Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was sentenced Monday to eight months in prison for unlawfully accepting money from a US supporter, capping the dramatic downfall of a man who only years earlier led the country and hoped to bring about a historic peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Olmert was convicted in March in a retrial in Jerusalem district court. The sentencing comes in addition to a six-year prison sentence he received last year in a separate bribery conviction, ensuring the end of the former premier's political career.

Olmert's lawyer, Eyal Rozovsky, said Olmert's legal team was "very disappointed" by the ruling and would appeal to Israel's supreme court. They were granted a 45-day stay, meaning the former Israeli leader will avoid incarceration for now.

Olmert also was given a suspended sentence of an additional eight months and fined $25,000.

A slew of character witnesses had vouched for Olmert, including former British prime minister Tony Blair and former Israeli Mossad chief Meir Dagan in written statements read aloud Monday. The verdict stated that it recognised Olmert's vast contributions to Israeli society and sentenced him to less than the prosecution had demanded. Still, it ruled that "a black flag hovers over his conduct”.

Olmert was forced to resign in early 2009 amid the corruption allegations. His departure cleared the way for hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu's election, and subsequent Mideast peace efforts have not succeeded.

Olmert, 69, was acquitted in 2012 of a series of charges that included accepting cash-stuffed envelopes from US businessman Morris Talansky when Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem and a Cabinet minister. Olmert was found to have received about $600,000 from Talansky during his term as mayor, and additional amounts in cash during his term as a Cabinet minister, but a court did not find evidence the money had been used for unlawful personal reasons or illegal campaign financing.

Talansky, an Orthodox Jew from New York's Long Island, had testified the money was spent on expensive cigars, first-class travel and luxury hotels, while insisting he received nothing in return.

The acquittal on the most serious charges at the time was seen as a major victory for Olmert, who denied being corrupt. He was convicted only on a lesser charge of breach of trust for steering job appointments and contracts to clients of a business partner, and it raised hopes for his political comeback.

But Olmert's former office manager and confidant Shula Zaken later became a state's witness, offering diary entries and tape recordings of conversations with Olmert about illicitly receiving cash, leading to a retrial. In the recordings, Olmert is heard telling Zaken not to testify in the first trial so she would not incriminate him.

The judges concluded that Olmert gave Zaken part of the money in exchange for her loyalty, and used the money for his own personal use without reporting it according to law. They convicted him on a serious charge of illicitly receiving money, as well as charges of fraud and breach of trust.

In a separate trial in March 2014, Olmert was convicted of bribery over a Jerusalem real estate scandal and was sentenced to six years in prison. He appealed and has been allowed to stay out of prison until a verdict is delivered.

At the time Olmert resigned as prime minister, Israel and the Palestinians had been engaged in more than a year of intense negotiations over the terms of Palestinian independence. The Palestinians seek all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in addition to the Gaza Strip, for an independent state. Israel occupied the three areas in the 1967 Mideast war, though it withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

Since leaving office, Olmert has said he presented the Palestinians the most generous Israeli proposal in history, offering roughly 95 per cent of the West Bank, along with a land swap covering the remaining 5 per cent of territory. In addition, he proposed international administration in East Jerusalem, home to the city's most sensitive religious sites.

Palestinian officials have said that while progress was made, Olmert's assessment was overly optimistic.

QATIF, Saudi Arabia — Tens of thousands of Saudi Shiites gathered Monday for a mass funeral for the victims of a mosque bombing authorities called an attempt by Sunni extremists to sow sectarian strife.

Mourners from the kingdom's minority crowded the streets in the mainly Shiite Qatif district of Eastern Province to show their respect for the 21 dead, who included two children.

A Shiite imam led the funeral prayer in a marketplace under a cloudless sky, as a breeze carried the fragrance of the herb placed on prayer mats upon which the bodies lay.

The bodies were then carried on litters decked with flowers in a final procession towards the cemetery in Kudeih village, where the attack took place on Friday.

Everybody "is very much anxious to participate... to express their support”, one organiser said ahead of the funeral, asking not to be named.

The suicide bombing, during the main weekly Muslim prayers in Kudeih, was the second mass killing of Shiites in the kingdom since late last year.

In November, gunmen killed seven Shiites in the Eastern Province town of Al Dalwa.

Asked whether he feared a new attack during the funeral, the organiser said: "Nobody can predict anything. We have taken all precautions in coordination with local authorities."

He added that tens of thousands of people had volunteered to act as crowd marshals for the ceremony.

