The US will soon be at war with Iran:
it is unavoidable.
DEBKAfile: First belated words of praise for Hizballah from Iran’s Ali Khamenei after Tehran and Damascus threatened Israel against attacking... Syria
July 16, 2006, 2:58 PM (GMT+02:00)
An Iranian spokesman said Sunday: “We are standing by the Syrian people." Israel faces “unimaginable losses.” Hizballah is not mentioned. The Syrian government promises “a firm, direct and unlimited response to any attack by Israel.”
Israeli spokesmen have reiterated that Syria is not targeted for attack. Israel accused Iran of helping Hizballah attack its missile boat last Friday.
An unnamed senior Iranian official admitted that his country had supplied 11,000 rockets to Hizballah, including Shahins, which have a range of 150 kilometers.
In an interview with the Arab daily Shawq al-Awsat, the official said there were 200 Iranian servicemen in Lebanon. They had helped set up Hizballah’s rocket bases in the South and the Beqaa Valley as well as mobile launchers.
DEBKA file: Hizballah fired a rocket at Merom Hagolan in the Golan on Saturday as a maneuver to entangle Syria in the conflict.
The Shiite terrorist group also spread false reports of Israeli air strikes on the Syrian side of the Lebanese border. Damascus resisted Hizballah’s ruse and firmly denied the report - as did Israel.
The night of July 12, after the Hizballah kidnap of two Israeli soldiers, DEBKAfile reported that Iran’s national security adviser Ali Larijani flew into Damascus in line with the recently-signed Iranian-Syrian mutual defense pact. His presence affirmed that an Israeli attack on Syria will be deemed an assault on Iran. It also links the Israeli hostage crisis to Iran’s nuclear standoff with the West.
The Syrian army went on a state of preparedness as did the Iranian air force, missile units and navy are also on high alert.
DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report Hizballah acted on orders from Tehran to open a second front against Israel, partly to ease IDF military pressure on the Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but also for three more reasons:.
1. To show the flag as a champion and defender of its ally, Hamas.
2. To complement to its latest order to go into action against American and British forces in southern Iraq.
3. To hijack the agenda of the G-8 summit in St. Petersberg and divert it from Iran’s nuclear case and the situation in Iraq.
Before their attack, our sources reported Hizballah’s leaders went into hiding and moved stocks of ordnance and missile underground to the Palestinian Ahmed Jibril’s tunnel system at Naama, 30 km south of Beirut, which was built in the 1980s by East German engineers. |
