Israeli jets were reported flying over Damascus by foreign sources in the last few hours Sunday (April 28). debkafile: Iran is pushing Bashar Assad hard to let Hizballah have sophisticated weapons, including self-propelled SA-17 interceptor missile systems.

Pushed hard by the US, Turkish officials opened discussions with Israel on the revival of their former military and intelligence collaboration, especially in relation to the Syrian conflict on which they agreed to pool intelligence and work together in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s Middle East trip was supposed to present the $10 billion US arms sales to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE as a signal for deterring a nuclear Iran. The Boston bombings shifted the onus of his trip to Syria and al Qaeda. Russian cooperation was a vital source of intelligence for nabbing the two bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Friday, April 19. Russian President Vladimir Putin will almost certainly claim his quid pro quo in Syrian currency.

Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev won the dubious distinction of being the first terrorist operatives to import al Qaeda terror to the United States through a route outside the Middle East – the Caucasus. debkafile: The pair were double agents, hired by US and Saudi intelligence to penetrate the Wahhabi jihadist networks which spread across the Russian Caucasian, with the help of certain Saudi financial institutions. Instead, the two former Chechens betrayed their mission and went over secretly to the radical Islamist networks.

In the murky world of double agents, no one can be sure who serves whom at any given time. Some straw companies also serve many spymasters - whether as their operating method or out of greed.  Ben Zygier-Alon’s mission has not been revealed, but some leaks suggest he may have been mixed up in this kind of vortex and, instead of jumping out, decided on his own bat to follow through all the way to a certain objective, so sealing his fate and possibly betraying his own masters.

Despite their best investigative efforts, ABC TV found no lead to the mysteries of the life and death of Australian Ben Zygier, the Mossad agent. How did he kill himself in a top-security cell in 2010 under the tightest surveillance? Why was he held in secret, solitary confinement? An unnamed Israeli official said his exposure would have posed an existential threat to the country. An Australian inquiry has been launched to find out why Israel’s notification of his death to the Tel Aviv embassy never reached Canberra.

The Al Qods Brigades Chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani beat the US to the draw in Cairo. He arrived in the last week of December and discussed with President Mohamed Morsi’s top advisers how his organization could help the Muslim Brotherhood build their own militia-cum-secret service.

Israeli officials have held talks in Jordan with Syrian opposition officials “in advance of a possible Israeli-US operation in Syria to protect the Golan Heights,” Western intelligence sources reported Tuesday, Jan. 1. There was no further information about this operation. The goings-on on the Israeli and Jordanian borders with Syria are officially blacked out. But European intelligence sources reveal nightly border clashes between US, Jordanian, Israeli special forces and Syrian rebels, on the one hand, and Syrian special forces, on the other.

Tehran is set on capturing an Israel drone like the American UAVs it has downed. Iranian spies in Azerbaijan went looking for the bases where drones purchased from Israel were held – and were arrested.

Israel’s operation was an intel coup to shut Iran’s gateway to Cairo via Hamas.

The Gaza operation was an exercise in deception, designed by six intelligence chiefs to trigger two coups – one to restore Mohamed Morsi’s powers as Egyptian president and the other to purge Hamas of its pro-Iranian elements.

Intelligence circles in the Middle East and Europe were fully abreast of Gen. David Petraeus’s fondness for the company of strong, ambitious women like Paula Broadwell and were not against exploiting those women’s garrulity for their own ends.

CIA director David Petraeus arrived in Cairo to lead a new anti-terror campaign against al Qaeda in cooperation with Egyptian security. It was launched after the discovery that Ayaman al-Zawahiri has set in motion a new wave of terror after reconstituting his old Egyptian Islamic Jihad and turning Sinai ...

If France and Israel were to combine their air and sea assets, they could clobber Iran’s nuclear program without any other partners. However, neither is yet about to move in this direction without the United States, although their intelligence ties are in closer rapport than they are with US ...

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.

Barack Obama this week clued Binyamin Netanyahu in on the latest US intelligence confirming Iran will have enough enriched uranium for 4-6 bombs by March 2013, debkafile reports. It was the first time Obama acknowledged that sanctions and diplomatic pressure are not working. Also revealed was that Iran had doubled the enrichment centrifuges at Natanz to 6,000, and that Iran needs no more than 2-3 weeks to upgrade enriched uranium from 20% to weapons grade. Obama still objects to an Israeli pre-emptive strike.

debkafile reveals one of the CIA’s most dramatic scoops in many years, an epic disaster for Iran. Our most exclusive Iranian and intelligence sources disclose that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s personal cameraman, Hassan Golkhanban, who defected from his UN entourage in New York on Oct. 1, brought with him an intelligence treasure trove of up-to-date photographs and videos of Iran’s top leaders visiting its most sensitive and secret nuclear and missile sites. He is staying at an undisclosed address.

Iran is assuming the worst: a) that its plummeting rial is the victim of a Western-Israeli conspiracy to softening the regime up by popular protest ahead of a military attack and b) that their enemies’ agents are manipulating the currency to force Iran to abandon its nuclear aspirations and ...

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is reported by debkafile as berating Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for the powerful presentation of his case to the UN General Assembly for confronting Iran with red lines, instead of failed diplomacy and sanctions Thursday, Sept. 27. Neither released statements. President Barack Obama would not tolerate the Israeli leader having a say in his Iran agenda, she reportedly said, before announcing that the world powers had decided to go back to negotiations with Tehran.

In a radio interview Thursday, Aug. 9, Defense Minister Ehud Barak stoutly refuted reported disagreements between the US and Israel, and himself and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu over a military attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Both see eye to eye on the matter, he said, as do US and Israeli intelligence evaluations.  “A nuclear Iran is taking shape before our eyes” Barak stressed, and new US intelligence findings make a decision on a possible attack “extremely urgent."