Defense Minister Gen. Ahmad Vahidi warned Sunday, Oct. 28: “The drone was definitely not the latest Iranian technology.” He was talking about the drone sent by Iran and Hizballah over Israel on Oct. 6 and implying it was not the last word in their armory - or even the last to reach Israel. debkafile: In mid-September, Tehran secretly shipped to Lebanon a batch of its most advanced Ababil-T UAVs for new missions, after developing a new stealth attack series with a range of 2,000 kilometers.

Less than 24 hours after Sudan’s Omar Bashir pledged “decisive steps against Israeli interests” for the destruction of the Iranian missile plant in Khartoum, Palestinian rocket teams early Sunday, Oct. 28, fired Grad missiles as target finders against Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona. This is reported exclusively by debkafile. They missed, but Hamas is expected to keep on trying to improve its aim, having undertaken to serve Tehran as its southern, anti-Israel operational arm, like Hizballah in the north.

Sudan’s President Omar Bashir said Saturday, Oct. 27 that “Israeli interests are now legitimate targets.” He spoke after Iranian generals secretly examined the rubble left by an air attack on Oct. 24 of the Shehab ballistic missile factory in Khartoum.  While Israel has not commented on the attack, Sudan’s Information Minister said “military experts” had determined it was destroyed by Israel-made missiles. debkafile: The high rank of the Iranian investigating team attests to the consternation in Tehran over the Yarmouk factory's loss.

The rules are simple: The duelists are masked, they fight in the shadows and their main weapon is the element of surprise. The latest joust took place in Khartoum where unidentified bombers obliterated a factory complex manufacturing Iranian ballistic and other missiles as Tehran’s strategic reserve for emergencies. A ...

Russia has won from Baghdad the same privilege as Iran for using Iraqi air space as a corridor for delivering military supplies to Bashar Assad in Damascus. The huge arms deal Putin and Maliki signed this month provides Syria with a reserve arsenal across the border in Iraq.

The Yarmouk Complex near Khartoum, which was bombed Wednesday, Oct.  24, by four fighter-bombers, recently went into manufacturing Iranian ballistic surface-to-surface Shehab missiles under license from Tehran, debkafile discloses. Western intelligence believes they were meant as Tehran’s strategic reserve stock in case its own ballistic arsenal was hit by Israeli bombers. No information was available about the comings and goings of Iranian missile specialists to Khartoum, or whether Tehran planned to stage missile attacks against Middle East targets from Sudan.

Iran has located its global cyber war-room at Hizballah’s secret internal security apparatus headquarters in South Beirut, under the direction of Hassan Nasrallah’s brother-in-law Wafiq Safa ,debkafile’s exclusive intelligence and counterterrorism sources reveal. The hackers and cyber experts who recently attacked American banks and guided an Iranian stealth drone into Israeli airspace on Oct. 6, operated from this facility and its secret bunkers. No US or Israel action has been taken as yet against this threat to their national security.

Eight nations are embroiled on both sides of the Syrian civil war, although the governments concerned pretend they are keeping to a policy led by the Obama administration of non-intervention. Amid cross-border clashes with Turkey, Bashar Assad has embarked on a scorched earth policy against his country.

Tehran has shifted its expansionist focus from Bahrain to punishing Saudi Arabia for backing the Syrian rebels fighting Bashar Assad. Iran is hitting the Saudis through their back door by buying up South Yemeni anti-government rebels.

Instead of Netanyahu attacking Iran, Khamenei has developed a preemptive strategy for harassing Israel without going far enough to provoke an Israel counter-attack. The stealth drone Iran sent over Israel was not only invisible to Israel but also to US Navy and military radar in the region.

The revised estimates compiled by US and French intelligence agencies on the relative strength of Syrian government and rebel forces have given Washington and Arab capitals backing the Syrian opposition pause.  The Obama administration built its policies around an estimated 70,000 rebel fighters, whereas the new figure, disclosed by debkafile’s intelligence sources, appears to be around 30,000 – one tenth of them Al Qaeda-linked jihadis. Challenging Washington, French President Frances is urging direct intervention now to save the Syrian revolt.

An Iranian cyber offensive has hit US banks, Israeli military defenses, Saudi oil and Qatari gas websites. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the US will retaliate for a “cyber Pearl Harbor.” The Wall Street Journal reports 100 Iranian hackers are conducting the offensive. debkafile: Tehran is telling Washington that US-led sanctions will continue to be punished and further pressure on Syria’s Bashar Assad will be met with assaults on Israel’s military or even nuclear sites. Without a response, Iran will keep going.

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.

The Iranian drone was not brought down by an Israeli airborne missile. After a losing cyber battle with the drone’s Iranian remote controllers in Lebanon, Israel sent two helicopters up to draw a steel cable under the intruder, trap it and haul it down to earth. The drone landed ...

Iran’s nuclear chief Abbasi is in charge of the conversion of the captured US Sentinel by Iran and the work of mixed Iranian-Russian-Chinese teams to transfer its secret systems to Iranian drones.

Iran is obsessed with making bigger and better military drones with stealth qualities and is ready to buy, steal, and dig out the secrets of the captured American RQ-170 top-secret UAV for technology to improve its own products.

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.

Before it was shot down, the large helicopter which breached Israeli airspace Saturday flew over the IDF’s southern facilities, Beersheba and the Israeli Air Force base at Nevatim. It likely had surveillance equipment for recording and beaming back to its Iranian controllers the electronic signatures of the Dimona nuclear reactor’s air defenses and the American X-band radar station linked to the US X-band station in Turkey – the “forward eyes” of the US-Israeli shield against Iranian ballistic missile attack. The UAV should have been shot down much sooner.

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 ...

Mistrust between Washington and Jerusalem is gaining. Israel suspects that the big US-led Hormuz multinational exercise aimed more at stopping it attacking Iran than defending the Strait of Hormuz.