
 The Lebanese Shiite Hizballah has obviously decided the Assad regime is  sinking. debkafile's military  sources report the organization is preparing to pull its heavy, long-range  weapons out of storage in Syrian military facilities – no longer sure they are  safe there – and risk transporting them to Lebanon. Last year, Syrian President Bashar Assad agreed to store Hizballah's incoming  Iran-made Fatah-110 surface missiles and its Syrian equivalent the M-600 and the  mobile SA-8 (Gecko) anti-air battery which holds 18 warheads with a maximum  range of 12 kilometers. Tehran paid for the upkeep of the Hizballah hardware on  Syrian side of the border after Israel threatened to bomb these potential  game-changers if they crossed over. Deployed at Hizballah bases in Lebanon, the Fatah-110 and M-600 would place  almost every corner of Israel within range of bombardment, while the SA-8 would  seriously restrict Israeli Air Force operations over southern Lebanon and  Galilee. Hizballah's headquarters in Dahya, Beirut, became alarmed when they heard  about strong resentment building up in the Syrian 11th Division over the Assad  crackdown against the dissidents – among officers as well as other ranks. Meanwhile, top Hizballah and Iranian offices in Tehran are working on the  best way to transport the missiles into Lebanon without exposing them to Israeli  attack, debkafile's Iranian  sources report. Some of them calculate that Israel would not venture to strike  them while still on Syrian soil because it would lay itself open to interfering,  or even getting in the way of, the revolt against President Assad and playing  into his hands.  A security emergency might well take the wind out of protest movement's  sails.
However, as the uprising against Assad rolls ever closer to  Damascus, Hizballah see a very real threat of it infecting the Syrian army and  has decided that now might be its last chance to get hold of the core arsenal it  has standing by for war with Israel before events get out of hand in Syria.
The  11th Division, which is camped outside Aleppo, is the best trained and organized  of all Syrian army units, equipped as its strategic reserve with the most  advanced weaponry. If the unrest has reached this elite unit, Hizballah reckons  there is no time to losing for pulling its missiles out of Syrian military  safekeeping.
But already, Tehran's Lebanese surrogate is beginning to distance  itself from Bashar Assad, its longtime strategic partner and arms supplier,  having decided he has his back to the wall.  April 28, the Hizballah-controlled  Lebanese Al Akhbar newspaper started criticizing the Assad regime on its op-ed  pages.