He said safety concerns had prompted organisers to ask women to stay away from the funeral but that a separate area had been set up for them to offer condolences after the burials.

Black flags of mourning flew in the streets of Qatif, where police mounted checkpoints while volunteer marshals in bright yellow and orange vests inspected vehicles.

"What happened, the unfortunate event, made us more united”, said Ayman Alawi Abu Rahi, who is from Kudeih.

"We as a Shiite community, we are not afraid of explosions. We condemn the terrorists," but not Sunnis. "They pray in our mosques," he said as mourners shouted the name of the Shiite-revered Imam Hussein.

The Daesh group said it carried out the bombing, the first time the jihadists, who control swathes of neighbouring Iraq and Syria, had claimed an attack in the Sunni-dominated kingdom.

The interior ministry confirmed that the bomber, a Saudi national, had links with Daesh, which considers Shiites to be heretics.

It was the deadliest attack in years in Saudi Arabia, and King Salman vowed on Sunday that anyone with the slightest involvement in the "heinous crime" would be punished.

Most Saudi Arabian Shiites live in the east, where the vast majority of the country's oil reserves lie but where Shiites have long complained of marginalisation.

Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Gulf neighbours joined a US-led air campaign against Daesh in Syria last year, raising concerns about possible retaliation in the kingdom.

TEHRAN — The trial of The Washington Post's Tehran correspondent Jason Rezaian, in custody for 10 months and accused of espionage, will open in Iran on Tuesday, a senior judicial official said.

Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejeie, quoted Monday by the ISNA news agency, said Rezaian's lawyer and an interpreter would be present in court but declined to give further details.

"I cannot reveal the details of the case but the trial will take place tomorrow and it will be up to the judge to decide whether the trial will be public or not," he said.

The Washington Post said the trial would be "closed to the world", and slammed what it called injustices against its correspondent.

"The shameful acts of injustice continue without end in the treatment of... Rezaian," the newspaper's executive director, Martin Baron, said in a statement.

"Now we learn his trial will be closed to the world. And so it will be closed to the scrutiny it fully deserves," Baron added in the statement published in Monday's edition of the paper.

Rezaian, an Iranian-American, was arrested in July last year in a politically sensitive case that has unfolded while Iran and world powers conduct nuclear talks. He is being held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.

The 39-year-old was formally charged with espionage, collaboration with hostile governments, gathering classified information and disseminating propaganda against Iran.

The United States and the Washington Post have branded the charges against him absurd, urging his release.

His lawyer Leila Ahsan said last week that Rezaian's wife, Yeganeh Salehi, an Iranian who is also a journalist and another suspect, have also been summoned to court in Tehran for Tuesday's trial.

Ahsan, who said she had learned that a date had been set for the trial after seeing a news report, said the file against Rezaian contains "no justifiable proof".

But Baron said in his statement that neither Salehi nor Rezaian's mother would be present in court on Tuesday.

"Jason's mother, Mary, who has spent the last two weeks in Iran awaiting the trial, will not be permitted to attend. His wife, Yeganeh, who faces related charges, will also be barred; she is to be tried separately," he said.

SIRTE, Libya (Reuters) — Warplanes from Libya's official government attacked an oil tanker docked outside the city of Sirte on Sunday, wounding three people and setting the ship on fire, officials said.

It was the third confirmed strike by the internationally recognised government on oil tankers, part of a conflict between competing administrations and parliaments allied to armed factions fighting for control of the country four years after the ousting of Muammar Qadhafi.

The recognised premier Abdullah Al Thinni has been working out of the east since losing the capital Tripoli in August last year to a rival faction. Both sides have been attacking each other with warplanes and thanks to loose alliances with former anti-Qadhafi rebels have also been fighting on several fronts on the land.

"Our jets warned an unflagged ship off Sirte city, but it ignored the warning," the eastern air force commander Saqer Al Joroushi told Reuters.

"We gave it a chance to evaluate the situation, then our fighting jets attacked the ship because it was unloading fighters and weapons," he added.

"The ship now is on fire. We are in war and we do not accept any security breaches, whether by land, air or sea," Jourushi added.

Mohamed Al Harari, a spokesman for Tripoli-based state oil firm NOC, said the Libyan tanker Anwar Afriqya owned by NOC had been carrying gasoil for Sirte's power plant. Another oil industry official said the size of the cargo was 25,000 tonnes.

A Reuters reporter could see the tanker docked near Sirte's power plant. Two parts of the tanker were still burning but Mohamed Abdulkafi, a military spokesman in Tripoli, said late in the evening the fire had been extinguished.

