After studying Israel's last military exercise near the Syrian-Lebanese border last week, Tehran transferred a team of Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Special Engineers from Syria to Lebanon for recommendations on how its lessons should be applied to Hizballah's war array, DEBKAfile's exclusive military and intelligence sources report. Last week, Israel carried out a large military exercise near the confluence of the Israeli, Syrian and Lebanese borders on the Golan simulating an IDF infantry and armored forces drive into Lebanon in the event of the Lebanese Hizballah going to war for the third time. Western intelligence report that the Iranian military engineering team is now examining Hizballah outposts and defense lines opposite Israel to determine whether they are capable of withstanding IDF air, missile, armored and commando attacks or need upgrading. According to our military sources, a group of at least five Iranian officers was sighted Monday, Dec. 20, entering Hizballah military installations in the Bint Jbail and Maroun a-Ras areas of the South. They arrived in a vehicle closely guarded by Hizballah militiamen and a Lebanese Army detail. Although the UNIFIL force's mission in South Lebanon is to block the entry of foreign combatants and weapons, its commanders have bowed to Hizballah dictates which deny them access to Hizballah facilities and Shiite villages under its control and the authority to stop convoys escorted by the Lebanese army. Indeed, every step taken by the international peacekeepers requires permission from the Lebanese government and army which then defer to Hizballah. In the light of the Israeli exercise, Iranian experts in groups of two or three are testing the line sector by sector.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report December 23, 2010, 11:26 AM (GMT+02:00)
The Iranian military command in Damascus, together with the Al Qods commander of Hizballah forces, Gen. Hossein Mahadavi, last week approved the assignment of 20-30 IRGC engineering officers from Syria to Lebanon. A convoy of buses under Hizballah guard transported the team through Ramat Zahrani to one of the larger Hizballah bases. Road access to the base was closed to civilian traffic over the weekend and security redoubled. A military movement on this scale must have been approved by the highest regime level in Damascus.
It was the first time that Lebanese troops had openly acted in association with Iranian Revolutionary Guards personnel.
Since their arrival, Iranian officers have been seen travelling every morning from the Hizballah bases hosting them to its main line of fortifications. That line runs from Ramat Zahrani near Qlaia and Khiyam and arcs northward past Yahmor and south to Lake Qaroun.to enclose the Beqaa region in the east. It was built at the end of 2008 as a barrier against IDF armored columns crossing the Lebanese and Syrian borders and driving east toward Damascus.
Israel only announced the exercise had taken place when it ended Thursday, Dec. 16, but it offered an unusual amount of detail: Taking part were the Nahal (infantry) Brigade and the armored 401st Brigade – both part of the 162nd Division. They practiced invading Lebanon in response to a large-scale Hizballah terrorist incursion into Israel. Also released were details of battlefield tactics, including operations against anti-tank missiles, responses to missile attacks and warding off swarms of Hizballah commandos on motorbikes, a form of assault favored by Revolutionary Guards Special Forces
Western intelligence sources expect the Iranian, Syrian and Hizballah tacticians who monitored the Israeli war game to introduce adjustments and upgrades to Hizballah's fortifications in the coming weeks, as per the recommendations of the IRGC engineers.
It is safe to assume that the IDF will then study those alterations and make its own adjustments.
DEBKAfile Special Report December 22, 2010, 9:05 PM (GMT+02:00)
The Iranian Sunni Baluchi underground Jund Allah announced Wednesday, Dec. 22, that it intends to execute Amir Hossein Shirani, a senior Iranian nuclear scientist, whom the organization abducted on Oct. 8 at the entrance of the secret Iranian nuclear facility in Isfahan, 340 kilometers south of Tehran. If Jund Allah carries out its decision, Amir Shirani will become the first senior Iranian nuclear expert to be captured and put to death by a terrorist organization. He will also be the second nuclear scientist Iran has lost in a single month: On Nov. 29, unknown killers assassinated Dr. Majid Shahriari, head of the program combating the Stuxnet malworm invading Iran's computers.
The Jund Allah spokesman Abdel Raouf Rigi made this announcement Wednesday: "We will execute this man after the Iranian authorities refused to respond to our demands."
Those demands, DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources report, were for the release of 200 jailed individuals defined as "Iranian Baluchi politicians" and Jundallah members. He denied that the 11 men Iran hanged Monday, Dec. 20, were members of Jund Allah, as claimed by Tehran.
"Iran is lying as usual," said Rigi. Those [hanged] were not members of the organization. They have tribal links to some resistance fighters, but they had nothing to do with our recent operations in Iran."
Our intelligence sources report that after Shirani was kidnapped, Tehran tried claiming he was only a common driver and cleaner at Isfahan and had nothing to do with the plant's scientific activities. But Western intelligence knew better and even then identified him as a cousin of Ahmed Sultani, one of the leading lights of Iran's nuclear program and director of the Isfahan facility, which is a secret uranium enrichment plant for nuclear weapons.
Iran makes a practice of employing members of the same family in its most secretive plants as a precaution against leaks of information, espionage and defections.
On Nov. 28, Jund Allah aired a recorded interview with the captured scientist on the Saudi Al Arabiyah TV channel, in which he admitted he had worked for three years in enriching uranium at the secret nuclear research center in Isfahan, having been recruited by a relative Ahmed Sultani, general manager of the facility. "During the time I worked there, I learnt the center was enriching uranium for manufacturing nuclear weapons," he said. "Because engineer Sultani was my relative, I got toattend most of the meetings," said the captured scientist.
"Work at the center," he disclosed added, "went on 24 hours a dayand was divided into three shifts. Around 50 engineers worked in each shift."
Having extracted all the kidnapped expert's secrets, including the names and functions of the staff at Isfahan, Jund Allah offered to hand him over in return for inmates held in Iranian jails. But Tehran decided it had no further need of the expert and had no qualms about abandoning him to his fate with his captors.
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