IRANIAN snipers are being used in Syria to put down the growing tide of demonstrations against president Bashar al-Assad, claims a member of the regime's secret police who has fled to Turkey.
It's a believable claim, given other reports and the importance of Syria to Iranian foreign policy.
At what point do Syrian soldiers sitting in the barracks refusing to kill civilians (or more accurately, not trusted enough by the government to risk ordering them to kill civilians) under the pretext that the protesters are tools of foreign conspirators start viewing these imported killers as the real invasion?