A port worker said there had been two attacks on the tanker docked outside the port. First a plane had fired rockets at the tanker's cockpit and crew's cabins, he said. "Then the plane attacked again with guns."

"They attacked after we had discharged the first tank and were readying the second," he said, adding that there was the risk of a gasoil spill.

Sirte's power plant on the western outskirts is controlled by forces loyal to Tripoli. The rest of the city has fallen into the hands of Daesh which has exploited a security vacuum.

The eastern government had already attacked in January a Greek-operated tanker docking at Derna, killing two seamen and accusing the shipper of sending weapons. NOC had said the tanker was only carrying heavy fuel oil for a power plant.

Two weeks ago forces loyal to the official governmen shelled a Turkish ship off the Libyan coast after it was warned not to approach. One crew member was killed in what Turkey described as a "contemptible attack".

ADEN/CAIRO (Reuters) — Local Sunni Muslim militia ejected Shiite Houthi rebels from much of the southern Yemeni city of Dalea on Monday, residents and combatants said, inflicting the first significant setback on the Iranian-backed rebels in two months of civil war.

Dalea had been a bastion of southern secessionists in Yemen before the Houthis took widespread control of the city in arch, after having seized the capital Sanaa in the north in September, toppling President Abed Rabbo Mansour, and then thrust into the centre and south of the Arabian Peninsula country.

After two months of fighting in which much of Dalea has been destroyed, Sunni fighters on Monday turned the tide by seizing a key military base and the main security directorate in the city, militia sources and local residents said. Twelve Sunni fighters and 40 Houthi rebels were killed, they said.

"In intense fighting lasting from dawn until this afternoon, the southern resistance succeeded in cleansing our city of Houthi elements," a front-line militiaman told Reuters.

Eyewitnesses said local forces in Dalea, which has an estimated population of 90,000, were backed by weeks of air strikes on Houthi positions as well as weapons drops which intensified in recent days.

A Saudi-led coalition has been bombing the Houthis and allied loyalists of ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh for two months while backing Sunni combatants along a jumbled series of battlefronts.

The Houthis, however, appear to remain the strongest faction in the civil war, retaining the edge in the main contested regions of central and south Yemen. The Houthis say they are fighting to root out corrupt officials and Sunni militants.

Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter bordering Yemen to the north, and fellow Gulf Arabs worry that the Shiite Muslim Houthi movement's allegiance to Iran will give the Islamic Republic a foothold in the Arabian Peninsula.

In the southern city of Taiz, residents said Houthi fighters pushed back Sunni tribal and Islamist militiamen in heavy street combat, and that shelling hit a fuel storage tank which set off an explosion, killing 10 people.

With ground combat worsening, a Yemeni official said UN-sponsored peace talks set to be held in Geneva on May 28 had been postponed.

Yemen's exiled government in Saudi Arabia led by Hadi has demanded the Houthis recognise its authority and withdraw from Yemen's main cities — two points demanded by a UN Security Council resolution last month.

"The Geneva meeting has been indefinitely postponed because the Houthis did not indicate their commitment to implement the Security Council resolution," Sultan Al Atwani, an aide to Hadi, told Reuters by telephone from Riyadh.

"Also, what is happening on ground — the attacks on Aden, Taiz, Dalea and Shabwa makes it difficult to go to Geneva," he added, naming southern provinces that have become war zones.

Ahmad Fawzi, a UN spokesman in Geneva, said he could not confirm the reports of a delay to talks, saying that plans were still under way for negotiations to start on Thursday.

BAGHDAD/BEIRUT — Daesh poured more fighters into Ramadi as security forces and Shiite paramilitaries prepared to retake the Iraqi city that fell to the Islamists a week ago in a major setback for the government.

In Palmyra, the Syrian air force struck at buildings captured by the Sunni militant group, whose arrival has raised fears that the city's famed Roman ruins will be destroyed.

The air force levelled Daesh "hideouts" and killed a large number of its members around Palmyra's military air base, Syrian state media said.

Daesh has killed at least 217 people execution-style, including children, since it moved into the Palmyra area 10 days ago, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Another 300 soldiers were killed before the Syrian city was captured, the monitoring group said.

The insurgents reinforced Ramadi on Monday, deploying fighters in preparation for battle against security forces and paramilitary groups advancing on the provincial capital, which lies 110km northwest of the capital, Baghdad.

Iraqi forces have regained ground east of Ramadi since launching a counteroffensive on Saturday, a week after it was overrun, and on Monday retook a rural area south of the city.

