Hamas signs binding military commitment to Iran-led war on Israel

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

Hamas leader Mahmoud A-Zahar and deputy commander of its military arm, Marwan Issa, spent the second week of September in Beirut and Tehran finalizing and signing protocols covering a binding commitment by the radical Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip to join Iran, Syria and Hizballah in a war on Israel, debkafile’s exclusive military sources disclose.

The protocols set out in detail the circumstances, procedures and terms governing Hamas’s participation in a conflict, whether it arises from an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program or the involvement of Iran’s allies, Syria and Hizballah, in comprehensive or partial hostilities against Israel. Hamas agreed to obey any orders to attack the Jewish state coming from Tehran, Damascus or Beirut.

Tehran also required A-Zahar and Issa to attach their signatures to copies of the military understandings Iranian National Security Director Saeed Jalili concluded with Bashar Assad during his visit to Damascus on Aug. 7. Those understandings, debkafile reports, touched off the massive Iranian airlift currently carrying hundreds of military personnel and weapons day by day to the embattled Syrian regime.

Hamas’s signature provided a booster shot of 22,000 trained fighters including reservists for the battle array of elite Iranian al Qods Brigades units building up in Syria and Lebanon and taking up positions along Israel’s borders.

This buildup prompted the large-scale snap military exercise Israel staged on the Golan Wednesday, Sept. 19. Most of the forces stayed on after the exercise was over and spread out along the Syrian and Lebanese borders.

The directives Hamas leaders received in Tehran after their meetings with top officials were detailed and precise. They were handed down in person by Defense Minister Ahmed Wahidi, Revolutionary Guards Chief Gen. Ali Jafari, the Al Qods Brigades commander, Qassem Soleimani, and a select group of Iranian intelligence experts on the Israel.

Those orders were presented in the language of commands and brooked no argument. Tehran had two goals:

1. To leave no leeway for the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, of which the Palestinian Hamas is an offshoot, to veto the pledges Hamas signed in Tehran. The Palestinian Hamas was put on notice that the group was now under contract to defer to Tehran in military matters ahead of Cairo.

2.  Iran, Hizballah and Syria instructed Hamas to stop obstructing Jihad Islami’s activities in the Gaza Strip and be ready to operate in harmony with Iran’s Palestinian proxy against Israel. In a potential outbreak of war, both must take their orders from Iran’s Middle East command.

For placing itself under Tehran’s jackboot, Hamas was assured of the resumption of Iranian economic aid and fresh supplies of missiles, advanced hi-tech war equipment to improve the accuracy of its rocket attacks on Israel - which rarely hit much - and anti-air weapons systems.

Iran had been keeping Hamas short pending the guarantees and pledges of allegiance A Zahar carried to Tehran and Beirut in the round trips he made between Sept 8 and 13.  Even then, to make sure there were no loopholes in their accords, the Iranians forced the Hamas delegation to break its journey home to the Gaza Strip in Beirut, repeat their commitments to Tehran to Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah and re-sign the documents in his presence. Failing to honor the deal, they warned, would elicit the immediate cutoff of Iranian aid and supplies.

debkafile’s military analysts report Hamas’ decision to unreservedly hitch its star to the Iranian wagon produced immediate fallout – especially on Egyptian-Israeli relations and counter-terror operations in Egyptian Sinai.

Friday, Islamist terrorists breached the Egyptian-Israeli border from Sinai, shot dead IDF Corp.

Netanel Yahalomi and injured a second soldier, before the IDF killed three of the gunmen in a shootout. In the last year, Sinai has become the stamping ground for al Qaeda cells and allied Islamic terrorists. Egypt’s new rulers have proved unequal to the job of controlling the territory.

At the same time, Cairo is demanding the revision of the 1979 peace treaty’s military clauses. President Mohamed Morsi said Sunday, Sept 23, that his government would uphold the peace pact with Israel only if US commits to helping the Palestinians attain self-rule.

