BEIRUT — President Bashar Assad of Syria displayed a new level of defiance Thursday, warning Israel that he could permit attacks on the Golan Heights and suggesting that he had secured plenty of weapons from Russia — possibly including an advanced missile system.
The message contrasted with reports that his rebel opponents appear to be faltering politically. Assad spoke in an interview broadcast on Al-Manar television, which is owned by his ally Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese Shi’ite militant group that has infused muscle into his military campaign to crush the Syrian insurgency.
Asked about Russian weapons deliveries, Assad said: “Russia is committed with Syria in implementing these contracts. What we agreed upon with Russia will be implemented, and part of it has been implemented over the recent period.’’
He was vague on whether Russia’s deliveries had included a sophisticated S-300 air missile system — of particular concern to Israel because it could compromise its ability to strike Syria from the air and because those missiles can hit deep inside Israeli territory. The Israelis have said they would not abide a Syrian deployment of S-300s, suggesting they would use force to destroy them.
Before the broadcast, Al-Manar sent out messages that paraphrased Assad as saying Syria had already received a shipment of the S-300 missiles.
It was unclear why Al-Manar said that Assad had spoken about the missile system when it was not directly mentioned in the televised interview. Al-Manar later said it mischaracterized what Assad said. US and Israeli officials have been pressing Russia to defer the S-300 system delivery, and there were other signals the paraphrased comments may have been a premature boast or bluff.
Israeli officials and Western diplomats in the region said they did not believe such a system had yet arrived in Syria. Even so, the possibility presented a new risk that the Syrian war could expand into a broader conflict.
“We’re in stormy waters indeed,” said Jonathan Spyer, a senior research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. “Somebody or other has to not do what they have openly claimed they would do. Somebody has to lose serious face, and governments don’t like to lose face at the moment of serious confrontation.”
Assad spent considerable time in the interview warning Israel, which attacked what it suspected were weapons caches in Syria this month that the Israelis suspected were bound for Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon.
“We will retaliate for any Israeli aggression next time,” Assad said. He also suggested the possibility of renewed fighting in the Golan Heights, the disputed border area occupied by Israel, which has been largely quiet for more than 40 years.
Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Assad’s comments on the Golan were worrisome in the context of other recent statements from Syria. “It’s a very sensitive, explosive situation being created by the new level of rhetoric,” Yaari said.
Assad reiterated the Syrian government’s intention to attend a UN peace conference on Syria, which Russia and the United States have been seeking to convene in Geneva despite their own differences over the conflict. But he said any agreements that might result would have to be approved by Syrians in a referendum.
Even as Assad’s interview was broadcast, fissures within the Syrian opposition widened, with military commanders demanding a significant new role in the main exile organization.
The disparity underscored the fact that Assad appeared to be consolidating his position, buttressed on both military and political fronts by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, while the Western-backed opposition stumbled toward serious disarray.
All week, the 63-member Syrian Coalition, the main rebel group, has been entangled in petty disputes over how many seats to add. Its leadership announced Thursday it would boycott the peace conference. It attributed the boycott to Iranian and Hezbollah interference in Syria, but analysts saw it as a position born of an inability to forge a united bargaining front.
“This is a low point,” said Amr al-Azm, a Syrian-born history professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio who tracks the opposition. “Unlike earlier screaming matches, you have a bad military situation on the ground and Geneva is looming and the opposition has nothing to play. This is as bad as it gets.”