According to British media, the US is set to attack Iranian military

facilities. DEBKAfile's military sources add that the USS Abraham

Lincoln Strike Force is heading for the Persian Gulf.

War tensions in the Middle East have shot up - not only over the

signals flashing between Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, but also on the

US-Iranian front in Iraq in the wake of rising in violence around

the Basra conflagration.

Tuesday, April 8, US Iraq commander, Gen. David Petraeus and

ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, will stress in their report to

Congress that Iran is waging war on America in Iraq, say sources in

Washington, London and Baghdad.

This emerged strongly last week, when US intelligence learned that

Iran had intervened directly in the Iraqi government's crackdown on

renegade militias in Basra and southern Iraq, by directing and

provisioning those militias through the Revolutionary Guards' al

Qods Brigades.

Official sources in London predict that Iran's intervention against

the American effort to stabilize Iraq may well prompt a US attack on

the military installations in Iran which are orchestrating the

interference.

Gen. Petraeus is on record as accusing Iran of being the source of

the daily rocket bombardment of Baghdad's Green Zone, seat of

government and US diplomatic and military headquarters.

DEBKAfile's military sources report that Moscow has dropped its two

nickels into the rising war alarm. In the last two weeks, Russian

military and intelligence officials have been leaking claims of

intensified American military movements around Iranian shores.

Iran is certain to come up in Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir

Putin's farewell talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi Sunday,

along with other controversial business, such as Moscow's objections

to NATO's eastern expansion and US missile shield in East Europe.

Saturday, US defense secretary Robert Gates turned up in Oman, the

site of big American air bases, for talks with Sultan Qaboos. He

then flew straight back to Washington. While Gates insisted to

correspondents aboard his plane that the US is committed to a

diplomatic solution for Iran's covert nuclear program, the surpise

visit struck sparks in the already fraught regional atmosphere,

particularly as it followed on the heels of US Vice President Dick

Cheney's talks in Oman two weeks ago.

DEBKAfile's Middle East sources sum up how Tehran and Damascus read

these events and the picture they have built up of Washington's

intentions as combined with Israel's military steps:

1. US is preparing to attack the Iranian military installations

linked to subversion in Iraq. The operation will widen out into

strikes on the Islamic Republic's suspect nuclear sites.

2. Israel will use the chance for a concurrent attack on Syria.

3. Israel will attack Hizballah's strongholds in Lebanon.

4. A broad, coordinated US-Israeli offensive will be mounted against

Iran, Syria and Hizballah.

Iran and Syria view Israel's four-day home defense exercise against

missile attack, conventional or non-conventional, beginning Sunday,

as setting the stage for these attacks.

Both believe Washington and Jerusalem are in close military step.