On the cusp of foreign intervention in Syria, the Iranian government claims to have affixed state-of-the-art radar and weapons systems on one of its warships.

The purported upgrades include domestically produced radar system that can detect cruise missiles and stealth technology, as well as new weapons system that will "improve performance and firepower."

The claims come through Iranian state-run media, and need be taken with a grain of salt. In the last year alone, the Iranian military has on separate instances made the following claims:

• A cutting edge surface-to-surface medium range rocket with advanced guidance systems.
• The coming additions of a new drone, a new tank, new submarine, a new missile, and an already widely debunked stealth fighter jet that can “take off and land on short runways.”
• The successful replication and full production of U.S. Scan Eagle drones. 
• A hovercraft with the ability to launch drones, missiles, and machine guns.

"In recent years, Iran has made great achievements in its defense sector and attained self-sufficiency in producing essential military equipment and systems," the Iranian state-run Fars news agency said in its announcement.

U.S. sanctions leveled against Iran have had a crippling effect on their economy and technological development. The Associated Press recently reported that oil revenues, the principle driver of the Iranian economy, are down as much as 50% amid the sanctions. 

The bellicose military announcement comes as significant U.S. naval assets are positioned off the coast of Syria amid calls from U.S. President Barack Obama to intervene in the conflict there. 

Iran is perhaps the most staunch backer of the Bashar al Assad regime in Syria, bolstering his bloody two-year-long quest to retain power with money, weapons, and fighters. 

SEE ALSO: Actually, The US Has A Strategy In Syria — And It's Starting To Work

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In a rather perplexing contrast with the Obama administration's message on military intervention in Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry refused to rule out the possibility of putting "boots on the ground" in Syria in response to a theoretical escalation of the conflict.

"I don’t want to take off the table an option that might or might not be on the table," Kerry said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday. 

Kerry's answer came in response to a question from Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. After hearing Kerry's response, Menendez said that Congress may have to "work on language that makes it clear" the mission of military intervention in Syria in an authorization of military force. 

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the ranking Republican member on the committee, challenged Kerry on the premise later, at which point Kerry tried to walk back his earlier statement. 

"Let's shut that door," Kerry said, saying he was "thinking out loud" about a "hypothetical" situation.

Part of the Obama administration's justification for its military intervention has been that it will have a limited and narrow scope, and that there was no chance of any troop deployment that would lead to a long occupation similar to the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan.

"So the key point that I want to emphasize to the American people:  The military plan that has been developed by the joint chiefs and that I believe is appropriate is proportional," President Barack Obama said Tuesday before a meeting with members of Congress.

"It is limited. It does not involve bootsontheground. This is not Iraq and this is not Afghanistan."

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is backing President Barack Obama's call for limited military strikes in Syria. 

"Secretary Clinton supports the President’s effort to enlist the Congress in pursuing a strong and targeted response to the Assad regime’s horrific use of chemical weapons," a Clinton aide said in an email. The aide's comments were first reported by Politico's Maggie Haberman. 

The comments served as the Clinton camp's first on the developments in Syria, after she had been roundly criticized for not offering any comment on the situation recently. 

As Secretary of State, Clinton advocated diplomatic efforts to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from office. And she also pushed a plan, along with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, to arm and train Syrian rebels. That proposal was scuttled by the White House last year.

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Why would anyone vote Republican? Please give reason. Raised taxes; marching us off to war again; approved more NSA snooping. WHO ARE THEY?!

— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) September 3, 2013

It's now Authoritarian vs. Libertarian. Since Democrats vs. Republicans has been obliterated, no real difference between parties...

— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) September 3, 2013

DRUDGE POLL ON RESOLUTION FOR OBAMA AND SYRIA: 1000+ votes in 1 minute, running 10-1 against! http://t.co/RHiRR3MiKN

— MATT DRUDGE (@DRUDGE) September 2, 2013

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Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) quickly tried to diffuse a controversy that popped up after a Washington Post photographer captured a shot of him playing poker on his iPhone during a Senate hearing on Syria Tuesday.

Shortly before 6 p.m. ET, the WaPo posted evidence of McCain's fooling around during the hearing, which was shot by photographer Melina Mara. 

It quickly gained traction on Twitter. And within minutes, the Drudge Report splashed the photograph with an unflattering headline: "MCCAIN PLAYS POKER DURING WAR HEARING."

McCain joked that the worst part of the story is that he lost:

Scandal! Caught playing iPhone game at 3+ hour Senate hearing - worst of all I lost!

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) September 3, 2013

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's hearing on Syria did last more than three hours, adjourning just after 6 p.m. on Tuesday. McCain has signaled that he supports President Barack Obama's plan for military action in Syria, arguing that it would be "catastrophic" if a vote in Congress fails to pass. 

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Members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee reached a deal late Tuesday on a new resolution that would authorize force in a U.S. mission in Syria — with some limits.

The resolution is much more narrow than the broad draft resolution the White House sent to Congress on Saturday. According to Senate aides familiar with the resolution's text, it limits military action to a 60-day period with a potential 30-day extension, if President Barack Obama comes to Congress with a request for an extension.

It also specifies that no troops may be deployed in the mission.

"The resolution creates a limited and clear mission all directly related to Assad’s weapons of mass destruction, places strict time limits on the mission, and specifies that there be no ground troops," a Senate aide told Business Insider.

The committee is expected to begin debate on the resolution on Wednesday. After it is marked up and if it passes through the committee, as expected, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will likely schedule a vote for early next week.

"We will have to see as it works its way through the Senate," an aide said on chances of full Senate passage.

The condition to bar any "boots on the ground" in Syria comes after Secretary of State John Kerry awkwardly refused to rule out such a possibility during a committee hearing Tuesday— and then furiously spent time trying to walk back on his statement throughout the rest of the hearing.

