London's IISS: "Syria’s armed opposition is an irritation rather than a threat to Assad!"

"...The lightly armed rebels of the Free Syrian Army cannot control the country’s largest centers of population, and assisting them from abroad would be very difficult, according to the 54 year-old London-based research institute.

The rebels are “no direct threat to the regime,” Toby Dodge, IISS senior fellow for the Middle East, said at a press conference in London today. Meanwhile “there clearly is not the momentum needed” to break the deadlock over international action at the United Nations Security Council, he said. Fighting inside the country continues as a form of “bloody attrition.” ..."