Saudi Arabia is exploring dialogue with its great regional rival Iran for ending the Syrian conflict and assuring Lebanon’s political future, debkafile’s Gulf sources report. Riyadh has given up on US policy for Syria in view of Russia's and Iran's unbending support for Bashar Assad; his battlefield gains aided by Hizballah and Iranian Bassij forces; and Turkey’s failure to react to the Reyhanli bombings. These perceptions generated a get-together between the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers Monday, May 13. in Jeddah.

Israeli military activity was reported Saturday, May 4 in Lebanon too - and not just over Syria.
US sources said earlier Israeli warplanes had struck targets in Syria including a chemical weapons depot outside Damascus, firing missiles remotely from Lebanese air space and the Golan.

The big news on Syria this week is the surreptitious pact forged in Beirut by Russia’s visiting deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov witgh Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah which covers their collaboration in the war for keeping Bashar Assad in power and guarantees Hizballah a Russian shield against a potential Israeli ...

Iran’s Basij are paramilitary troops trained for crushing urban unrest that jeopardizes the regime in Tehran. They have been deployed in Damascus and are relieving the Hizballah units guarding the Shiite Syrian villages along the Lebanese border.

President Ahmadinejad is smearing his enemies while under persecution himself for insisting on pushing his own candidate for president in the June 24 election and bringing the economy to the brink of disaster.

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.

The Al Qods Brigades chief, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, candidly Iran’s hopes and ambitions in a public lecture this week. He indicated that Syria is no longer the focus of Iran’s plans of expansion but rather Iraq, which has been chosen as the main vehicle for exporting the Shiite ...

Amid detailed coverage of Korean crisis through North Korean and American moves, important Chinese and Russian military movements are ignored. Moscow and China are unlikely to bring Kim Jong-Un to heel until Washington agrees to link the Korean case to its disputed policies on Iran and Syria.

The rebel fighters’ newly-acquired antitank guided missiles-ATGM (of both Russian and American manufacture) are knocking over the T-72 tanks of the 4^th Republican Guard Division and the 3^rd Division, the backbone of the capital’s defenses, while their portable MANPAD air defense systems have brought practically all takeoffs and landings ...

Iran and Russian step up their cooperation for boosting Assad’s army with continuous airlifts of war materiel, landed close to the war arenas against a prospective Western invasion of Syria. This could bring US and Israeli troops into direct confrontation with Iranian combatants.

After sustaining a succession of setbacks and rejections in the Arab Revolt, Hizballah faces its most agonizing debacle at the hands of its sworn enemies, Israel and the United States, if they go ahead with an operation against Assad’s chemical weapons.

Middle East tensions are spiraling six days before US President Barack Obama lands in the Middle East. Thursday night, March 14, an Iranian fighter jet tried to bring down a US Predator drone over the Straits of Hormuz – until a US fighter escort fired warning flares.  Syria threatened to bomb Lebanon unless Lebanese Islamists stopped pouring into Syria to fight with Jabhat a-Nusra. Three Russian warships carrying marines entered Beirut port for the first time after the Syrian Tartus port was judged unsafe.

The Syrian opposition and rebels have come to terms with their inability to beat Assad’s army on the battlefield and are ready to talk. Assad won’t hear of stepping down and is preparing to run for another presidential term in 2014. Moscow which is hosting the talks stands behind ...

Khamenei has cut short the brawl between Ahmadinejad and Speaker Larijani in the run-up to the June presidential election, by picking a bland, unassuming professor as his favorite candidate for next president.

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.

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.

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.

Turkish interior minister Moammer Guler identified the suicide bomber who detonated an explosive Friday, Feb. 1 at the US embassy in Ankara, killing a Turkish security guard, as Ecevit Sanli, 31, a member of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C), an outlawed left-wing terrorist group.  He was released from Turkish jail eight months ago. debkafile: The DHKP/C, which is associated with Lebanese terrorist groups and Syrian left-wing factions, was suspected of the attack killing five Israeli tourists in Burgas, Bulgaria last July.

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.