Here's the full text:

Syria Joint Resolution

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NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia (AP)— President Vladimir Putin warned the West against taking one-sided action in Syria but also said Russia "doesn't exclude" supporting a U.N. resolution on punitive military strikes if it is proved that Damascus used poison gas on its own people.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press and Russia's state Channel 1 television, Putin said Moscow has provided some components of the S-300 air defense missile system to Syria but has frozen further shipments. He suggested that Russia may sell the potent missile systems elsewhere if Western nations attack Syria without U.N. Security Council backing.

The interview Tuesday night at Putin's country residence outside the Russian capital was the only one he granted prior to the summit of G-20 nations in St. Petersburg, which opens Thursday. The summit was supposed to concentrate on the global economy but now looks likely to be dominated by the international crisis over allegations that the Syrian government used chemical weapons in the country's civil war.

Putin said he felt sorry that President Barack Obama canceled a one-on-one meeting in Moscow that was supposed to have happened before the summit. But he expressed hope the two would have serious discussions about Syria and other issues in St. Petersburg.

"President Obama hasn't been elected by the American people in order to be pleasant to Russia. And your humble servant hasn't been elected by the people of Russia to be pleasant to someone either," he said of their relationship.

"We work, we argue about some issues. We are human. Sometimes one of us gets vexed. But I would like to repeat once again that global mutual interests form a good basis for finding a joint solution to our problems," Putin said.

He also denied that Russia has anti-gay policies — an issue that has threatened to embarrass the country as it prepares to host the Winter Olympics in February.

The Russian leader, a year into his third term as president, appeared to go out of his way to be conciliatory amid a growing chill in U.S.-Russian relations. The two countries have sparred over Syria, the Edward Snowden affair, Russia's treatment of its opposition and the diminishing scope in Russia for civil society groups that receive funding from the West.

Putin said it was "ludicrous" that the government of President Bashar Assad — a staunch ally of Russia — would use chemical weapons at a time when it was holding sway against the rebels.

"From our viewpoint, it seems absolutely absurd that the armed forces, the regular armed forces, which are on the offensive today and in some areas have encircled the so-called rebels and are finishing them off, that in these conditions they would start using forbidden chemical weapons while realizing quite well that it could serve as a pretext for applying sanctions against them, including the use of force," he said.

The Obama administration says 1,429 people died in the Aug. 21 attack in a Damascus suburb. Casualty estimates by other groups are far lower, and Assad's government blames the episode on rebels trying to overthrow him. A U.N. inspection team is awaiting lab results on tissue and soil samples it collected while in Syria before completing a report.

"If there are data that the chemical weapons have been used, and used specifically by the regular army, this evidence should be submitted to the U.N. Security Council," added Putin, a former officer in the Soviet KGB. "And it ought to be convincing. It shouldn't be based on some rumors and information obtained by special services through some kind of eavesdropping, some conversations and things like that."

He noted that even in the U.S., "there are experts who believe that the evidence presented by the administration doesn't look convincing, and they don't exclude the possibility that the opposition conducted a premeditated provocative action trying to give their sponsors a pretext for military intervention."

He compared the evidence presented by Washington to false data used by the Bush administration about weapons of mass destruction to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"All these arguments turned out to be untenable, but they were used to launch a military action, which many in the U.S. called a mistake. Did we forget about that?" Putin said.

He said he "doesn't exclude" backing the use of force against Syria at the United Nations if there is objective evidence proving that Assad's regime used chemical weapons against its people. But he strongly warned Washington against launching military action without U.N. approval, saying it would represent an aggression.

Putin reinforced his demand that before taking action, Obama needed approval from the U.N. Security Council. Russia can veto resolutions in the council and has protected Syria from punitive actions there before.

Asked what kind of evidence on chemical weapons use would convince Russia, Putin said "it should be a deep and specific probe containing evidence that would be obvious and prove beyond doubt who did it and what means were used."

Putin said it was "too early" to talk about what Russia would do if the U.S. attacked Syria.

"We have our ideas about what we will do and how we will do it in case the situation develops toward the use of force or otherwise," he said. "We have our plans."

Putin called the S-300 air defense missile system "a very efficient weapon" and said that Russia had a contract for its delivery of the S-300s to Syria. "We have supplied some of the components, but the delivery hasn't been completed. We have suspended it for now," he said.

"But if we see that steps are taken that violate the existing international norms, we shall think how we should act in the future, in particular regarding supplies of such sensitive weapons to certain regions of the world," he said.

The statement could be a veiled threat to revive a contract for the delivery of the S-300s to Iran, which Russia canceled a few years ago under strong U.S. and Israeli pressure.

Putin praised Obama as a frank and constructive negotiating partner and denied reports that he had taken personal offense at remarks by Obama comparing Putin's body language to that of a slouching, bored student. Putin said appearances can be deceiving.

Putin also accused U.S. intelligence agencies of bungling efforts to apprehend Snowden, the National Security Agency leader, who is wanted in the U.S. on espionage charges. He said the United States could have allowed Snowden to go to a country where his security would not be guaranteed or intercepted him along the way, but instead pressured other countries not to accept him or even to allow a plane carrying him to cross their airspace. Russia has granted him temporary asylum.

Putin also gave the first official confirmation that Snowden had been in touch with Russian officials in Hong Kong before flying to Moscow on June 23, but said he only learned that Snowden was on the flight two hours before it arrived. Putin once again denied that Russia's security services are working with Snowden, whose stay in Russia has been shrouded in secrecy.

On another topic, he denied at length charges that Russia has anti-gay policies, indicating that Obama was welcome to meet with gay and lesbian activists in Russia during his visit. He even said he might meet with a similar group himself if there is interest from the gay community in Russia.

Putin rejected the criticism of a Russian law banning gay propaganda that prompted some activists to call for the boycott of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, arguing that it wouldn't infringe on the rights of gays.

He also said that athletes and activists would not be punished if they raise rainbow flags or paint their fingernails in rainbow colors at the Feb. 7-23 Olympics.

But he clearly has no intention of allowing a gay pride parade or other such actions: Last month, Putin signed a decree banning all demonstrations and rallies in Sochi throughout the Winter Games.

