Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar Assad finalized plans to back a Hizballah coup against the Lebanese government when they met in Damascus Saturday, Sept. 18, debkafile's military and Mid East sources report.  Hizballah called a general mobilization that same day and by Sunday had 5,000 armed men deployed in Beirut, ready to make good on its threat to seize power rather than let its leaders be indicted by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) for the Hariri murder.

Notwithstanding Pentagon and Tehran's denials that seven US troops were detained by Iranian border guards, debkafile's sources report that Iran did in fact kidnap 5 US security personnel in Afghanistan nearly a week ago. The Pentagon denies that any US troops are missing. Tehran too denied its own report  claiming it was leaked deliberately as the president was on the way to the UN General Assembly.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has carved out for himself a role at Barack Obama's right hand - uniquely for a non-American politician. In its latest issue out Friday, DEBKA-Net-Weekly looks behind Tony Blair's astonishing rise to the top of the White House team of policy-makers, especially on the Middle East and Iran. His popularity in Washington is matched inversely by his falling stakes at home and in Europe.

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A top Iranian general said Friday, Sept. 3: "Iran hopes there won't be a need to target the nuclear facility of the Zionist regime, but if there is, Israel would receive dreadful retribution."
Saturday, Sept. 4, Israeli ambassador in Washington Michael Oren reported that Iran's proxy Hizballah had positioned 16,000 rockets in South Lebanon, altogether quadrupling the number ranged on the Israeli border four years ago. They can now reach every part of Israel as far south as Eilat with enhanced precision.

Syria and Hizballah collude to install a radical Shiite government in Baghdad, by forging an alliance between the two Iraqi Shiite foes - outgoing PM Nouri al-Maliki and radical cleric Moqtada Sadr.

It didn’t' take Iran too long to start using its new nuclear reactor at Bushehr as a safe hideaway for nuclear and secret weapons facilities.

Western intelligence sources report that on August 30, Hizballah put its forces on a state of war alert and issued a partial call-up of reservists, apparently in preparation for a major attack on Israel in response to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington or during the Jewish New Year festival starting on Sept. 8. Iranian pressure for an attack has intensified in the wake of the Palestinian Hamas's drive-by murder of four Israeli civilians on a road near Hebron gave Tuesday night Aug. 31.

On Aug. 23, just two days after Iran inaugurated its first nuclear reactor at Bushehr, debkafile's exclusive sources report a shootout in the streets of Tehran flared between rival intelligence factions of the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) and the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) - as mutual suspicions boiled over.
IRGC nuclear directors suspect politicians of betraying nuclear secrets to the West, while the MOIS sees disloyalty in the Ahmadinejad clique. The incident was blacked out by the regime.

Obama has embarked on a new and dangerous track for bringing Iran to the negotiating table by interchanging tough measures with benefits. It looks now like heading for failure and ending with Iran acquiring a weapon.

The phone call between Saudi King Abdullah and President Barack Obama ended in a falling-out on almost all US Middle East policies. Abudllah sees Obama as blinding hiself to an Iranian-Russian trap.

On Aug. 1, Reza Baruni, the father of Iran's military UAV program, died in a mighty explosion that destroyed his closely secured villa, debkafile reports exclusively. He lived in the high-scale neighborhood secluded for high Iranian officials in the southern town of Ahwaz in oil-rich Khuzestan.

Very few people in the country outside the top leaders and air force knew about his job and so his death was not generally appreciated as fatally stalling Iran's military drone program for many years.

Saturday morning, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman visited the site of the Lebanese-Israeli border clash of Tuesday, Aug. 1. debkafile reveals that Iranian intelligence and commando officers toured the border area 24 hours before him, part of a high-ranking Iranian delegation led by Ali Akbar Velayati which rushed to Beirut after the clash. Their Lebanese army escort included heads of the same 9th battalion which started the clash by shooting across the border and killing Lt. Col. Dov Harari.

A chain of unreported, mysterious attacks plague Iran. Drones crashed into the Bushehr reactor causing casualties, and a senior Iranian weapons director is assassinated.

In the wake of Obama's policy departure, Iran is poised to strike back at America - either by a nuclear device, a naval attack, massive terror or US military targets in Iraq.

The CIA is busy sorting out how much data was real, how much planted in Shahram Amiri's six-year career as a US double agent - and how far US and allied policy-makers were misled about Iran's nuclear program.

Tehran has found no way yet to translate verbal threats into counter-action against the new UN, US and European sanctions. Iran's regional standing set back by the UAE's betrayal.

The US and Russia accept each other's new military bases in Caucasus and Central Asia. Tehran is worried Moscow will turn a blind eye to a US-Israel attack on its nuclear facilities from the north, the south or the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf.

Washington has posted a third carrier opposite Iran's shores, debkafile's military sources report. It is supported by amphibious assault ships and up to 4,000 marines and sailors, bringing the total US strength in these waters to three carriers and 10,000 combat personnel.
Our sources add: In the face of the USS Nassau (LHA-4) Amphibious Ready Group 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit around the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea, Iran called off its "aid ship" to Gaza.

North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il has ordered his military to prepare for all-out war after Barack Obama sent the US military to work with Seoul to prepare for future aggression.
Military observers in the Korean Peninsula and Japan were predicting limited skirmishes on land, sea and air. Some sources found North Korea capable of going all the way to test-firing a nuclear warhead for the first time. Iran is following the crisis closely - and learning.

When Obama asks Medvedev to restrain Assad, instead of cooperating, Moscow announced new arms sales to Syria. The US President was then convinced that the US-Russian partnership was over.