The Iranian president, while visiting the leaders of Syria and Hezbollah Thursday, said he hopes this summer will bring defeat for “the region’s enemies,” an apparent reference to Israel and the United States.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit with Syrian President Bashar Assad confirmed that ties between their two countries are as close as ever; Ahmadinejad described them as “amicable, excellent and extremely deep.” He commented on how the two nations “have common stands on regional issues and face common enemies,” in the words of the Jerusalem Post.

The visit came amid mounting regional tensions and war preparations. Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted the head of the Syrian Foreign Ministry’s Strategic Studies Center as saying that because circumstances in the region are “extremely sensitive,” the visit was “quite necessary.” Talks between Ahmadinejad and Assad focused on the region’s most explosive issues—Israel, Lebanon and Iraq. Strong evidence proves both countries are fomenting conflict in all three of these hotspots, and there are strong signals that they are preparing to escalate that conflict into full-scale war.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been reaching out to Syria to start peace talks, but he established as a precondition to such talks Syria cutting off contact with Iran. Ahmadinejad’s visit, then, amounted to a snub of Olmert’s offer.

debkafile reported that Ahmadinejad actually warned Assad “he had better stop signaling his willingness for peace talks with Israel because this behavior was hampering Iran’s plans for a war this summer.”

Ahmadinejad reminded Assad that Tehran had spent almost a year on detailed preparations for a summer war and would not tolerate the Syrian ruler sabotaging this effort. Assad was reminded of his huge debt to the Islamic Republic. In the last few months alone, Iran put up hundreds of millions of dollars for Syria’s arms purchases from Russia; Syria gets its oil gratis and raw materials and finished goods at subsidized prices.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah also turned up in Damascus the same day to meet with Ahmadinejad. According to debkafile, he boasted that, with dedicated help, his organization could bring down Israel in a matter of months.

After the meeting, Ahmadinejad told reporters it would be a “hot” summer in the Mideast. “We hope that the hot weather of this summer will coincide with similar victories for the region’s peoples, and with consequent defeat for the region’s enemies,” he said.

debkafile additionally reported,

After meeting the group, the Iranian president held face to face interviews with each of the hard-line Palestinian leaders and heard their requests for armaments and funding. Before flying home, he left a group of Revolutionary Guards al Quds Brigade officers with instructions for the missions to be assigned to each of the Palestinian terror chiefs in the forthcoming summer war.

Iran is driving the region on multiple fronts toward a major war. At the same time, Israel is reportedly bracing itself. Readers should closely watch the Middle East in the coming weeks for the possibility of a massive explosion, as spoken of by Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry in his 2006 article “Jerusalem Is About to Be Cut in Half.”