Police sources said Iraqi forces supported by Iran-backed Shiite militia and locally recruited Sunni tribal fighters had retaken parts of Al Tash, 20km south of Ramadi.

Pro-government Sunni tribal fighters, with the help of the army, laid land mines to reinforce their defensive lines around Baghdadi, a settlement northwest of Ramadi which controls access to a major Iraqi air base. Daesh attacked Baghdadi with seven suicide car bombs on Sunday.

In Ramadi, residents said trucks carrying Daesh fighters arrived on Sunday evening.

Local man Abu Saed heard a commotion outside his house in the city's southeastern Officers neighbourhood. "I saw two trucks pull up outside with dozens of fighters carrying arms running quickly into nearby buildings and taking cover."

Another resident said at least 40 fighters had jumped out of three trucks that arrived in the southern Al Tamim district on Sunday evening.

"They were carrying weapons and wearing mostly khaki dress with ammunition belts wrapped around their chests," said Abu Mutaz. "They were talking in an Arabic dialect, they were not Iraqis."

Major setback

The seizures of Ramadi and Palmyra were Daesh's biggest successes since a US-led coalition launched an air war against it last year.

The near simultaneous victories against the Iraqi and Syrian armies have forced Washington to examine its strategy of bombing from the air while leaving fighting on the ground to local forces.

In a sharp criticism of Washington's ally, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter on Sunday accused the Iraqi army of abandoning Ramadi to a much smaller enemy force.

A spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Al Abadi dismissed the comments as "untimely and surprising at a time when Iraqi security forces are preparing to launch a counter offensive to retake Ramadi".

The general in charge of Iran's paramilitary activities in the Middle East said the United States and other powers were failing to confront Daesh.

"Today, in the fight against this dangerous phenomenon, nobody is present except Iran," said Major General Qassem Soleimani, who is often seen on the battlefields of Iraq.

But in a move that could mark an expansion of US involvement in the conflict, Turkey said it and the United States had agreed in principle to give air support to some forces from Syria's mainstream opposition.

Meanwhile, the United States and its allies carried out 10 air strikes against Daesh militants in Syria and 25 strikes in Iraq since Sunday, the US military said.

Most of the strikes in Syria were in the northeast, near Al Hasakah, while in Iraq, Daesh positions were attacked near Baghdadi, Bayji, Fallujah and Mosul, among other sites.

Days after taking Ramadi, Daesh defeated Syrian government forces to capture Palmyra, home to 50,000 people and site of some of the world's most extensive and best-preserved Roman ruins.

The observatory said there had been no reports so far of Daesh destroying Palmyra's ruins and artifacts.

The militants have proclaimed a caliphate to rule over all Muslims from territory they hold in Syria and Iraq. They have carried out mass killings in towns and cities they have captured, and destroyed ancient monuments, which they consider evidence of paganism.

In Syria, Hizbollah fighters captured two hilltops from Al Qaeda's Syria wing, Al Nusra Front, in areas close to the Lebanese border and killed dozens of enemy combatants, Hizbollah-run Al Manar television reported on Monday.

Iranian-backed Hizbollah has backed Syrian President Bashar Assad in his country's civil war. The group's leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, has vowed to clear the border area of Sunni Muslim militant groups that have carried out attacks on Lebanese soil.

BAGHDAD — The Daesh terror group seized on Sunday the Iraqi side of a key border crossing with Syria after isolated government forces pulled out, a police officer and a provincial official said.

"Daesh early this morning took control of Al Walid post on the border between Iraq and Syria after the withdrawal of the army and the Iraqi border police," a police colonel said.

The militants had seized the Syrian side, known as Al Tanaf, three days earlier, leaving Iraqi forces guarding the remote outpost in Anbar province very vulnerable.

The police colonel said the government forces at Al Walid temporarily pulled back to the nearby Treibil Border Crossing with Jordan.

Daesh fighters seized another border crossing between Al Qaim in Anbar and Albu Kamal in Syria last year. The other crossing between the two countries is further north and controlled by Kurdish forces.

The head of Anbar's border commission confirmed that government forces had pulled out of Al Walid.

"There was no military support for the security forces and there weren't enough of them to protect the crossing," Suad Jassem said.

"Daesh now controls both sides of both crossings," she said, referring to Al Walid/Al Tanaf and Al Qaim/Albu Kamal.

A member of the border guard that pulled back to Treibil said a double suicide car bomb attack on Al Walid prompted the retreat.

