In a bloody coincidence with Frontline’s First Wednesday talk about the divisive issue of international intervention in Syria, yet another massacre of women, children, civilians has been charged at the Assad regime.

Less than a fortnight after the Houla massacre in the Homs province of Syria, in which 108 people were killed, opposition activist report that a further 78 people were killed on June 6 by pro-government forces in Qubair and Maarzaf in the Hama province.

Media reports increasingly talk about Syria’s ‘tipping point’ – but last night’s talk illustrated the variety of perspectives on this contentious fulcrum.

Chaired by the Guardian’s Ian Black, the panel began by explaining their own perspective on the country’s current crisis. Charles Glass, recently returned from Syria, began by telling the  audience about the striking polarity in opinions he heard advocated by ordinary Syrians – “either dramatically for or dramatically against the regime.”

Rim Turkmani, founder of secular opposition group Building the Syrian State, said that the Western powers had contributed to such polarity, whilst underestimating the complexities of Syrian society. She said that all too often, external powers had ignored “how to help Syrians”, focusing instead on “how to harm the regime”.

Christopher Phillips, of Queen Mary’s University reminded the audience that ‘we’ the international community are already involved in the Syrian conflict as the past year has seen the externalisation of conflict and a reliance on the outside world for resolution.

Ian Black introduced the final panelist, Nadim Shehadi, an associate fellow of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa programme, as “openly interventionist”. Shehadi qualified this by saying that at the moment the international powers are paralysed because they are falling into the trap of Bashar al-Assad’s mind game – that it’s either him or civil war.

The evening quickly moved to audience questions: What kind of deal can really be done? What kind of intervention can occur? What is the role of the external actors? But the issue to which the panellist kept returning was raised by Dr Ghada Karmi: Foreign media coverage has too often relied upon “so-called spokesmen for the opposition without any critical analysis of … who they are”.

As yet the opposition groups in Syria have remained, in Shehadi’s words, “leaderless”. Perhaps it is this lack of leadership, organisation, and the presentation of a viable alternative to the Assad regime which has delayed the ‘tipping point’. Is this the regime narrative succeeding over the opposition?

Shehadi said:

“There is an information war… The revolution started as a non-violent, peaceful opposition to the regime… and now it’s perceived as a violent civil war with bad leadership. The perception now is something the regime is very comfortable with. The regime can do violent civil war for the next ten years – it will win and flourish… The regime is winning the mind game and most of what you see in the press is buying that regime narrative.”

More questions included the threats of ethnic cleansing and of sectarianism, the pivotal role of Russia, and the failing Anan plan. Jonathan Steele asked about another tipping point: “At what point do you think the opposition will be willing to talk to the regime?”

It was an evening that posed far more questions than it answered. Despite some cautious optimism that negotiations and resolutions should not be discredited and dismissed as futile, the talk’s conclusion echoed Ian Black’s own question: “Fifteen months and 15,000 dead; can [that compromise] still happen?”

Watch the full event here:

The critical nature of coming weeks was acknowledged by the panelists who took part in the Frontline Club’s First Wednesday discussion on Syria on the night that the UN Security Council condemned the government’s violent crackdown in the city of Hama.

"Ramadan was always going to be an explosive month for Syria," said Sue Lloyd Roberts who posed as a tourist in June to film Syrian protesters for BBC2’s Newsnight:

"You can be arrested if a group of people meet in a public place, which is why during Ramadan, when thousands go to their mosques routinely every day, it was going to be a chance to focus political dissent and to set off demonstrations.

"This is what has happened and the army was waiting for it to happen and my god have they retaliated in a brutal way."

Malik Al-Abdeh, a former BBC journalist and chief editor of Barada TV a London-based Syrian opposition satellite channel, said if the regime was to emerge stronger than it is now then we could see the beginning of a civil war in Syria.

He added that the slogan from the beginning of the revolution has been ‘death over indignity’ and said many of the protesters would prefer to die than to continue to live under Bashar al-Assad:

"There is no going back as far as the protesters are concerned. They know that if they go back they will all be arrested because there is still a network of informers. However, after Ramadan, if the regime is visibly weakened, then it could well spell the beginning of the end for Bashar al-Assad, so the next three weeks will be crucial."

Christopher Phillips, Syria analyst in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Middle East team, agreed that the Syrian uprising was "at a key juncture". This is the the moment that "the gloves have come off" and the regime had given up all pretence of being reformist, he said:

 "There’s no pretence any more that Bashar in particular is some kind of reformer, or is unwilling to use violence. He is clearly involved in this and he is clearly willing to use force."

But Phillips said he was uncertain if there would be a civil war because that would require another side to fight back.

"One of the reasons movement is peaceful is because they know full well that if ever they give the regime a genuine opportunity to crush them, a genuine justification, they will be smashed. The only arms that can be got hold of are small arms, they would be absolutely crushed. It’s not like Libya where you have large segments of the military with hardware that would switch sides."

Ammar Waqqaf, a member of the British Syrian Societ, who insisted that the uprisings were of a sectarian nature, also said the country was already in a state of civil war: "This is why the regime has toughened up because if it hadn’t then the other side is going to take matters into its own hands," he said.

Daniel Pye, a Damascus-based freelance journalist who has worked as deputy editor of a Syrian current affairs magazine since February 2011, said he had heard only occasional sectarian slogans at anti regime demonstrations. "Maybe one person in a crowd shouts something and everyone else has said ‘No, this isn’t what we’re about, we’re one people against the regime’," he said, adding that there was a growing movement of people in Syria that the world should take notice of:

"It may be disorganised and chaotic and have many different elements to it but there is a movement of people that people all over the world should listen to and do everything they can to understand."

Watch the one and half hour event for a full briefing on Syria here or download the podcast here. The hashtag for this event was #FCSyria.