After UN condemns Syria abuses, Assad rains artillery down on Homs

For now, however, such weaponry cannot match the firepower that Assad's military can bring to bear, analysts say, but that could change if Assad fails to heed Arab peace calls. A non-Gulf Arab ambassador said Qatar and Saudi Arabia had insisted on the "material support" wording to cover "all kinds of support including weapons in future", adding: "But we see this as a dangerous escalation."

A senior Arab diplomat voiced fears that such a step could ignite a conflagration in Syria, a nation of Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, Kurds and Druze at the heart of the Arab world.

Syria was a major supplier of Sunni jihaddis to the insurgency against the US occupation of Iraq, and there are signs that the Sunni Iraqis are now reciprocating. Sunni Islamists have long been repressed by Assad's regime, and the smuggling lines that kept arms and men flowing to battles in Iraq's Anbar province can run the other way.

At the government to government level, Iraq appears to be providing some support for Assad. The new Iraq's Shiite leaders are politically close to Iran, a major backer of Assad, and have avoided condemnation of his actions to this point. The Wall Street Journal reports:

On Thursday, U.S. intelligence officials said they now believe al Qaeda operatives are joining the battle against the Assad regime. "We believe that al Qaeda in Iraq is extending its reach into Syria," James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said in a Senate hearing, the most direct connection yet drawn by U.S. officials between terrorist groups and the Syrian opposition. Recent explosions on security and police installations in Damascus and Aleppo, he said, "had all the earmarks of an al Qaeda-like attack."

Iraqis, meanwhile, have allegedly been arming both sides of the Syrian conflict. Sunni leaders in Iraq have claimed to be arming the opposition to Mr. Assad. Syrian opposition members have accused Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of aiding Mr. Assad by turning a blind eye to the passage of Iraqi Shiite militiamen, as well as Iranian fighters and weapons transiting to Syria through Iraq, to assist Mr. Assad in his crackdown. Iraqi officials deny this.

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