"Daesh attacked us early this morning with two suicide car bombs coming from the Syrian side. There were no casualties among our forces luckily," said Marwan Al Hadithi.

"We tried to shoot them with the heavy machinegun but it was in vain because they were heavily armoured with steel plates," he told AFP from Treibil.

"We know their methods. They start with car bombs and after that they break in," he said, adding that his unit had repeatedly asked for more manpower.

"We were ready to withdraw. We had decided that we would stay if any reinforcements reached us and that we would withdraw at the first attack we are exposed to if we received no reinforcements," he said.

"This border had been closed totally since the moment the Syrians withdrew from their side. There has been no civilian movement," he said.

The Daesh group controls the nearby Iraqi town of Rutba, which commands access to the only road leading to other parts of the country.

Al Walid was effectively cut off from the rest of the country and Hadithi explained that security forces would rotate out by crossing into Syria and flying back to Iraq or embarking on a long road journey along the Saudi border.

Trucks delivering goods from Syria and Jordan would be stopped by Daesh in Rutba but generally allowed to carry on after paying a fee which various sources estimate at $300 to $500.

The border guard said the Treibil border crossing was safe for the time being.

"There was a secure path to Treibil from Al Walid... If there's any attack here, you'll see a Jordanian jet in the sky in 10 minutes," he said.

CAIRO — Saudi forces and Yemen's Houthi militia traded heavy artillery fire which destroyed part of the main border crossing between the two countries overnight, residents said on Sunday, an escalation of the two-month war.

The Haradh border crossing, the largest for people and goods between the world's top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, and its impoverished neighbour, was evacuated amid shelling which razed its departure lounge and passport section, witnesses said.

Residents of several Yemeni villages in the area left their homes and fled from the frontier, which has turned into a front line between the kingdom and the Iran-allied rebels.

Arab air raids hit military bases and weapon stores in the capital Sanaa, and local officials said a mid-level Houthi commander, Abu Bassam Al Kibsi, was killed in an air strike in the central province of Raymah.

Saudi Arabia has led an Arab coalition bombing the Houthis and backing southern Yemeni fighters opposing the group and loyal to the exiled government in Saudi Arabia headed by President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

The Sunni Muslim states believe the Shiite Houthis are a proxy for influence by Iran, but their campaign has yet to reverse the rebels' battlefield gains.

Local fighters combating the Houthis in Yemen's south reported Saudi-led air strikes on a major airbase controlled by the group in Lahj province and say they killed eight Houthi fighters in an ambush in Dalea province on Sunday.

Residents in the central city of Taiz said Houthi forces and pro-Hadi fighters fired tank and artillery shells at each other throughout the city overnight, killing five civilians.

The Houthis seized control of a military base on a strategic mountaintop in the centre of the city, eyewitnesses said.

A United Nations-backed peace conference set for May 28 in Geneva remains in doubt, as Hadi's exiled government in Saudi Arabia has expressed reluctance to attend before the Houthis recognise their authority and quit Yemen's main cities.

The Houthis have demanded a ceasefire before any talks.

BEIRUT — The leader of the militant Hizbollah  group said Sunday that the region is facing “unprecedented danger” from extremist groups and vowed his militants will expand their involvement in Syria’s civil war in support of government forces.

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah spoke during a ceremony marking the 15th anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, vowing to battle Sunni extremists groups such as the Daesh group and Al Qaeda. He said such factions are an “existential threat” to anyone who does not agree with their ideology.

Hizbollah  openly joined President Bashar Assad forces in the civil war in 2013 and its fighters have been taking part in a major battle in recent weeks against jihadis in the Qalamoun mountain region that borders Lebanon.

“Our presence will grow whenever it is required for us to be present,” Nasrallah said in comments that came after Assad’s forces suffered several defeats over the past two months — mostly in the northwestern province of Idlib and the southern region of Daraa. The western city of Palmyra, home to a set of historic Roman-era ruins, was captured by the Daesh group last week.

“We are present today in many places and I tell you we will be present wherever this battle requires. We are up to it and we are the men for it,” Nasrallah said speaking from a secret location on a giant video screen.

Inside Syria, a military helicopter crashed earlier Sunday at the northern air base of Kweiras, killing all of its crew, state TV said, as an activist group said it was shot down by Daesh militants.

The TV report quoted an unnamed military official as saying that the helicopter crashed as a result of a technical problem while taking off. The report did not say how many crew members were onboard at the time of the crash.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Daesh militants who have been laying siege to the base for months shot down the helicopter.

