U.S. Officials: Iran is Stepping Up Lethal Aid to Syria

Quoted by Joby Warrick and Liz Sly, Washington Post

“Iran has been involved in the crackdown by Assad on a much larger scale than previously thought,” said Ammar Abdulhamid, a Washington-based Syrian activist and a member of the Syria Working Group of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank.

Defectors besieged near Syria capital

By Zeina Karam, Associated Press

“The current battles taking place in and around Damascus may not yet lead to the unraveling of the regime, but the illusion of normalcy that the Assads have sought hard to maintain in the capital since the beginning of the revolution has surely unraveled,” said Ammar Abdulhamid, a U.S.-based Syrian dissident.

“Once illusions unravel, reality soon follows,” he wrote in his blog Sunday.