Hizballah forces went on alert Thursday, Feb. 21, upon the expiry of a 48-hour ultimatum slapped down by Syrian rebels to halt the Lebanese group’s military support for Bashar Assad - or else. debkafile: Relevant to this chain of events is the Syrian claim that its anti-aircraft missiles downed an Israeli drone Wednesday over the Lebanese village of Deir al-Aachayer. Those events were touched off by the initial preparations in Moscow for a political process between Syria’s warring parties for determining the country’s future.

Nigeria reported Wednesday, Feb. 20 that it had busted a terrorist group “backed by Iranian handlers” for gathering intelligence on locations frequented by Americans and Israelis and assassinations. Its leader had received $30,000 from Tehran to expand the group from the Muslim north of the country to the Christian South. In Cyprus, Hossam Taleb Yaacoub, 24, admitted at his trial that he was a Hizballah member, who spied on locations frequented by Israelis in Limassol and acted as Hizballah “courier” in EU countries.

Contrary to reports of Hizballah attacks on Syrian villages in the Homs region, a thousand Hizballah militiamen have moved in to defend those Shiite, pro-Assad villages against rebel attack. debkafile reveals: Syrian rebel Islamists are receiving anti-tank missiles from Kosovo and Bosnia. They give the rebels an edge in battle with Syrian troops, but also arm Jabhat al-Nusra for a push into Lebanon to strike Hizballah in its Beqaa Valley strongholds. The Syrian conflict now confronts the Sunni Jabhat al-Nusra head-on with the Shiite Hizballah.

Tehran believes the precision of the attack which killed IRGC General Hassan Shateri is evidence of deep intelligence penetration, and has placed Israel in its sights for payback. DEBKAfile: The general's last assignment was the formation of a guerrilla army of 5,000 Revolutionary Guardsmen and 5,000 Hizballlah operatives to fortify the defenses of Bashar Assad’s governing institutions and secure the main Syria-Lebanon route. Iran is determined to get Hizballah’s advanced weapons transferred from Syria to Lebanon, whatever it takes.

The Syrian and Israeli armies have been on a high state of preparedness for two months ready a) for Assad to pay Israel back for its attack and b) for Israel to strike weapons transfers to Hizballah in Lebanon. Israel meanwhile imposes no-fly zones over three Syrian borders.

As Syrian rebels advance on the heart of Damascus, Assad arms the 4^th Division with chemical weapons for use if necessary to halt the advance. Al Qaeda has moved shop to Lebanon and is harassing Hizballah with nightly raids.

Iran is squeezing Assad hard to push Hizballah’s weapons out of Syrian stores across the border into Lebanon. He is too heavily dependent on Tehran to refuse. Assad is also waiting for the weather to clear to settle his accounts with Israel with a limited military strike.

Syrian ruler Bashar Assad has ordered the resumption of weapons transfers to the Lebanese Hizballah, debkafile reports exclusively.  He gave this assurance to Iran’s National Security Director Saeed Jalilee when they met Sunday, Feb. 3,  four days after Israel’s reported air strike on the Jamraya military complex near Damascus. Israel is anticipating tricks for smuggling the hardware across to Hizballah by sending round-the-clock air force patrols over the Lebanese-Syrian border for monitoring traffic and exercising control.

Obama was convinced that by sundering Assad’s military links with Hizballah, Iran would be isolated and Assad bereft of his regime’s most active support and shield.

Israel’s war alert unfolded in five days from Jan. 25 to 29 as Hizballah came close to seizing a major Syrian chemical arsenal and jihadists fighting in Syrian rebel ranks threatened to capture another chemical store.

The Syrian government stated Wednesday night, Jan. 30 that the Israeli Air Force planes had struck an arms depot at Jamaraya near Damascus leaving dead and wounded and damaging military vehicles. There was no Israeli air strike on a Hizballah arms convoy, said the statement from Damascus in response to earlier reports that Israeli air sorties Wednesday had destroyed Hizballah missile and arms convoys ready to cross from Syria into Lebanon. No comment from Israel.

Tehran is looking seriously at a limited Syrian-Lebanese clash of arms with Israel – possibly using Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons as a trigger, debkafile discloses.  Israel reacted to this news by announcing Sunday, Jan. 27, the deployment of Iron Dome anti-missile batteries in northern Israel and Haifa port.  A clash would serve Tehran by sidetracking Israel from striking Iran’s nuclear facilities and help spin out its nuclear talks with the Six Powers. Israel has got plans ready for current military challenges.

Likud’s chief asset, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, may also be its chief liability. His silence and ambiguity, his failure to preempt a nuclear-armed Iran and his alignment with Barak Obama on Middle East affairs affecting Israel’s vital security are hurting his party - the joint Likud-Yisrael Beitenu ticket – which, 17 days before a general election, is on a downward slide to 34 from its first 47-seat rating. Yet, the polls still put him in the top slot (43+ percent) as favorite for prime minister and his left-of-center opposition is falling back.

The US, Russia and Israel fail to prevent Assad depositing chemical weapons in Hizballah’s Lebanese strongholds. Not enough is being done to keep them out of al Qaeda hands either.

Tehran has plans to maintain its grip on Syria, even while Washington and Russia are pressing on with secret discussions on the fate of Syrian president Bashar Assad and, in Damascus, international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi Tuesday, Dec. 25, gave himself an extra six days to mediate a deal for ending the war. debkafile:  Saudi intelligence chiefs at the GCC summit in Manama revealed that Iran intends launching Hizballah and local militias to sabotage any international deals and any transitional regime.

Some of the chemical weapons pushed north by the Assad regime may have been sent  from Syrian bases at Jabal Kalamon to Hizballah’s Lebanese Beqaa Valley strongholds, to keep them out of rebel hands, including al Qaeda, debkafile reports. Hizballah is thought to have split up the consignment among different bases to make them harder to attack. Assad is believed to have directed his troops to use chemical weapons if the rebels are near to seizing part of Damascus international airport.

A confidential report submitted to Ayatollah Khamenei advises a massive expansion of military spending focusing on earmarking more money and scientific resources for developing missile and sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicles. The technology and manufacturing plants for sophisticated drones should be transferred to Gaza and Sudan – not Lebanon. This ...

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has sent a come-hither signal to the Lebanese Hizballah Shiite extremists raising fears in Washington and Jerusalem that the New Egypt is being drawn into the most radical Middle East orbit.

Israel has given Damascus a final warning that a military response would be forthcoming if its fighter aircraft infringed the airspace over the Golan demilitarized zones, debkafile reports. The warning, further ratcheting up border tension, was relayed through the UN Disengagement Observer Force in an effort to contain any spillover of the Syrian civil war across Israel’s border. It applied to any ordnance flying across the border and the entry of Syrian forces to the Golan demilitarized zones.

IRGC spokesman Brig. Gen. Ramezan Sharif’s claim Wednesday, Oct. 30, that the Iranian drone which encroached on Israeli airspace on Oct. 6 “obtained the images of many areas that are important for us,” came to counter IDF Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, Northern Command chief, who said no photos were taken because "I don't think there was a camera there." Tehran now suspects the UAV was not shot down but recovered intact and wants to find out what Israeli intelligence has learned from its equipment.