U.S. drones in the air over Syria monitoring military crackdown.

Haaretz - The United States is flying unmanned reconnaissance planes over Syria to monitor the regime’s escalating crackdown on dissent, U.S. defense officials told NBC television on Saturday. The drones are being used to gather evidence on the Syrian security forces’ violence against pro-democracy protesters that can be used to “make a case for a widespread international response,” the U.S.-based broadcaster quoted the unnamed officials as saying. The Pentagon officials stressed that the U.S. is not preparing the ground for a military intervention, but is simply collecting evidence of President Bashar Assad’s crackdown on protesters. There was no official comment from Syria on the report. The West has ruled out a Libya-style military intervention in Syria to stop 11 months of bloodshed. Meanwhile, there have been disagreements regarding what action must be taken against Syria. Turkey refuses to set up buffer zones for civilians on its border with Syria, and demands that the transfer of equipment and medicine be done via the sea and not through its territory. France, on the other hand, maintains that such buffer zones must be on land and will anyhow spill over the Turkish border. While the Syrian army continued to attack Daraa and Homs with tanks and heavy artillery, large protests also took place in Damascus, as well as Aleppo, a city which hasn’t taken part in anti-regime protests regularly thus far. The resolution passed by the United Nations General Assembly condemning Syria, supported by 137 countries, has not impressed the Syrian regime which is only escalating its war against the opposition and widening its war zones. Russia continues to come to aid of the Assad regime with weapon shipments, and on Friday two Iranian warships passed through the Suez Canal on the way to Tartus port in Syria. Western officials fear that Iranian military presence along with Russian aid could turn Syria into a center of international friction much worse than the struggle inside Syria. They fear that the control over actions in Syria will be taken over by a Russian-Iranian “partnership” which would exclude the European Union and Turkey and that U.S. involvement could be too late and inefficient.