As for the body language between Putin and Obama that some have said suggested a difficult working relationship, the Russian president urged everyone to avoid jumping to conclusions.

"There are some gestures, of course, that you can only interpret one way, but no one has ever seen those kinds of gestures directed by Obama at me or by me at Obama, and I hope that never happens," he said.

"Everything else is fantasy."

___

Associated Press writer Laura Mills in Moscow contributed to this report.

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(Reuters) - President Barack Obama's national security team is trying to make the case to skeptical U.S. lawmakers for a limited strike against the Syrian government over its alleged use of chemical weapons on August 21.

Following are details of missile strikes and other limited military action taken by the United States over the past 30 years and what transpired afterwards:

* Lebanon 1983 - In September 1983, U.S. battleships anchored in the Mediterranean Sea off Lebanon shelled Syrian, Palestinian and Druze forces in the Shouf Mountains outside Beirut in support of the Lebanese army, during the complex civil war that began in 1975.

It was one of several actions that created a perception that the United States was taking sides in the war. A month later, Shi'ite Muslim suicide bombers blew up the U.S. Marine and French barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Marines and 58 French paratroopers. President Ronald Reagan pulled U.S. forces out of Lebanon in February 1984. Lebanon's civil war raged on until 1990.

* Libya 1986 - U.S. bomber aircraft struck sites in the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, 10 days after the deadly bombing of West Berlin's LaBelle nightclub frequented by American soldiers, which Washington blamed on Libya. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's adopted daughter was alleged to have been killed, and his sons were reported injured.

Libya was not linked to another major terrorist attack until the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 259 passengers and crew and 11 people on the ground. Libyan Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, who denied involvement in downing the jet, was convicted of the bombing in a court in the Netherlands 2001. Gaddafi ruled Libya until his ouster in August 2011.

* Afghanistan and Sudan 1998 - President Bill Clinton responded to al Qaeda's bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania with cruise missile strikes on al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had lived in Khartoum in 1990s and U.S. intelligence believed the factory was producing chemical weapons. European diplomats later said the factory was a primary source of medicine in Sudan.

Analysts and historians say "Operation Infinite Reach" was interpreted by bin Laden, who reportedly joked that the attack killed only camels and chickens, as evidence the United States lacked the stomach for confrontation with his forces. In October 2000, the U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Cole was hit by an al Qaeda suicide attack while it refueled at port in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 American sailors. A year later, the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington killed nearly 3,000 people.

* Iraq 1993, 1996 and 1998 - In 1993, Clinton ordered the firing of Tomahawk missiles against the headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service in response to a failed Iraqi attempt to assassinate former U.S. President George H.W. Bush.

In 1996, U.S. cruise missiles hit air defense facilities in southern Iraq in retaliation for Iraq's attacks on minority Kurds and its challenges to no-fly zones authorized by U.N. Security Council resolution.

In 1998, a four-day U.S. and British bombing campaign named "Operation Desert Fox" hit Iraqi weapons research and storage facilities to retaliate for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's refusal to cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspectors.

U.S. officials said the strikes jolted Hussein's hold on power, but he remained the leader of Iraq until he was ousted in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

SOURCES: Reuters and contemporary news reports.

(Reporting by Paul Eckert; Editing by Warren Strobel and Xavier Briand)

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After a three-month hiatus, Jon Stewart made his much-anticipated return to "The Daily Show" Tuesday night — and he picked up right where he left off.

After spending three months producing a movie in the Middle East, it took some time — and help — for Stewart to get back into U.S. mold. Temporary host John Oliver, as well as fellow Comedy Central host Stephen Colbert, helped get him back into form in the show's first segment.

Once the detox was complete, Stewart went right into discussion on Syria. 

It felt like he never left, he said.

"Wow! America taking military action against a Middle East regime? It's like I never left!" Stewart said, then launching into clips of recent presidents before their invasions against Middle East countries.

He cast President Barack Obama in much of the same light as those other U.S. presidents — saying the argument put forth by Obama and others that the U.S. should carry out limited military action in Syria for the purpose of not looking "weak" on previous statements as akin to a "seventh grade" argument.

He also referred to Obama's repeated attempts to differentiate the Syria mission from Iraq and Afghanistan as "Operation Just The Tip."

And he did not welcome the addition of Iraq War-era talking heads Bill Kristol and Donald Rumsfeld — he said the "idiot parade" was back in town.  

Here are the clips:

And on Syria:

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As the United States and other world powers continue to debate a possible military intervention in Syria, the hacker collective Anonymous has gone ahead with its own intervention, taking on its Syrian counterpart — the Syrian Electronic Army.

It's a shadow war happening online between two amorphous, grassroots groups. And Anonymous dealt the first blow.

Last week, Anons began releasing data they stole in April after infiltrating a server used by the Syrian Electronic Army. Over the weekend, someone began dumping it all on the so-called "deep web," a portion of the internet that isn't accessible by traditional browsers or search engines. 

While the Syrian Electronic Army is mostly made up of supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and may receive some material support from the regime, the organization does not appear to have any official relationship the government, something that appears to be confirmed in the data leaked by Anonymous. The Syrian Electronic Army has claimed several high-profile security breaches recently, including hacks on the websites of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the US Marine Corps.

Anons said the data released identifies the Syrian Electronic Army's core leadership, their methods, personal emails, usernames and passwords used by its members.

“I imagine them as an Assad cronies’ notion of the Chinese Cyber Army, on a shoestring budget,” one Anonymous member, involved in the analysis of the data, told GlobalPost. 

More from GlobalPost: Anonymous to FBI: You don't scare us 

The leaked data identified five core leaders — two of which reside inside Syria, according to Anons involved with analyzing the data. Those key leaders include hackers using the nom de guerre The Shadow, The Pro, Syrian_34g13 and vict0r.

Syrian Electronic Army members, however, deny that their website had been accessed and their members identified. In an interview with Mashable, an individual operating a Twitter acount believed to be associated with the Syrians said the names "Hatem Deeb" and "Mohammed Abd al-Karim," released by Anonymous and published by former Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs, were not the leaders of the organization. 

