Defense minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz decided Wednesday, Oct. 24, to shift to the Gaza sector most of the personnel and anti-missile batteries taking part in the joint Israeli-US war game and home front exercise. This came after Palestinians in Gaza hammered Israeli civilian locations with 60 rockets in just a few hours. debkafile: IDF chiefs suspect the Hamas assault is the opening shot of a major offensive which Hizballah may be preparing to join. The US troop increment's fate is yet to be determined.

Hassan Nasrallah’s threat Thursday night of more UAV’s over Israel aroused concern in the Israeli high command that Iranian drones had been smuggled into the hands of the Palestinian Hamas extremists ruling the Gaza Strip. The Hizballah leader implied that Tehran or Hizballah might ask Hamas to release drones over Israel, possibly in coordination with UAV intrusions from Lebanon. All three would celebrate a drone double shot as a major feat against the Zionist enemy – especially after the successful Iranian UAV incursion last Saturday.

Two days after an Iranian pilotless helicopter breached Israeli air space, Israel Monday, Oct. 8, rushed into position Patriot missile interceptor batteries in different parts of northern Israel, including Mt. Carmel, near Haifa. debkafile: The IDF has drawn initial lessons from the failure of air defense radar to detect the hostile UAV when it flew down Israel’s coastline from the north over Israel’s most sensitive military and industrial centers. The Patriots are there for more Iranian or Hizballah intrusions and to meet the current deterioration in Syria.

As Israel and Hizballah teetered on the brink of war, Iran airlifted elite Al Qods units into Lebanon and Syria to shore up the war capabilities and retilt the military balance against Israel.

Israeli reservists drafted at no notice, Air Force, Central Command and other IDF units were flown to Israel’s northern Golan border early Wednesday, Sept. 19, for a surprise IDF exercise under the codename “National Asset.” Since early September, the Israeli Defense Forces have been in the midst of preparations which have the appearance of readiness for a real war rather than an exercise. Those preparations peaked Wednesday under the codename which indicated its goal: the defense of national assets.

Not all is dandy in the cyber war collaboration between the US and Israel. Since Stuxnet, Iran has made strides in its cyber war capabilities and attained a level largely unknown to Western intelligence.

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.

Because Israel received no answers from Washington about concessions Obama had made to Tehran in secret talks, and because Israel believes that Iran’s bomb-building capability will outrun progress in negotiations, Israel intelligence advise bringing forward the date for a military strike to stop Iran in its nuclear ...

Monday, April 24, the Obama administration stepped in to damp down the military frictions developing between Jerusalem and Cairo, fanned further this week by a dispute over the suspension of Egyptian gas to Israel. Earlier that day, Egypt’s military ruler Field Marshal Muhammad Tantawi said: “If anyone comes near Egypt’s border, we will break their leg.” Egyptian Islamists and Bedouin groups have since announced they would mark Israel’s Independence Day Thursday with a mass assault on the Sinai memorials of Israel’s fallen soldiers.

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.

Israel's top IDF command is being reshuffled, tailored for the potential confrontation with Iran. When Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel takes over in May as Air Force chief, he will free the retiring AIF commander Maj. Gen. Ido Nehushtan to become Dep. Chief of Staff and bring his high technological ...

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. ...

Iran has completed the development of a nuclear weapon and is only waiting for a sign from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to start assembling its first nuclear bomb, said Israeli Military Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi on Thursday, February 2. By the end of 2012 or early 2013 Iran may have a single nuclear bomb, he said, but by 2015 the figure would jump to four or five. Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon: None of Iran's nuclear installations are immune from attack.

Expanded Russian military support for the Assad regime was underscored by the deployment Friday, Dec. 16, of advanced Moscow-supplied Yakhont (SSN-26) shore-to-sea missiles along Syria's Mediterranean shore to fend off a potential invasion by sea. Last week, Russia airlifted to Syria 3 million face masks against chemical and biological weapons; and the Admiral Kutznetsov strike group headed out to Syria's Mediterranean port of Tartus. US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in Ankara; Syrian Vice President Farouk a-Shara in Moscow.

Israel's targeted killing Thursday Dec. 8 of Ismail Batash, commander of the "Army of Believers" (a Hamas terrorist front group), may have done more harm than good. Aside from triggering a hail of Palestinian missiles against Israel, debkafile's sources report it strengthened the Hamas-Salafist Bedouin pact in northern Sinai and is speeding up the transfer there of Hamas' terrorist infrastructure from Gaza – out of Israel's reach. The terrorist peril to southern Israel, including Eilat, has mounted, while the IDF's hands are tied.

Tuesday, Dec. 6, the US, France and Britain went into concerted action to contain the Syrian crisis before it detonates a regional conflict and deteriorates into civil strife. At the same time, Syria and its neighbors sharply intensified their war preparations, fully expecting diplomacy to fail.  In Geneva, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the leaders of Syrian opposition groups that the Obama administration had stepped up its pressure on Assad and now referred to his regime as the "Assad gang." 

By ordering Turkish warships to escort aid ships to Gaza and stop Israel's offshore gas exploitation, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is muscling his way into the eastern Mediterranean and taking his dispute with Israel to the brink. He is also challenging Greece and Cyprus. Cairo and Riyadh are ...

Five years after the Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit was kidnapped by Hamas in a cross-border raid from Gaza, members of his family Saturday, June 25, chained themselves to the fence outside the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's residence in desperate protest.  debkafile: Their protest is misdirected to the wrong address: Even if Israel bowed to every Hamas demand, its leaders backed by Iran and Syria would set a new price as the pretext for holding on to this prime asset.
 

Israeli intelligence reports that young West Bank Palestinians are fired up by the Arab Revolt in other countries and preparing riotous disturbances against Israel. They may be timed to coincide with the next round of mass incursions planned by Syria, Hizballah and Hamas across Israel's borders.

Thursday, May 5, Israel augmented the units deployed on its border with Syria and the intersection of the Israel-Syria-Jordan frontiers in the Har Dov area against the spate of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in flight from President Bashar Assad's bloody crackdown in Damascus and the Daraa region. The UN force on the Golan Heights – UNDOF – is likewise beefing up the contingents policing Israeli-Syrian ceasefire lines. Some, turned away at Turkish, Jordanian and Lebanese borders, are heading for Israel.