By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on December 19, 2014

Defence Minister Daoud Rajha, General Assef Shawkat and General Hassan Ali Turkmani

Sam Dagher at the Wall Street Journal has identified the July 18, 2012, bombing, which killed four senior Assad regime officials, most seriously Assef Shawkat, as the turning point in Syria, reversing the rebellion’s momentum, bringing the scale of the killing above where it had been before, closing the ranks of the minorities around the regime, and opening the country up to Iran.

Dagher certainly has the timing correct. It was the late summer, and most noticeably the fall of 2012, when the death toll in Syria markedly increased. 5,000 people had been killed in all of 2011, and another 5,000 by May 2012. By September 2012, 30,000 people were dead, the kill-rate now reaching 5,000-per-month. By January 2013, 60,000 people were dead, a kill-rate of 10,000-per-month. Nobody really knows what the total, let alone the rate, is now, but this was when it spiked. This period is also concurrent with the massive operation mounted by Clerical Iran to rescue the Bashar dictatorship.

Given how beneficial this bombing was to the regime, there have long been rumours it was an inside job. A recent report by Naame Shaam said exactly this, that this was an Iranian-orchestrated counter-intelligence operation to snuff-out the softliners within the regime who were trying to reach a deal with the protesters and rebels inside the country and their Gulf Arab patrons, which would have involved some concessions from the regime on its absolute control. Continue reading →