subsumed the once dominant Nusra Front, a more localized group of al Qaeda-linked fighters that had resisted calls by foreign radicals to expand its scope beyond the Syrian revolt to a more regional Islamist mission.

"PERSONAL GLORY AND WORLDLY AIMS"

Residents of rebel-held territories in the north once welcomed hardline Islamist groups, even those linked to al Qaeda which often included radical foreign militants with experience of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Town leaders would say the hardline groups were better organized, less corrupt and set up administrative councils to keep electricity running and food supplies coming in.

But locals are growing more wary of the groups, particularly ISIS, as they impose their austere interpretations of Islamic law. Some say the groups have beaten or executed residents seen as defying them.

Protests against radical Islamist groups are becoming more common. The Observatory said the al-Dana clashes were set off at an anti-ISIS protest when some Islamist militants fired at the demonstration.

But other activists in Idlib province, where al-Dana is located, argued that the clashes were more about local power struggles than demonstrations.

ISIS units are believed to be buying up land and property in some parts of Idlib and Aleppo province, and they also have tried to control supplies of wheat and oil in other rebel areas.

Islamist groups that support al Qaeda posted statements on Facebook and Twitter saying that they had not started the clashes and had not tried to impose their will on locals.

"The Islamic State has been running many missionary activities in al-Dana, through religious guidance and counseling and posting road signs that exhort the virtues of morality, while also working to keep the city safe and offer conflict resolution," a statement in the name of ISIS read.

The Free Youth Movement of Idlib, an activist group, lambasted both the Qaeda militants and the local rebel group that fought them.

"The two sides are fighting over power, as if the regime had already fallen ... Do not paint one side as better than the other" it said.

"These fighters were part of two groups who are battling on the front line, but they are doing it for personal glory and worldly aims. Martyr after martyr from both groups are falling each day on the front lines... God keep us away from chaos and temptation."

(Reporting by Erika Solomon; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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New reports of strikes on Russian anti-ship missiles near the port of Latakia, Syria, seem to indicate another possible Israeli strike, Reuters reports.

This would be the fourth such strike this year.

From Reuters:

Rebels described huge blasts - the ferocity of which, they said, was beyond the firepower available to them but consistent with that of a modern military like Israel's.

Israel has not confirmed or denied involvement. The Syrian government has not commented on the incident, beyond a state television report noting a "series of explosions" at the site.

As has been the trend, Israel has neither confirmed nor denied the strikes.

Israel warned Russia just this May not to arm Syria with missiles.

"At this stage I can't say there is an escalation. The shipments have not been sent on their way yet. And I hope that they will not be sent," said Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon last May. But "if God forbid they do reach Syria, we will know what to do."

Though Yaalon's warning was about s300 anti-aircraft missiles, the anti-ship missiles at Syria's port could easily threaten Israeli or American ships operating in the Mediterranean.

From Reuters:

Such weaponry, Israeli officials have made clear, would include the long-range Yakhonts, which could help Hezbollah repel Israel's navy and endanger its offshore gas rigs.

Yaalon has already been asked about the blasts reported in Latakia, and his words remained largely the same, telling reporters, "We have set red lines in regards to our own interests, and we keep them. There is an attack here, an explosion there, various versions - in any event, in the Middle East it is usually we who are blamed for most."

As if to back him up, the last known mention of Israeli action on Syria came when an unnamed official contacted the New York Times to warn of further strikes coming from Israel.

The official, who was "briefed by high-level officials on the Syria situation in the past two days," said that Israel is "considering further military strikes on Syria to stop the transfer of advanced weapons to Islamic militants."

Rebels on the scene said they aren't sure if the strikes came from ships at sea or jets in the air. Just that the size and scope of the blasts were indicative of modern armed forces.

SEE ALSO: Russia's plan to arm Syria should be called 'Operation Human Shield'

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Chemical weapons were "clearly" used in Syria— but most likely by Syrian rebels, not the Syrian army, according to Moscow's ambassador to the United Nations.

A team of Russian experts made the assessment after visited Khan al-Assal, near Aleppo, where Syria claimed rebels had used chemical weapons in a March attack, CNN wrote.

The attack reportedly killed 26 people, including 16 regime troops.

CNN quoted Russia's envoy, Vitaly Churkin, as saying:

"The results of the analysis clearly indicate that the ordnance used in Khan al-Assal was not industrially manufactured and was filled with sarin [poison gas]."

Rebels had accused Syria of using chemical weapons in another part of the country at the same time, CNN added.

RT said Russia had handed over their samples taken at the site of the "chemical attack" to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon.

Churkin continued by saying that the projectile involved in the Khan al-Assal attack was not a standard one for chemical use.