“The story has been the source of amusement and laughter for all of us. Neither Hatem Deeb nor Mohammed Osman are hackers, but are both friends of ours that they are trying to intimidate in order to blackmail us. What they're doing is actually illegal and irresponsible, they even posted a photograph of a random guy that none of us could identify and called him the leader of the SEA,” the individual said.

An NBC news reporter, however, claimed to have further proof after discovering an article written in Syrian newspaper al-Wihda identifying Deeb as the founder of the Syrian Electronic Army.

More from GlobalPost: Greenwald v. the UK: Anonymous Strikes Back 

It's difficult to prove one way or another, which is often the case in the shadowy world of online hackery. Among the data collected by anonymous is a large number of user accounts for the Syrian Electronic Army's website. But while many of these users support the organization, it is doubtful that many of them possess the skills necessary to carry off the Syrian Electronic Army's high-profile attacks.

The leaked data did appear to give some insight into the group's skill as a hacker collective. Much of the information indicated that the organization uses relatively unsophisticated — but effective — methods to infiltrate their targets. In most of their security breaches, it used Trojans distributed through spear phishing emails. This apparent lack of sophistication contradicts the common perception that the Syrian Electronic Army is made up of coding prodigies and masterful malware architects. 

While Anonymous first accessed the data on April 19, it only released it last week, after accusations that the Assad government had launched a chemical weapons attack on its own people, and world powers publicly debated the merits of military intervention.

The timing raised some questions. A Washington Times article that detailed the capabilities of pro-Assad hackers, may have been the catalyst for the information dump. The article argued that a US strike against the Syrian regime could spark retaliatory cyberattacks against the West, carried out by the Syrian Electronic Army.

The article was circulated widely among Anons involved in the data analysis. And, shortly after its the Washington Times piece, the data was made publicly available on the deep web.

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President Barack Obama said Wednesday that there was plenty of credibility on the line over the world's response in Syria — of Congress and of the international community as a whole.

"My credibility is not on the line," Obama said during a joint press conference in Sweden, where he spoke after a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt. "International credibility is on the line."

His remarks came as Congress is in the midst of debating a resolution that would authorize limited U.S. military force in response to alleged chemical weapons attacks by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on his own people on Aug. 21. 

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will begin markup and debate Wednesday on a compromise resolution that authorizes military action for a 60-day period, while specifically barring any ground troops from being deployed in Syria.

Obama expressed confidence that Congress would pass a resolution because their credibility was on the line. He also said that Congress had a responsibility to uphold an international "red line"— a reference to a comment he famously made last August, when he said that the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons would be a "red line" that would "change [his] calculus" on U.S. intervention in the Syrian civil war.

On Wednesday, he said that the "red line" applied to all parties involved — because "98%" of countries, he said, signed on to the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which banned the production, stockpiling, preparation, and use of chemical weapons. Congress, he said, also set a "red line" when it ratified the treaty, as well as when it passed the Syria Accountability Act in 2003. 

"So, when I said in a press conference that my calculus about what's happening in Syria would be altered by the use of chemical weapons — which the overwhelming consensus of humanity says is wrong — that wasn't something I just kind of made up," Obama said. "I didn't pluck it out of thin air. There's a reason for it."

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PARIS (Reuters) - "I am French," explains the young man in the YouTube video carrying a Kalashnikov and wearing a kufiya cotton headdress as he sits in front of a waving black-and-white flag of al Qaeda.

"Oh my Muslim brothers in France, Europe and in the whole world, Jihad in Syria is obligatory," says the fair-skinned youth with sandy hair, wispy beard and southern French accent, imploring viewers to join him and his younger brother in Syria.

"There are many Muslims in the world and we need you."

Although the United States and its European allies support rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, they consider some rebel groups to be dangerous terrorist organizations linked to al Qaeda.

Officials in Western countries say they are worried about the threat from their own nationals going abroad to fight in Syria and one day returning to carry out attacks at home.

"There is a key factor in the Syria war now: the number of French nationals who are fighting there. It is a problem of national security," a senior French diplomat told Reuters.

Radicals heading toSyria are learning about the war online from social media like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and user forums. Security experts say that makes it harder than ever to disrupt the networks that might lure them in.

"The Islamist radicalization going on today isn't with preachers anymore, acting within mosques, but individuals who are using the Internet as a means of propaganda," said sociologist Samir Amghar, author of the book "Militant Islam in Europe."

As the West considers strikes on Syriato punish Assad's government for suspected chemical weapons attacks, as many as 600 Europeans have already joined the rebellion against him, according to the European Union, which in May recommended better tracking of social media to spot foreign fighters.

A much smaller number of Americans are also believed to be fighting. A Muslim convert from Michigan was the first U.S. woman believed to have been killed alongside the rebels in May.

Computer experts and police say onlinerecruitment is particularly difficult to disrupt because of the dizzying volume of material, time lags in capturing digital evidence, the difficulty of cross-border cooperation and the uncertainty of securing convictions in countries that safeguard free speech.

"I describe it as a Sisyphean task," said Shiraz Maher of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College, London. "You try and pull it down and it will come back in one form or another."

"How do you begin to challenge this? It's just practically impossible to do, it's out there in such quantity."

"VISIT SYRIA!"

Syria has now eclipsed conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Mali to dominate web discussion by Islamists. Some 40 different rebel factions are uploading status reports from the ground in Syria in real time, said senior analyst Laith Alkhouri of security consultancy Flashpoint Global Partners.

Just a few keystrokes can uncover Germans, Italians, Belgians, British, Americans, even Australians - Muslim-born or recently converted - on social networking sites encouraging their countrymen to leave their homes and take up arms in Syria.

"Oh brothers! You don't need someone to take you by the hand to get there. A bit of resourcefulness and you're off!" wrote "Erwan" in a June 23 posting on French radical Islamist forum Ansar Al Haqq. He included links showing the easiest way toSyria from Turkey.

