IS plots terror attacks inside Tehran. Hizballah high-up killed in Damascus bus blast

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report February 2, 2015

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has launched a new terror offensive against Iranians, their followers and other Shiites.  It was kicked off Sunday, Feb. 2 with an attack on a Damascus bus carrying Lebanese Shiite pilgrims to shrines in Syria. Nine people were killed and at least 20 injured. ISIS has set its sights next on the Muslim Shiite heartland, Iran and its cities – especially the capital Tehran.

The Damascus bus attack is ascribed by some sources to a Saudi suicide bomber by the name of Abu al-Ezz al-Ansari. The claim that the Syrian rebel Jabhat al-Nusra was the perpetrator was false, say DEBKAfile’s intelligence and counter-terrorism sources. This group does not go in for Saudi recruits and certainly not suicide bombers of that ilk.

ISIS fingered Nusra to conceal its own responsibility for the attack and its real target. Our sources reveal that the Islamic State attacked the Shiite pilgrims in order to get at a high-ranking officer of Hizballah’s armed wing, who was on the bus.

Hizballah headquarters in Beirut has imposed deep hush on his death and identity. But because they could not pretend the bus explosion did not happen, they pinned it Monday on “takfir [infidel] groups” which they say collaborate with Israel.

This attack revealed most significantly that Hizballah has begun covering the tracks in Syria of its top Hizballah men by inserting them among Shiite pilgrims traveling by bus from Lebanon to Damascus. They are camouflaging the movements of their top men in Syria by an elaborate security net, ever since an Israeli air strike on Jan. 18, killed around nine Hizballah and Iranian officers, including the Iranian general, Ali Allah Dadi.

Still, ISIS agents were able to find the bus and blow it up, indicating deep hostile penetration of the Iranian and HIzballah forces assigned to Syria to fight for Bashar Assad.

Conscious of the Islamic State’s next plans, the Iranian Al Qods Brigades commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, paid an unscheduled visit to Beirut last Thursday, Jan. 29, for urgent talks with Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah and briefings for the organization’s military council members. Their most pressing concern was the detailed ISIS program, which is ready to go, for a broad new campaign of terror against Iranian and pro-Iranian targets in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Iranian homeland.

Nasrallah to Israel: Accept “the mix of Lebanese and Iranian blood on Syrian soil in Quneitra” or face war

DEBKAfile Special Report January 30, 2015, 8:56 PM (IDT)

In is first speech since the cross-border military clash with Israel this week, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah Friday, Jan. 30 tried dictating terms to Israel for border calm to continue. He said Israel must give up the right it reserves to strike out against the presence of his Lebanese Shiite organization and Iran on Syrian soil in Quneitra – or else, the war goes on.

“The resistance no longer cares about rules of engagement,” he said in reference to Israeli leaders’ repeated warning that they would not tolerate an Iranian-backed Hizballah takeover of Syrian Golan for opening up a second front against the Jewish state.

The Hizballah leader went on to say: “From now on, if any member of Hizballah is assassinated, we will blame it on Israel and reserve the right to respond to it whenever and however we choose.”
The main point he made was this: “The mix of Lebanese and Iranian blood on Syrian soil in Quneitra represents the unity of our battle and fate.”

During the day he conferred with a visitor from Tehran: Al Qods Brigades chief, Gen. Qassem Sioleimani.

Clearly, the high tension emanating from the Golan and its environs since the air strike on Jan. 18 that killed an Iranian general and six Hizballah officers near Quneitra – up until the Hizballah attack on an IDF convoy from Mt. Dov Wednesday, Jan. 28 – was just a preamble.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Israel’s armed forces find they are pitched against a dangerous concerted drive by Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hizballah, local and Iraqi Shiite militias, to seize and control a new pro-Iranian front line – a narrow strip 150-km long – which runs from the Qalamoun Mountains of Syria up to Mt. Hermon and includes the Syrian Golan.
This line overlooks Israel and touches its borders at more than one point.

Hizballah’s chief undoubtedly recognizes – as do his masters in Tehran – that they face more armed clashes with Israel in the coming weeks, because the terms Nasrallah dictated as Tehran’s mouthpiece are unacceptable.

Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu said Friday that the continuous offensive staged by Iran to uproot Israel won’t succeed. He spoke on a hospital visit to soldiers injured in the Hizballah rocket attack on their convoy Wednesday.

ISIS in full swing under ex-Iraqi general: 70 deaths in a month, on the march in 10 countries

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis February 1, 2015, 12:43 PM (IDT)

Saturday night, January 31, the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant capped a month of atrocities by beheading its second Japanese hostage, Kenjo Goto, a 47-year old journalist. Jordan vows to do everything its power to save the Jordanian pilot Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, but it may be too late.

In January alone, the Islamists are known to have killed at least 70 people in 10 targeted European and Middle East countries. This is a modest estimate since exact figures are not available everywhere – like in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. ISIS terrorists trailed their horror that month through France, Spain, Belgium, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Libya.

US President Barack Obama, who heads a 20-state coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq, strongly condemned the Goto murder. Secretary of State John Kerry, trying to sound positive, commended the recovery of the Syrian town of Kobani by Kurdish forces as “a big deal.”

ISIS was indeed forced to concede defeat in battle under US air strikes. But Kerry forgot to mention that the battle is far from over: the Islamists pulled back from Kobani’s districts, but are still pressing hard on the walls of the town and heavy fighting for its control continues.
If Kobani is the only military gain achieved by US-backed forces in months of coalition effort, who will be able to stop the brutal ISIS offensive going forward in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East?

The British government keeps on warning that an Islamist attack is coming soon. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Sunday that this was a “generational struggle that must be fought in other parts of the world in addition to the Middle East.”

It was obvious from these lame comments that the West is totally at a loss for ways to pre-empt the thrusting danger.

Some Western intelligence agencies have sought cold comfort by pointing to the Islamists’ willingness to negotiate the release of the Jordanian pilot held hostage since his capture in Syria in December as a symptom of weakness, signaling its readiness to part with its murderous image. Others judged the latest video clips unprofessional and a sign that ISIS leadership was in disarray.

Neither of these judgments is supported by the facts.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terrorism and intelligence sources report that the high command of the Islamic State functions at present with machinelike efficiency in pursuit of its goals. The name of Abu Baqr al-Baghdadi has been circulated widely as ruler of the Islamic “caliphate” he founded in parts of Syria and Iraq. But behind the scenes, he is assisted by a tight inner group of 12-15 former high officers from the Baath army which served the Saddam Hussein up until the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Members of this group ranged in rank from lieutenant-colonel to general.
Ex-Maj. Gen. Abu Ali al-Anbari, its outstanding figure, acts as Al Baghdadi senior lieutenant.

He also appears to be the brain that has charted ISIS’s current military strategy which, our sources learn, focuses on three major thrusts: the activation of sleeper cells in Europe for coordinated terrorist operations: multiple, synchronized attacks in the Middle East along a line running from Tripoli, Libya, through Egyptian Suez Canal cities and encompassing the Sinai Peninsula; and the full-dress Iraqi-Syrian warfront, with the accent currently on the major offensive launched Thursday, March 29, to capture the big Iraq oil town of Kirkuk.

DEBKAfile was first to report the arrival in Sinai during the first week of December of a group of ISIS officers from Iraq to take command of their latest convert, Ansar Beit Al-Miqdas.
Another former Iraqi army officer was entrusted with coordinating ISIS operations between the East Libyan Islamist contingent and the Sinai movement. Their mission is to topple the rule of President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi.

The imported Iraqi command made its presence felt in Libya Tuesday, Jan. 27 with the seizure of the luxury Corinthia Hotel in Tripoli and execution of the foreigners taken there, including an American and a British man. Two days later, ISIS terrorists fanned out across Sinai for their most devastating attack ever on Egyptian military and security forces. They launched simultaneous attacks in five towns, Rafah on the border of the Gaza Strip, El Arish and Sheikh Suweid in the north and the Suez Canal cities of Port Said and Suez to the west – killing some 50 Egyptian personnel and injuring more than double that figure.

ISIS strategists, not content with these “successes,” are still in full thrust and believed to be planning to expand their operations and hit Israel – whether from the south or the north.