On 29 December, in the week Arab League monitors arrived in the country and shortly after activists released film of Syrian army tanks in Homs, Bashar al-Assad appears to have shared a YouTube video with one of his closest advisers that lampoons the monitors for their inability to spot regime armour.

"Check out this video on YouTube," Assad wrote to his media adviser, Hadeel al-Ali, using the sam@alshahba.com account. "Hahahahahahaha, OMG!!! This is amazing!" she responded. "Everybody was talking about Ghalion and his theory about the tanks."

By Ghalion she meant Burhan Ghalioun, the leader of the opposition Syrian National Council, who had remarked that Arab League observers' movements were being restricted. The regime was reported to have hidden some of its tanks during the Arab League's visit to Homs. In the four-minute video, which appears to have been produced by a regime sympathiser to lampoon both Ghalioun and the Arab League mission, a toy car crudely modified to look like a tank shoots at a pile of biscuits that represents a collapsing Homs tower block. Enter the monitor – represented by a plastic toy man who bears a passing resemblance to the Fat Controller in the Thomas the Tank Engine books. The toy "tank" is then disguised by having its barrel removed.

"Now, as the Arab monitor comes to check whether the Syrian regime has complied with the Arab initiatives or not … He does not know what is going on," the voiceover says, concluding: "This is a short summary about the way to hide a tank and inshallah we will do more videos in the series to explain more tricks by the Syrian regime."