Authorities sometimes choose to shut or sabotage the sites of groups they identify as terrorists, as the United States and Britain did in corrupting online issues of al Qaeda's "Inspire" English-language magazine.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said in June that police had removed over 5,700 pieces of online terrorism content since 2011. Yet that is only a fraction of the estimated 50,000 extremist sites globally, according to the University of Arizona's Dark Web Project, which collects and analyses data from global jihadist forums.

While governments and major social networking sites quickly take down material deemed clearly offensive, such as videos of prisoners being beheaded, most content is less clear cut.

Authorities seeking to curb what they consider to be dangerous material on the Web have to make fine distinctions between political speech that is protected in most Western countries, and incitement to violence which is banned.

Sociologist Amghar said many of the sites are promoting an ideology, rather than calling for violence.

"The objective of many of these sites is not to incite individuals to commit attacks but rather to keep the idea ofJihad in the forefront of people's minds," he said. "The hard part to gauge with precision is what's the impact."

In a sign of the difficulty of stamping out extremism on the Internet, both France and Germany abandoned movesto block such content in the past two years.

The West's opposition to Assad muddies the issue further. It means any Westerners fighting against the government - and anyone on the internet urging them to do so - are ostensibly on the same side as Western authorities.

France's top anti-terrorism judge, Marc Trevidic, foresees challenges in prosecuting return Westerners who return home, given the difficulty of tracking their movements in Syria and proving they joined groups, such as the al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, that Western states consider terrorists. A recruiting video may fall short of proof needed for conviction.

"We consider that wanting to fight Jihad is being a terrorist. But things aren't so simple," Trevidic told an anti-terrorism parliamentary committee in February.

France has opened five formal Syria-related terrorism investigations but no cases have yet been decided by a judge, according to a justice ministry source.

Across the Atlantic, a U.S. citizen, Eric Harroun, was indicted in June by a federal grand jury for allegedly fighting alongside the al-Nusra Front. He can be been seen in online videos posing with weapons and boasting of successful attacks.

"THANK YOU, YOUTUBE"

There are benefits to leaving extremist online material in place, security experts say.

"It's an excellent tool for intelligence," said criminologist Alain Bauer, a former security advisor to French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy. "Western intelligence agencies should give Facebook, YouTube and these other sites a medal."

Eighty percent of terrorism cases before French courts rely exclusively on evidence from the Internet, according toa May 24 parliamentary report on terrorism.

"There's a sense of 'disrupt the flow' when they can, and also a sense of 'leave it be, let's monitor'," said Maher.

When authorities do try to take material off the Web, they are often too late to be effective. It may take months before YouTube responds to a government request to remove an offending video. In the interim, hundreds of copies may have been made and reposted, fuelled by buzz about the video on Twitter.

A system in which users flag inappropriate content is faster, but given that 72 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute, it's not fast enough to keep such content offline.

"It takes five minutes to upload a one-hour video but it might take five months to get YouTube to be aware of this video," said Flashpoint's Alkhouri.

A spokesman for Google, which owns YouTube, said the company responds quickly after users flag content forbidden under policy guidelines, such as incitement to violence.

Given the flood of volume, Western police agencies need smarter tools allowing them to pinpoint and analyze the most dangerous content, a capability most don't have, said Hsinchun Chen, who runs Dark Web at the University of Arizona.

"The analogy is drinking water from the fire hydrant, the content just keeps coming through and how do you monitor that?"

Chen's Dark Web portal relies on multilingual data mining and content analysis to gather and sift through terrorist web content. He said a similar systematic method of collection is currently used only by Israel and one U.S. security agency.

"(Intelligence agencies) are experts in investigations but most of them are not experts in computer science. They don't have the resources or the will or the capability to collect large amounts of information on a systematic basis," Chen said. "They should have it, and it's available."

That also raises privacy issues, which have come to the fore in the United States since former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency collects huge amounts of data from phone calls and internet traffic.

In its May report, France's parliamentary commission recommended strengthening the technical means and automation of Internet surveillance. It added that high-level engineers were "impossible to recruit."

URGENT OR LONG-TERM THREAT

Fighting online extremist content requires a cross-border response as websites may appear in one country but be hosted in another. But information-sharing can be slow and the sensitive nature of terrorism cases adds further delays.

"As soon as you talk about terrorism and national security there are other rules of the game," said Troels Oerting, head of the European Cybercrime Centre at Europol, which helps countries monitor the Web. "National security is very national, it's not very international."

One such example is Malika el Aroud, a Belgian-Moroccan convicted in 2007 by Switzerland for operating a website that recruited militant Islamist fighters to Afghanistan, only to launch a similar site across the border in Belgium. A Belgian court ultimately sentenced her to prison in 2010.

Police are likely to devote more effort to immediate local threats than hypothetical future threats, like those that might be posed by returned fighters from Syria.

"If I'm an intelligence officer in Paris and my primary concern is to make sure nothing happens on the Metro, I'm not immediately concerned by the guy saying, 'Go toSyria,'" said radicalization expert Maher.

"The urgent threat is the guy sitting in a Parisian suburb building a bomb," he said. "You have to balance resources between that threat and the important more slow-moving threat that will germinate and come to fruition in years to come."

(Additional Reporting By Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Peter Graff)

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The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is coming out against military action in Syria, and it plans to pressure on-the-fence Democrats in Congress to oppose it, as well.

The PCCC, which has a membership of nearly 1 million people, is sending a memo to Democratic representatives and senators with the results of a survey that shows its members overwhelmingly oppose intervening in Syria. The poll also shows that its members aren't buying President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry's justifications for intervening.

Here are some of the findings highlighted in the memo, for which the PCCC received more than 57,000 responses:

• 52% say they don't believe Obama and Kerry when they say certain things are true in Syria as justification for military action. Only 48% agree with them.

• By 73% to 18%, respondents oppose U.S. military action in Syria.