Kweiras military air base is in the northern province of Aleppo and is close to the town of Al Bab, which is held by the Daesh group.

The Daesh group posted a statement on a militant website claiming responsibility for downing the Syrian helicopter.

Syrian rebels have shot down helicopters in the past.

Meanwhile in Damascus, a bomb exploded Sunday morning near the city center killing a brigadier general and six of his bodyguards, the Observatory said. It added that the attack was claimed by the ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham group.

The Damascus media centre identified the officer as Brig. Gen. Bassam Mehanna Al Ali.

State news agency SANA reported that a bomb exploded in the area without giving further details.

BEIRUT — Weakened by years of war, Syria’s government appears ready for the country’s de facto partition, defending strategically important areas and leaving much of the country to rebels and jihadists, experts and diplomats say.

The strategy was in evidence last week with the army’s retreat from the ancient central city of Palmyra after an advance by the Daesh group.

“It is quite understandable that the Syrian army withdraws to protect large cities where much of the population is located,” said Waddah Abded Rabbo, director of Syria’s Al Watan newspaper, which is close to the regime.

“The world must think about whether the establishment of two terrorist states is in its interests or not,” he said, in reference to Daesh’s self-proclaimed “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq, and Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front’s plans for its own “emirate” in northern Syria.

Syria’s government labels all those fighting to oust President Bashar Assad “terrorists”, and has pointed to the emergence of Daesh and Al Nusra as evidence that opponents of the regime are extremists.

Since the uprising against Assad began in March 2011 with peaceful protests, the government has lost more than three-quarters of the country’s territory, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor.

But the territory the regime controls accounts for about 50 to 60 per cent of the population, according to French geographer and Syria expert Fabrice Balanche.

He said 10-15 per cent of Syria’s population is now in areas controlled by Daesh, 20-25 per cent in territory controlled by Al Nusra or rebel groups and another five to 10 per cent in areas controlled by Kurdish forces.

“The government in Damascus still has an army and the support of a part of the population,” Balanche said.

“We’re heading towards an informal partition with front lines that could shift further.”

‘Division is inevitable’

People close to the regime talk about a government retreat to “useful Syria”.

“The division of Syria is inevitable. The regime wants to control the coast, the two central cities of Hama and Homs and the capital Damascus,” one Syrian political figure close to the regime said.

“The red lines for the authorities are the Damascus-Beirut highway and the Damascus-Homs highway, as well as the coast, with cities like Latakia and Tartus,” he added, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The coastal Latakia and Tartus provinces are strongholds of the regime, and home to much of the country’s Alawite community, the offshoot of Shiite Islam to which Assad adheres.

In the north, east and south of the country, large swathes of territory are now held by jihadists or rebel groups, and the regime’s last major offensive — in Aleppo province in February — was a failure.

For now the regime’s sole offensive movement is in Qalamun along the Lebanese border, but there its ally, Lebanon’s Shiite Hizbollah movement, is taking the lead in the fighting.

“The Syrian army today has become a Praetorian guard that is charged with protecting the regime,” said a diplomat who goes to Damascus regularly.

He said the situation had left Syrian officials “worried, of course”, but that they remained convinced that key regime allies Russia and Iran would not let the government collapse.

Some observers believe the defensive posture was the suggestion of Iran, which believes it is better to have less territory but be able to keep it secure.

“Iran urged Syrian authorities to face facts and change strategy by protecting only strategic zones,” opposition figure Haytham Manna said.

Dwindling regime forces

The shift may also be the result of the dwindling forces available to the regime, which has seen its once 300,000-strong army “whittled away” by combat and attrition, according to Aram Nerguizian, a senior fellow at the US Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

“On the surface, the regime appears to have accepted that it must secure, hold and defend its core area of control... with its current mix of forces,” he said.

Those are approximately 175,000 men from the army, pro-regime Syrian militias and foreign fighters including from Hizbollah and elsewhere.

The observatory says 68,000 regime forces are among the 220,000 people killed since the conflict began.

But the new strategy does not indicate regime collapse and could even work in its favour, Nerguizian said.

“Supply lines would have far less overstretch to contend with, and the regime’s taxed command-and-control structure would have more margin of manoeuvre.”

Thomas Pierret, a Syria expert at the University of Edinburgh, said that to survive, “the regime will have to lower its expectations and concentrate on the Damascus-Homs-coast axes.”

“Militarily, the regime probably still has the means to hold the southeastern half of the country long-term, but further losses could weaken it from within.”