The suicide bomber who killed six people in an attack on an Israeli bus at Burgas airport  July 18, had accomplices, was “extremely experienced” and may have entered Bulgaria from Europe’s Schengen passport-free area, said Bulgarian Prime Minister Boygok Borisov. He spoke Tuesday, July 24, at a new conference with visiting US presidential anti-terror adviser John Brennan. The European Union turned down Israel’s request to blacklist Hizballah as a terrorist organization after Israel blamed it and Iran for the attack.

Israeli, Turkish and Jordanian armies and US Middle East forces were on the ready Sunday, July 22, in case Syrian chemical weapons moved toward Lebanon, debkafile reports. Acting in unison, those armies are watching out for the slightest movement, because it would take just two hours to cover the distance from Syria to the Hizballah-controlled Bakaa Valley of Lebanon. Their arrival there would mean a war. So the IDF prefers to stop the arsenal in its tracks before it reaches the Lebanese border.

Tehran and Damascus have decided to initiate their war on Israel with terrorism, reserving chemical weapons for use first against the rebels and Jordan. Syria’s rebels have also procured chemical weapons from Libya.

Two radical developments arising from the Syrian conflict are revealed by debkafile: In an astonishing about face, Turkey has abandoned its 14-month support for the Syrian revolt alongside the West and made common cause with Russia, i.e. Bashar Assad.  Further exacerbating fears of a “proxy war” involving Israel, Iran and Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah is preparing to transfer its Scud D missiles, capable of hitting any point in Israel, from Syria to Lebanon. Israel has threatened to stop their crossing by force.

Despite the deep secrecy surrounding the incident, debkafile reports exclusively that unidentified commandos this week kidnapped five top Hizballah commanders, naming them as Ali Safa, a senior officer of Hizballah’s intelligence service and nephew of Hassan Nasrallah; Hussein Hamid, Dep. Commander of Hizballah forces in South Lebanon;  Ali Zerayb, member of its Jihad Council; Hassan Arzouni, chief of intelligence in the Bint Jbeil district bordering on Israel; and Aras Shoeib, head of training in the Beqaa Valley of E. Lebanon.

Obama focuses on obtaining Vladmir Putin’s consent to deploying 5,000 largely Russian monitors in Syria in order to gain a partner also for his Iran nuclear diplomacy. HIzballah risks being cut off from its heavy weapons arsenal hidden in Syria.

Nasrallah finds his Hizballah is growing increasingly unpopular at home for aiding and supporting Bashar Assad against the Syrian uprising. He is losing allies right and left and up against the choice between defying his masters in Tehran and losing face at home.

The Iranian leadership is torn by a serious debate over a preemptive strike on Israel. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei fears it will jeopardize his credibility and upend his direct confidential dialogue with Barack Obama. He faces tough opposition from Iran’s war faction.

The shocking impact of the twin explosions which killed 55 people and injured almost 400 in Damascus Thursday, May 10, galvanized Bashar Assad’s allies, starting with Iran, into frenetic activity. Within hours, Tehran had ordered its Lebanese proxy Hizballah to open up its arms stores and run quantities of weapons and military equipment across the border to the Syrian army. Iran then started organizing a security camera network for Damascus. Moscow judged the bombings a serious escalation in the conspiracy to topple Bashar Assad.

Israel’s war preparations are based on the estimate that by the end of 2012, Iran will be able to produce a crude nuclear device as well as a dirty bomb. It calculates as high the risk that Tehran will decide to use those devices for war against Israel in the short term and not ...

Israel boosted its Syrian and Lebanese border units as special flights carrying thousands of pro-Palestinian activists from Tehran touched down in Damascus for the international Global March to Jerusalem Friday, March 30. Before takeoff, they were split into small groups and tutored by Iranian Al Qods Brigades officers in tactics for breaching Israeli border barriers, bursting through and challenging the Israeli military forces defending the border. They go into action on Palestinian-backed Israel-Arab Earth Day to match disturbances in Israel and the West Bank.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood secretly turned to mending its fences with Iran on the back of the Israeli-Palestinian clash over the Gaza Strip using Hamas as go-between. The Sunni Brotherhood, the dominant political force in post-Mubarak Egypt, decided two weeks ago to forge ties with Shiite Iran, causing a major upset for United States and Israeli ...

Tehran is capitalizing on its allies’ two perceived victories: Bashar Assad’s success in seizing Idlib from rebel hands and the Palestinian Jihad Islami’s triumphal missile assault from Gaza on southern Israel. The Iranians are moving forward with plans to match that assault with a Hizballah offensive on northern Israel from Lebanon. This was the object of a rendezvous opposite Metulah Wednesday, March 14, between a high-ranking Iranian delegation headed by Ahmadinejad’s spokesman Ali Akbar Javanfekr and Hizballah intelligence officers.

A major Saudi oil pipeline was indeed blown despite Riyadh’s disclaimers and more Iran-instigated sabotage of its oil sector is to be expected – either by covert Iranian squads, local Shiites or Hizballah.

Israel's military (the IDF) is no longer hiding from view its preparations for an attack on Iran's nuclear program – most probably from the spring – and its expectation of armed hostilities erupting consequently on at least three fronts, Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas in Gaza. On Jan. ...

President Bashar Assad Sunday, Jan. 30, pulled in the Syrian Republican Guard and the 4th armored division commanded by his brother Maher Assad from the north to Damascus, debkafile reports exclusively. He deployed them in battle positions in the capital for the first time following an intelligence tipoff that one of the armored division commanders had been won over by Western powers and persuaded to stage a coup d'etat in time for Tuesday's UN Security Council meeting on Syria.

Argentine has captured a three-man Iranian-Hizballah cell and is hunting for the rest of the network, debkafile exclusive sources reveal. It was nabbed in San Carlos de Bariloche, popular with Israeli backpackers touring the Andes. Their network is suspected of plotting attacks on the local Habad center, one of ten in the country, part of a worldwide terrorist offensive against Israeli and Jewish targets which was stopped short twice this month in Thailand and Azerbaijan. Chile, Peru, Uruguay and Mexico are also on terror alert.

A Hizballah cell backed by intelligence from Tehran and external Iranian terror cells in Turkey, Bulgaria, Georgia and Armenia, was captured in Baku on Jan. 19 by Azerbaijan's National Security Ministry (MNS) officers, who thwarted attacks on the Israeli embassy and the Habad center as well as on Israeli and local personages. Two cell members reside in Azerbaijan; its Tehran-based leader was recruited by Iranian intelligence. This was the first known instance of Iranian intelligence and a Hizballah cell cooperating for a terror operation.

The Thai police's capture of a Lebanese-Swedish Hizballah suspect thwarted a terrorist attack on Bet Habad in Bangkok, involving the taking of hostages and blowing up the building - on the same lines as al Qaeda's 2008 assault on the Mumbai Habad center which killed 8 Israelis and Jews - only more ambitious. Habad Bangkok is much larger; its hostel has dozens of rooms. A second team was to have hit the Khao San Road restaurants popular with Israelis and Americans. The terror alert is still in force.

debkafile reports that the Katyusha rocket volley from S. Lebanon which hit Galilee in northern Israel in the small hours of Tuesday, Nov. 29, was initiated by Hizballah commanders in South Lebanon, although claimed by the al Qaeda-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades. Hizballah activated a Palestinian cell it controls in the Ain Hilwa refugee camp on behalf of its Damascus ally, after a group of NATO and Arab officers quietly established a command in Turkey for intervention in the Syrian crisis.