• Only 14% favor unilateral U.S. military action. Among those open to a coalition effort, 55% say the United Nations “must” approve the action to go forward.

• 81% believe that an initially-limited bombing campaign would lead to deeper involvement.

• 80% say, regardless of the U.S.'s goal, narrow bombings will not achieve it.

• Most respondents believe something should be done about Syria — only 11% say to do nothing. 38% say we need a diplomatic strategy involving the UN and other nations. 19% say pursue war crime charges in The Hague. 19% favor humanitarian aid. Only 11% prefer air attacks as the solution.

The survey and pressure come as Congress is in the midst of debating a resolution that would authorize limited U.S. military force in response to alleged chemical weapons attacks by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on his own people on Aug. 21. 

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will begin markup and debate Wednesday on a compromise resolution that authorizes military action for a 60-day period, while specifically barring any ground troops from being deployed in Syria.

The PCCC said its members would make "thousands" of calls to members of Congress in the coming days, as well as participate in local events.

"You now face a decision that involves life and death," Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor, Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founders, said in a statement. 

"This decision also involves billions of dollars. And it will send a signal to your constituents and the world about our nation’s morals and our ability to make strategic, goal-oriented decisions. ... Your progressive base stands firmly against military action in Syria."

Green and the PCCC had come out in support of Obama's decision to seek Congressional authorization on Saturday, calling it an "important precedent for all future presidents."

The full PCCC memo and survey results, with charts, are embedded below:

Syria Memo PCCC

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The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a resolution that authorizes President Barack Obama to use limited military force in Syria by a 10-7 vote on Wednesday. 

The resolution will now head to the full Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid will likely schedule a vote for early next week.

Voting "yes" on the resolution were Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Ben Cardin (Md.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Chris Coons (Del.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Bob Menendez (N.J.) and Tim Kaine (Va.); as well as Republicans Bob Corker (Tenn.), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), and John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Voting "no" were Democrats Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.); as well as Republicans James Risch (Idaho), Ron Johnson (Wisc.), John Barrasso (Wyo.), and big names Rand Paul (Ky.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.).

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) voted present.

The panel's passage came the day after Menendez, its chair, and Corker, its ranking Republican, agreed to a compromise resolution that narrowed the White House's proposed guidelines. The compromise resolution limits military action to 60 days — with a potential 30-day extension. It also barred the deployment of ground troops in Syria.

However, McCain's vote was only assured after he and Coons introduced an amendment that broadened the objective of the U.S. mission to "change the momentum on the battlefield in Syria."

The amendment added specifies that the U.S.'s strategy should aim to degrade the Assad regime's capabilities to use chemical weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, while at the same time upgrading the "lethal and non-lethal capabilities" of "vetted" groups within the Syrian opposition.

The White House commended the Senate panel's vote in a statement from Press Secretary Jay Carney. 

"We commend the Senate for moving swiftly and for working across party lines on behalf of our national security," Carney said. "... The military action authorized in the resolution would uphold America's national security interests by degrading Assad's chemical weapons capability and deterring the future use of these weapons, even as we pursue a broader strategy of strengthening the opposition to hasten a political transition in Syria.

"We will continue to work with Congress to build on this bipartisan support for a military response that is narrowly tailored to enforce the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons, and sufficient to protect the national security interests of the United States of America."

SEE ALSO: Liberals Aren't Buying Obama And Kerry's Arguments For Action In Syria

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Bashar Al Assad isn't the only one making moves based on the probability of U.S. bombs, Al Qaeda is in the mix too.

The extremist militant group figures that they will also be targets of a torrent of U.S. cruise missiles.

Mark Stout, Senior Editor at War on the Rocks, writes:

Today, however, more and more jihadists are taking the United States’ military capabilities very seriously and this new view probably extends to other NATO militaries, as well.  Certainly, there is little scoffing these days at the effectiveness of modern airpower or intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

A few days ago when American strikes on Syria seemed imminent, Fatah al-Islam, among other groups, warned its members to be ready for the possibility that the strikes would be on jihadist targets as well as Assad regime targets.

The modern military's ability to efficiently find targets has Al Qaeda leaders spooked, as Liz Sly of The Washington Post noted last week when she quoted an all-hands memo sent out to affiliates in Syria:

“Start changing your locations, and use safe houses, and don’t move around in obvious convoys. Take away mobile phones from the troops, and send them away from the leadership. America destroyed jihadi bases in a very short period of time in Afghanistan and Iraq, and killed a large number of them, because they weren’t prepared. So don’t fall in the trap of laziness.”

Among many ways the military locks on targets — human intelligence, boots on the ground with laser targeting systems — satellite and cell phone signals have been of great consequence.

Cruise missiles operate with a combination of four targeting systems, one of which is GPS, another which matches the contour of the landscape, and still yet another that stores GPS location and satellite images of the target.

All told, they are a deadly accurate weapon — and Obama has a few hundred parked off the coast of Syria.

SEE ALSO: 20 Reasons why the Tomahawk should have Assad awake at night

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Those tasked with executing the strike on Bashar al Assad's regime in Syria were reportedly shocked when U.S. President Barack Obama announced Saturday that he wanted to seek Congressional approval first, according to Chris Lawrence with CNN. 

"The tempo went from 'go-go-go' to nothing," an unnamed defense official told CNN. "We were standing multiple watches. Everyone was pretty sure it was going to happen."

With U.S. destroyers and submarines moored off the coast of Syria, battle stations manned, and fingers on the trigger of hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles, Obama reportedly changed his mind Friday evening on executing the strike on his own authority, after a conversation with his chief of staff, Denis McDonough.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said as early as Aug. 27 that the U.S. military was "ready to go" to strike Syria if ordered, in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians on Aug. 21.

But after a proposed UN Security Council Resolution failed to make it pass Russia, and a British measure authorizing force died in the House of Commons, the president decided to seek an authorization of military force from Congress.

The authorization cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today by a vote of 10 to 7, with one abstention. 

It is expected to be subject to a full vote from the House and Senate as early as next week.

