debkafile Exclusive: Damascus airport has become the hub for thousands of Hizballah, Hamas, Jihad Islami fighters heading out to Iranian training c

According to debkafile‘s military and intelligence sources, in the last several weeks, Damascus international airport main has become the main transport hub for a stream of Lebanese and Palestinian terrorists heading for Revolutionary Guards installations in Iran. Hence Israel military intelligence chief’s pessimistic briefing to the Israeli cabinet Sunday, April 1. (See separate item on this page) Damascus airport is also the transit point for returning terrorists to gather and pick up their assignment for various Middle East countries, as well as Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Syrian military intelligence and Iranian RG officers have set up a joint depot at the Syrian airport for directing the incoming and outgoing traffic – much of it ferried by Syrian Airways.
A high-ranking Western intelligence source in the Middle East told debkafile that the number of such terrorist-trainees commuting between Damascus and Tehran has grown to more than three times the volume of Muslim and al Qaeda fighters heading out from Syria into Iraq. This source calculates Iran is running a crash program to prepare an army of trained terrorist strength to retaliate for a potential US attack on its nuclear installations. That will be the signal for these men to ignite a regional war of terror across Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and out to Sinai and Egypt.
Four Iranian command centers have been set up at home, in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, to coordinate the movements of fighting men and the arms consignments that are being shipped through marine smuggling routes to their various destinations.
According to our intelligence and military sources, new training methods are employed for the new intake of terrorists. They are no longer being trained at special facilities provided for them at the camps run by the Al Quds Brigades, the RGs international branch. From the beginning of 2007, they have been integrated in regular RG training facilities and are taking basic training along with Iranian recruits in line with a revised Iranian military doctrine. The entire Middle East is deemed henceforth a single integrated line designed to defend the ayatollahs’ regime in Tehran in case of American attack. This line will be manned entirely by units which underwent training in the same combat tactics and operate the same weapons systems and communications.
Syria’s high command and military intelligence are pivotal to the construction, administration and control of this new fighting-terrorist machine. The personal say-so of president Bashar Assad would have been necessary for this project. Damascus airport facilities are a pivotal link in the mechanism wiring Tehran to the terrorist groups and transporting them from training centers to operating bases ready to fight for the Islamic Republic. Without Damascus’ aid, the operation would have taken much longer.
Israel’s AMAN chief, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin views this burgeoning war-cum-terror machine as a dangerous element that could tip the region over into a full-blown conflict without prior warning. No one outside Iran, even seasoned military intelligence observers, can know for certain when, why or for which location, some high-up in the wildly-radical Revolutionary Guards will decide to push the button to activate it.