Tehran is looking seriously at a limited Syrian-Lebanese clash of arms with Israel – possibly using Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons as a trigger, debkafile discloses.  Israel reacted to this news by announcing Sunday, Jan. 27, the deployment of Iron Dome anti-missile batteries in northern Israel and Haifa port.  A clash would serve Tehran by sidetracking Israel from striking Iran’s nuclear facilities and help spin out its nuclear talks with the Six Powers. Israel has got plans ready for current military challenges.

The Turkish prime minister believes a resolution of the long and bloody feud with the Kurdish PKK will bring him the presidency in 2014. Iran will do its best to thwart a deal that grants more autonomy to Turkish Kurds as an undesirable precedent for stirring up its own ...

Moscow Monday, Jan. 21 said two Russian planes would land in Beirut Tuesday to evacuate 100 Russians from Syria, and contingency plans were in hand to lift 30,000 Russians from the embattled country. debkafile: This was decided after Bashar Assad told his high command to organize mobile armored strike groups for a big push to evict rebel forces from the places they captured. Russia and Iran have stepped up their arms deliveries to Assad’s army by sea and by air in support of Assad's coming offensive.

It was the first time in military history that any army had used the state-of-the art Airborne Radar Platform for repulsing a concerted enemy missile attack. Israel unveiled its Regional Airborne Radar Platform C2 in the Gaza operation to show its mettle against a blanket of Hamas missiles. It ...

The IDFs’ closure to civilian traffic of a 182-kilometer long security strip, 300 meters deep, along the Israeli-Egyptian border, resulted, debkafile reports, from the failure of US Undersecretary of Defense Michael Vickers to breathe life into the US-Egyptian-Israeli partnership for combating terror during his Cairo trip earlier this month. Refusing to reactivate the Cairo-Jerusalem “hot line” for terrorism, the Egyptians were instead engaged in détente with Iran after Al Qods chief Gen. Qassam Soleimani paid them a secret visit.

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.

Syria launches Scuds against the rebels as they near the Al Safira chemical weapons depot. Lavrov asserts that the weapons are under control – for now. Netanyahu goes to Amman for talks with King Abdullah.

Both sides to the Syrian conflict appear to have launched a form of poison chemicals against their foes. Western and Middle East military sources say pro-Assad forces may have brought into the Homs battle of Dec. 23 imported gas grenades which Iran used to quell the 2009 Tehran riots. debkafile: Although Jordan claimed Sunday it “would not enter into any alliance to protect itself,” large NATO and US forces have prepared the kingdom for chemical attack. Some intelligence sources estimate Turkey or Israel may be next after Jordan.

Tehran has plans to maintain its grip on Syria, even while Washington and Russia are pressing on with secret discussions on the fate of Syrian president Bashar Assad and, in Damascus, international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi Tuesday, Dec. 25, gave himself an extra six days to mediate a deal for ending the war. debkafile:  Saudi intelligence chiefs at the GCC summit in Manama revealed that Iran intends launching Hizballah and local militias to sabotage any international deals and any transitional regime.

debkafile Special: Last week, the Azerbaijani police picked up six Iranian secret agents looking for the air bases housing the drones their government purchased from Israel. The agents carried cash, fake passports, automatic pistols, advanced electronic equipment for tracking aircraft and electronic warfare devices for jamming them. Their capture foiled an Iranian plot to trap one of the UAVs as it flew over the Azerbaijani-Iranian Caspian Sea border. As the agents’ clandestine handler, the Iranian culture attaché was barred form returning to Baku.

Moscow has answered the US Patriots in Turkey with the top-line Eskandar missiles for Syria for which the West has no answer. This compounded the bad news coming from Pyongyang of North Korea’s first successful long-range three-stage missile test. To neither does Obama seem to have an answer.

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.

Qatar and Egypt are playing a double game with Washington, easing Iran’s path to reconnect with Hamas in Gaza after the connection was snapped by the Israeli operation in November.

The Naples Police’s seizure last Friday, Dec. 7 of five containers before they were loaded on an Egyptian freighter shut down two of Iran’s clandestine arms routes to Gaza - from Kosovo and Macedonia via Croatia to a secret depot in Verona, Italy, debkafile reports exclusively. They acted on a tip-off from Israel. More sections of the Iranian arms ring were then rolled up in other parts of Italy. The Egyptian vessel bound for Alexandria was to have unloaded its arms cargo at an unmarked stopover in El Arish.

If the US and Israeli are counting on swarms of drones to carry out an attack on Iranian nuclear sites, they had better think again.

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

The Hamas brought the Israeli offensive down on the Gaza Strip by pushing out the military envelope too far against Israel while it was still the weakest cog in Iran’s radical terror machine. When Obama learned of Khamenei’s design to convert the Gaza Strip into Iran’s southern front, he ...

Iran suffered a serious setback in the Gaza Strip as a result of the Israeli operation to get rid of Hamas’s pro-Iranian leaders. Tehran had conceived of the Gaza Strip as its gateway to the Muslim Brothers of Egypt and Jordan. Though small in time and scale - and relatively inconsequential in the large Middle East picture - the eight-day Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip helped elevate the US to the Middle East major league at Iran's expense.

An Iranian freighter departed Bandar Abbas port Sunday, Nov. 18, with 220 short-range missiles and 50 improved long-range Fajar-5 rockets for the Gaza Strip, debkafile reports. The ship turned toward the Bab al-Mandeb Straits and the Red Sea. The new Fajar-5s have a 200-kilo warhead, packing a bigger punch than the 175 kilo-payload of the rockets now in use with the Palestinian terrorists of Gaza.  Hamas has removed part of this payload to extend their range as far as Tel Aviv 85 kilometers away.

Because the powers concerned about Syrian bloodshed stick to a hands-off policy Assad and al Qaeda win a free field to fight it out.