SEE ALSO: These Two Maps Show Just How Much Western Power Is Surrounding Syria Right Now

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A Swedish reporter confronted President Barack Obama about reconciling a pending attack on Syria with his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize that he won almost immediately after taking office.

Obama and Sweden’s Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt held a joint press conference Wednesday in Stockholm as part of the first ever bilateral meeting between the nation’s two top leaders.

The reporter asked, “I was wondering, could you describe the dilemma to being a Nobel Peace Prize winner and getting ready to attack Syria?”

Obama first referred the reporter to look at his speech accepting the prize, in which he said he was undeserving compared to past recipients but also said the use of military force is sometimes necessary.

“What I also described is the challenge all of us face, when we believe in peace but we confront a world that is full of violence,” Obama said. “The question then becomes what are our responsibilities. So, I’ve made every effort to end the war in Iraq, to wind down the war in Afghanistan, to strengthen our commitment to multilateral action, to promote diplomacy as a solution to problems. The question though, that all of us face as political leaders: At what point do we need to confront actions that are violating our common humanity?”

Answering his own question, Obama said, “I would argue when I see 400 children subjected to gas, over 1,400 civilians dying senselessly in an environment where you already have tens of thousands killed, and we have the opportunity to take some action that is meaningful even if it doesn’t solve the entire problem, may at least mitigate this particular problem, then the moral thing to do is not to stand by and do nothing.”

According to U.S. intelligence, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad used chemical weapons against his own people on Aug. 21, killing 1,429, of whom 426 were children.

Obama went on to reference how much of the world is critical of the United States, but expects them to step up during an international crisis.

“As much as we are criticized, when bad stuff happens around the world, the first question is, what is the United States going to do about it?” Obama said. “That’s true on every issue. It’s true in Libya. It’s true in Rwanda. It’s true in Sierra Leon. It’s now true in Syria. That’s part of the deal.”

Most of the Nobel prizes are awarded in Stockholm. The Nobel Peace Prize, however, is awarded in Oslo, Norway.

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ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - China warned on Thursday that military intervention in Syria would hurt the world economy and push up oil prices, reinforcing Vladimir Putin's attempts to talk U.S. President Barack Obama out of air strikes.

The rift over Syria could overshadow a summit of the Group of 20 (G20) developed and developing economies in St. Petersburg at which global leaders want to forge a united front on growth, trade, banking transparency and fighting tax evasion.

The club that accounts for two thirds of the world's population and 90 percent of its output is divided over issues such as turmoil in emerging markets and the Federal Reserve's decision to end its program of stimulus for the U.S. economy.

But no rift is wider than the one between the U.S. and Russian leaders on possible military intervention in Syria to punish President Bashar al-Assad over a chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds of people on August 21.

Putin was isolated on Syria at a Group of Eight meeting in June, the last big meeting of world powers, but now has China to back him at the G20 summit in Russia's former imperial capital.

"Military action would have a negative impact on the global economy, especially on the oil price - it will cause a hike in the oil price," Chinese Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao told a briefing before the start of the G20 leaders' talks.

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei reiterated that any party resorting to chemical warfare should accept responsibility for it but said unilateral military actions violate international law and would complicate the conflict.

Like Moscow, one of Syria's main arms suppliers, Beijing has veto powers on the United Nations Security Council. Obama is unlikely to win Security Council approval for military action but is seeking the approval of the U.S. Congress.

France echoed Obama's call for action over the gas attack, which Washington blames on Syrian government troops and Moscow says may have been carried out by rebels trying to oust Assad.

"The position of France is to punish and negotiate," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told France 2 television before travelling to St. Petersburg, where Putin is hosting the summit in a tsarist palace on the coast.

"We are convinced that if there is no punishment for Mr. Assad, there will be no negotiation," he added. "Punishment will allow negotiation, but obviously it will be difficult."

Fabius, whose country is preparing to support the U.S. military action with own forces, said Syria would be discussed at the summit even though it is not formally on the agenda.

Putin has said he would like to hold one-on-one talks with Obama but a Kremlin spokesman said no such meeting was planned. Last month, Obama pulled out of talks with Putin that had been scheduled for Wednesday, and U.S.-Russian ties are in freefall.

Foreign ministers from key states in the G20 - which includes all five permanent U.N. Security Council members - will also discuss Syria on the sidelines of the meeting.

Any G20 decision on Syria would not be binding but Putin would like to see a consensus to avert military action in what would be a significant - but unlikely - personal triumph.

Obama used a visit to Sweden on Wednesday to build his case for a military response, saying: "The international community's credibility is on the line." Putin increased the volume as well, accusing Secretary of State John Kerry of "lying" by playing down the role of the militant group al Qaeda with rebel forces.

LOSS OF HARMONY

The G20 achieved unprecedented cooperation between developed and emerging nations to stave off economic collapse during the 2009 financial crisis, but the harmony has now gone.

There are likely to be some agreements - including on measures to fight tax evasion by multinational companies - at the summit in the spectacular, 18th-century Peterhof palace complex, built on the orders of Tsar Peter the Great.

An initiative will be presented to leaders on refining regulation of the $630-trillion global market for financial derivatives to prevent a possible markets blow-up.

Steps to give the so-called 'shadow banking' sector until 2015 to comply with new global rules will also be discussed.

But consensus is proving hard to achieve among developed economies as the United States takes aggressive action to spur demand and Europe moves more slowly to let go of austerity.

Meanwhile, emerging economies in the BRICS countries - Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa - are divided over the role of the U.S. dollar in the world economy. And there has been no sign of them rallying behind the fifth BRICS member, India, after it called on Friday for joint currency intervention.

Russia and China also joined forces in warning about the potential impact of the Fed ending its bond-buying program to stimulate the economy. Zhu urged the United States to be "mindful of the spillover effects and work to contribute to the stability of the global financial markets and the steady recovery of the global economy".

The International Monetary Fund will call at the meeting for strengthened global action to revitalize growth and better manage risks, according to an IMF document seen by Reuters.