"Hexogen, utilized as an opening charge, is not utilized in standard ammunitions. Therefore, there is every reason to believe that it was armed opposition fighters who used the chemical weapons in Khan al-Assal."

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in April that the US had "evidence that the chemical weapon sarin has been used in Syria on a small scale."

However, it was the Syrian government that the White House accused of crossing a "red line" by using chemical weapons against its people.

While a spokesman for Ban said the secretary-general "takes seriously all credible allegations," the US cast doubt on the analysis, according to an ABC report.

Washington has called for full UN access to Syrian sites where chemical weapons use is suspected.

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - The fall of the Muslim Brotherhood inEgypt has put a new spring in the step of Bashar al-Assad, who sees it as a sign that Islamists - including those spearheading the Sunni-dominated rebellion against him - are in decline.

Exuding confidence after a recent successful army counter-offensive, and speaking as the Egyptian army was deposing Islamist president Mohamed Mursi, Assad said "what is happening inEgypt is the fall of what is known as political Islam."

"After a whole year, reality has become clear to the Egyptian people. The Muslim Brotherhood's performance has helped them see the lies the (group) used at the start of the popular revolution inEgypt."

The Syrian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood was all but destroyed by Assad's father Hafez al-Assad. Membership became a capital offence in 1980 and an Islamist insurrection in 1982 drew a ruthless response. That defeat seemed to mark the end of the Islamic movement as a political force inSyria.

But the past two years have brought a reversal. The Brotherhood is influential inSyria's opposition in exile, mainly because of its ability to channel money and arms from countries including Qatar and Turkey.

The roots of the enmity between Assad's Baath Party and the Muslim Brotherhood are ideological.

The Baath Party is secular, nationalist and led by the minority Alawites, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, whom the Brotherhood and other conservative Sunni Muslims view as heretics. The Brotherhood considers nationalism to be un-Islamic and religion to be inseparable from the politics of government.

The end of Brotherhood rule inEgypt coupled with fierce opposition to the Brothers' brand of political Islam in Gulf power Saudi Arabia may change the regional equation. Recent victories on the battlefield have increased Assad's confidence.

"Assad is basically saying the Islamists are now in retreat and the military are on the offensive," says Fawaz Gerges, head of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics.

The Brotherhood's fall inEgypt, the land of its birth in 1928, means the Islamist narrative has all but collapsed, so the reasoning goes. The Brotherhood is in decline and the secular Arab nationalist narrative Assad purports to embody is on the rise.

"He is saying if the mother organization fails, the Muslim Brothers inSyria have no future" and their sponsors such as Qatar are in retreat, Gerges says.

CURBING IRAN

None of this, however, implies decisive change in the balance on the ground inSyria where, even with support from Shi'ite Iran and its Lebanese paramilitary proxy Hezbollah, there is no sign Assad can regain control of a fragmenting country.

The government holds the capital Damascus and other cities while the largest areas under rebel control are to the north and east of Aleppo and down the center of the country between Idlib and Hama. Aleppo remains divided.

After making early military gains, the rebels now find themselves short of the weapons they need to take on Assad's armor and air power.

While Assad is not capable of snatching total victory by delivering a decisive blow to Sunni rebels, he believes he is winning because he has been able to survive for the past two and a half years, Gerges argues.

But Assad must still contend with two uncomfortable facts: outside support for the rebels is not going away and Islamist fighters in their ranks are likely to harden their attitudes following what they see as a military coup against Mursi.

Observers such as Tarek Osman, an Egyptian political economist and author of "Egypt on the Brink", doubt that support for Syria's rebels will start melting away because the desire of Sunni Gulf Arab states and the West to maintain their opposition to Assad's ally Iran more than outweighs their distaste for the Brotherhood.

"For almost all major regional players, the fight against Iranian influence in the eastern Mediterranean has a higher level of urgency and importance than their positions regarding political Islam," says Osman.

He also points to "a sense of defiance already setting in among Arab Islamists" because of the way Mursi was bundled out of office despite having come to power through the ballot box. That will harden their attitudes inSyria and in other Arab states facing difficult transitions.

"For the jihadist groups fighting the Assad regime inSyria, this defiance could mean increased ferocity: a sense that their ‘cause' now is under attack."

The hardening of Islamists' position can be seen in their Internet chatter where some describe the military move to force Mursi to step down, as a "conspiracy against Islam".

"The military is the enemy of Islam, this is a fact. The armies in the Arab world were built to reject Islam. That is why we saw the army here killing Muslims and the same inEgypt, they are showing their real face," said Abu Omar, an Islamist in the northern province of Idlib.

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