President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after again warning Iran’s allies this week that Israel is poised to attack them, finds them less inclined to act as Tehran’s surrogates in a potential conflict and more insistent on equality as partners.
Thursday, Feb. 25, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad drops in on President Bashar Assad in Damascus for what their spokesmen have called coordination talks attesting to the strong relations between their two governments. According to debkafile’s Iranian and military sources,  their conversation will focus on how to implement the secret military pact their two governments signed in December 2009, which commits each, as well as co-signatories Hizballah of Lebanon and the Palestinian Hamas, to come to the other’s aid if any is attacked by the United States or Israel.
debkafile’s sources in Damascus report that  Ahmadinejad put in three phone calls to President Assad, Lebanese President General Michel Suleiman and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah to warn them that “Iran has reliable information (…) that the Zionist regime is after finding a way to compensate for the ridiculous defeats it suffered by the people of Gaza and Lebanon’s Hizballah.” He added:  “Should the Zionist regime repeat its mistakes and initiate a military operation, then it must be resisted with full force to put an end to it once and for all.”