But with the United States and other advanced economies picking up speed, the IMF said it still expected global growth to accelerate in 2014 from this year, helped by the highly accommodative monetary conditions in the rich world.

Further friction on the fringes of the summit could be caused by Obama's plans to meet human rights activists including members of a gay rights group which staged protests against a law Putin signed banning "gay propaganda" among children.

(Reporting by Gernot Heller, Luke Baker, Tetsushi Kajimoto, Lidia Kelly, Katya Golubkova, Alessandra Prentice and Denis Dyomkin, and by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Steve Gutterman and Alastair Macdonald)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - It would hardly be a surprise to Syrian President Bashar al-Assador his military if American missiles start hitting Syria soon.

With weeks to prepare for an attack, Assad might benefit in some ways from the delay in any strike caused by President Barack Obama's decision to seek approval from a divided U.S. Congress.

U.S. officials and defense experts say Assad's forces cannot take enough targets out of reach to blunt the U.S. military mission, especially since it is billed as having very limited objectives.

Obama is calling for a limited military strike in response to a chemical weapons attack on civilians blamed by the United States on Assad's forces.

Fixed targets, for example, cannot be protected no matter how much time elapses. "A building can't be moved, nor hid," one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Other fixed targets could include airfields, although not any storage facilities with chemical weapons in them.

Defense analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank said if successful, hitting fixed targets would eliminate key assets to Assad that "can't easily be replaced, like command and control facilities, major headquarters."

"These are lasting targets," Cordesman said.

It is still unclear when any U.S. attack on Syria will happen but Assad already has had ample time to try to get ready. U.S. officials have been openly discussing the possibility of hitting Syria since shortly after the August 21 chemical weapons attack near Damascus.

Even if Congress approves military action, a final vote would be unlikely before the middle of next week.

A second U.S. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the delay added "complexities" to the planning efforts.

"It may change target sets," the official said. "We'll continue to refine our targeting options to conditions on the ground."

Assad has already moved some military equipment and personnel to civilian areas and put soldiers whose loyalty to Assad is in doubt in military sites as human shields against any Western strikes, the Istanbul-based Syrian opposition has said.

It cited movement of rockets, Scud missiles and launches, as well as soldiers to locations including schools, university dormitories and government buildings inside cities.

That could complicate the ability of the United States to reach some targets.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged publicly to Congress that Obama has ordered the military to develop plans that keep a lid on collateral damage - civilian deaths and damage to civilian infrastructure.

"Though they are in fact moving resources around - and in some cases placing prisoners and others in places that they believe we might target - at this point our intelligence is keeping up with that movement," Dempsey, the top U.S. military officer, told lawmakers on Wednesday.

WAIT FOR MONTH?

The question of whether losing the element of surprise makes a difference militarily became a bone of contention in the debate over congressional backing for Obama's attack plan.

Senator John McCain, one of the Republicans who has pushed hardest for military action in Syria, said this week he was "astounded" when Obama said the military had advised him that an attack would still be effective in a month's time.

"When you tell the enemy you are going to attack, they are obviously going to disperse and make it harder," McCain said in Congress on Tuesday.

"It's ridiculous to think that it's not wise from a pure military standpoint not to warn the enemy that you're gonna attack," McCain said.

The Obama administration says the planned attack is designed to strike a particular balance - being strong enough to deter Assad from using chemical weapons in the future while also degrading his ability to do so.

But the Obama administration has said any attack would not be designed to topple Assador necessarily shift the momentum in Syria's civil war to the detriment of government forces.

U.S. objectives include targets directly linked to the Syrian military's ability to use chemical weapons, as well as missiles and rockets that can deliver them, Dempsey said.

Air defenses that could be used to protect chemical weapons sites are also potential targets, Dempsey said.

"That target package is still being refined as I sit here with you," Dempsey told lawmakers.

Despite the stated objective of deterring Assad, the U.S. military cannot guarantee its strikes will prevent Assad from using chemical weapons in the future.

Even the objective to degrade - a military term that means "diminish" - his capabilities is vague. There has been no clear, public objective offered by the United States on how much it must damage Assad's capabilities.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Alistair Bell and Will Dunham)

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Iran will support Syria "until the end" in the face of possible US-led military strikes, the chief of Iran's elite Quds Force unit was quoted Thursday by the media as saying.

Iran is Syria's main regional ally and some analysts believe a wider goal of US President Barack Obama's determination to launch a strike against the Damascus regime is to blunt Tehran's growing regional influence and any consequent threat to Washington ally Israel.

"The aim of the United States is not to protect human rights ... but to destroy the front of resistance (against Israel)," Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani was quoted as saying.

"We will support Syria to the end," he added in a speech to the Assembly of Experts, the body that supervises the work of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

He did not elaborate on the nature of the support and Iran has constantly denied allegations by Western powers that it has sent military forces to prop up President Bashar al-Assad's embattled regime.

A year ago, the chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, said that members of the Quds Force foreign operations unit were in Syria but only to provide Assad's government with "counsel and advice".

Soleimani accused the US of using its claims that Syria's forces had unleashed chemical weapons on civilians last month as a "pretext" to try to topple Assad's regime.

Iran's Defence Minister Hossein Dehqan, meanwhile, ruled out sending troops or weapons to Syria.

"The Syrians do not need us to provide them with weapons because they have a defensive anti-aircraft system themselves," he was cited in the local media as saying.

President Hassan Rowhani said Iran will do "everything to prevent" an attack on the Syrian regime, according to extracts from statements he made before the Assembly of Experts published in the media.

"Any action against Syria is against the interests of the region but also against the friends of the United States in this region," he said.

"Such action will help nobody."

The US, France and other countries accuse Assad's forces of launching chemical weapons attacks on the outskirts of Damascus on August 21, which they say killed hundreds.

Obama is seeking congressional backing as well as broader international support for punitive strikes on Assad's regime.

Iran has warned that any military action against Syria risks sparking a broader regional conflagration.

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