Israeli leaders are now asking what guarantees is President Morsi offering for offsetting any Iranian-orchestrated Hamas war operations from Gaza in line with the accord they have just signed in Tehran and Beirut.

Furthermore, they ask, what happens to the al Qaeda cells and other military groups rampant in Sinai? Up until now Iran and Hamas ran their ties with those terrorists on separate tracks. Will they now effect a merger?

A note of foreboding on this score was struck by Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz Sunday, Sept. 23, when he toured the scene of the last shootout with Sinai terrorists.

“The Sinai border will continue to present us with a challenge,” he said. “We have made a colossal effort in the last two years to seal off the Egyptian border and it will be done. But even then, the threat will not disappear.”

Iran pours more troops into Syria, ready to target Israel from Syria and Lebanon

DEBKAfile Special Report

Iran continues to fly military personnel and quantities of weapons into Syria by civilian aircraft which cut through Iraqi airspace, American intelligence sources disclosed early Thursday, Sept. 20. UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon also said that, "Unfortunately, both [Syrian] sides, government and opposition forces, seem to be determined to see the end by military means."

Clearly, Iran is augmenting its military involvement in the constantly escalating Syrian civil war, broadening it into a multinational conflict which threatens to drag Lebanon in, by means of the Iranian-Syrian ally, Hizballah.

The UN Secretary General's statement implying that the two Syrian sides are determined to fight to the bitter end is echoed in Iran’s resolve to fight to the bitter end for Assad, on Syrian soil.
Tehran is not hiding its actions. Sunday, Sept. 16, Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Commander Gen. Ali Jafari said openly that Al Qods Brigades units were present and operational in both Syria and Lebanon.

No comment on this revelation has come from the US, Israel or Israel’s military (IDF) chiefs - notwithstanding its menacing import, namely, that Tehran is no longer hanging about and waiting for its nuclear program to be attacked in order to punish Israel, but is getting ready for a pre-emptive operation.

Still, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have chosen silence in the face of what any other nation would regard as a casus belli: the open deployment of enemy forces on its northern and eastern borders.

This must have been the catalyst for the IDF’s surprise two-division strength drill Wednesday on Israel’s Golan border with Syria. But the IDF spokesman sounded almost apologetic when he explained that the exercise had nothing to do with the events in Syria or with Hizballah, and that it was no more than a routine drill for testing preparedness.

debkafile's military sources say that, in the current climate, no military operation by any army on the Syrian border – especially one of this magnitude – may be regarded as “routine.” Only a week ago, the Golani Brigade concluded a large military exercise in northern Israel including the Golan. That sort of frequency must have operational connotations: The IDF is evidently keeping the army on the move and in a constant state of readiness to fight a real war without delay on terrain made familiar by repeated war games.

IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz has a penchant for expressing himself through symbols, his method of overcoming the restrictions placed on his tongue by military and other constraints.

On New Year’s Eve last week, the general handed military correspondents a small gift: The Hebrew edition of the American writer Richard David Bach's "There's No Such Place as Far Away."

For the Golan drill Wednesday, he decided to attach Maj. Gen. (res.) Nati Sharoni, chief artillery officer in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, to his party of advisers and observers.

The book was a clear message to Tehran and doubting Thomases at home that the IDF is fully capable of an operation against Iran’s nuclear program and of successfully accomplishing any mission far from its shores.

Gen. Sharoni’s presence at the Golan exercise, and the exercise itself, was a warning to Iran, Hizballah and Syria that they will be disappointed if they hope to catch Israel unready, as it was by the surprise attack which almost overcame the IDF 39 years ago before the tide of war was turned back against Egypt.

Turkish officers take command of Syrian rebel brigades. N. Israel on alert

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report  

Turkish army officers have assumed direct command of the first two Syrian rebel brigades fighting Bashar Assad’s government forces, according to debkafile’s exclusive sources. This step has sent military tensions rocketing on Israel’s northern borders with Syria and Lebanon in case of a backlash.
The rebel North Liberators Brigade in the Idlib region of northern Syria and the Tawhid Brigade fighting in the Al-Bab area northeast of Aleppo are now taking their operational orders from Turkish officers, who exercise their authority from headquarters outside Syria in the southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep. Nonetheless, Turkey is considered to have stepped directly into the Syrian conflict marking the onset of foreign intervention.

Western and Arab military circles in the Middle East expect Turkey to extend its command to additional rebel units – not all of them part of the Free Syrian Army.

This first step has already caused waves.

1.  The consequences of Turkish military action in Syria were urgently aired with CIA Director David Petraeus when he arrived in Ankara Monday, Sept. 3, debkafile’s intelligence sources reveal.  After hearing how and when Ankara proposed to expand its role in the Syrian conflict, Petraeus discussed with Turkish military and intelligence chiefs the likely Syrian, Iranian and Hizballah responses.

He then flew to Israel to continue the discussion there.

2.  By then, US, Turkish and Israeli intelligence watchers were reporting unusual military movements in Syria and on Hizballah turf in southern Lebanon – suspected of being preparations for a blowback from the Turkish intervention in Syria.

3. The IDF countered by placing its units guarding the Syrian and Lebanese borders on a state of alert. Wednesday, Sept. 5, an Iron Dome battery was installed in Gush Dan to head off a potential Hizballah missile barrage on central Israel and its hub, Tel Aviv.

4.  Later that day, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan commented: "The regime in Syria has now become a terrorist state."

Only a few of Erdogan's listeners understood he was laying international legal grounding for expanding Turkish military intervention in Syria.

debkafile's military sources report that Thursday, Sept. 6, military temperatures remained high-to-feverish along Syria's borders with Turkey and Israel, and along Lebanon's borders with Syria and Israel.

If Damascus falls, Israel and its gas fields feared threatened

DEBKAfile  Exclusive Report

Syrian military forces were gathered in Tuesday, July 17, to save Damascus.

Tanks and armored vehicles were positioned in strength in the capital’s center and around government buildings. However, the noise and fury of battle in the Syrian capital Tuesday, July 17, were produced, debkafile’s military sources report, by six battalions of Bashar Assad’s loyal Allawite militia in clashes with the rebels who captured the two southern suburbs of Meidan and Tadmon Monday. They are trying to pound the enemy into extinction before its forces reach central Damascus.

The two beleaguered districts are home to a quarter of the capital’s 1.8 million inhabitants.

The Syrian general staff has withdrawn its command headquarters to a well-fortified complex on Shuhada Street in the capital’s center.

If Damascus falls and Assad is cornered, the entire region stands in peril of wider repercussions, because neither he nor Tehran will take defeat lying down.

debkafile’s military sources report their campaign will be paced and scaled according to the momentum of the Syrian rebels’ advance on Bashar Assad’s door-step, which could be drawn out and bloody.

On the Iranian-Hizballah list are Middle East oil installations as well as Israeli, US, Turkish, Saudi and Jordanian strategic targets.

Saturday, the Cypriot police captured a Hizballah terrorist before he could blow up an Israeli El Al flight and tourist buses in Limassol.

Tehran is feared to be focusing on the Mediterranean island as part of a plot to set Israel’s Mediterranean gas field Tamar on fire. The field is 80 kilometers west of Haifa
It would be a spectacular curtain-raiser for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and for strikes against Gulf oil installations.

Navy Commander, Maj. Gen. Ram Rothberg called last week for an extra five warships and submarines to safeguard Israel’s burgeoning gas fields at the cost of a billion dollars.

The Syrian ruler has stoked up the menace by moving out of storage missiles and shells armed with mustard gas, sarin nerve gas and cyanide stockpiled for years.

They are on operational readiness at Homs, Latakia and Aleppo and, according to Nawaf Fares,
Syrian ex-ambassador to Iraq who defected to the opposition, may already have been used against rebel concentrations.

The longer the battle for Damascus goes on, the greater the danger that the Syrian ruler will release his poison-tipped missiles against Israel, Turkey and Jordan.