• Claim by Hezbollah commander intercepted by German intelligence agency
• But Assad's attempt to crush the rebels failed as West prepares to attack
• Russia has announced the deployment of a cruiser in the eastern Med
• Putin yesterday warned U.S. against attacking Syria and provoking conflict
• American and French lawmakers set to vote on any intervention
  

By Allan Hall and Hugo Gye

PUBLISHED: 08:06 EST, 4 September 2013 | UPDATED: 08:15 EST, 4 September 2013

Bashar Al-Assad launched the chemical attack which killed hundreds of people because he 'lost his nerve' and worried that Damascus would fall to rebel troops, according to new intelligence.

In a telephone call which was tapped by German spy chiefs, a senior Hezbollah commander told the Iranian embassy in Lebanon that Syria's president intended to tilt the balance of power towards the regime in the battle for control of the country's capital.

However, it appears that the chemical attack backfired, as it looks set to prompt a major intervention from American and French troops aimed at crippling Assad's military capabilities.

The German intelligence came as Vladimir Putin warned the West not to take unilateral action against Syria, and repeated his claim that the regime was not responsible for the chemical weapons strike in the suburbs of Damascus two weeks ago.

Russia today announced that it is sending a missile cruiser to the eastern Mediterranean to enforce the country's interests in the volatile region.

The call from a Hezbollah leader about the chemical attack, in which he described the move as 'a big mistake', was intercepted by Germany's BNC intelligence service and reported by Der Spiegel magazine.

The revelation has led the country's top spies to agree with the U.S. intelligence assessment that Assad was indeed responsible for using chemical weapons in the attack on August 21.

BND president Gerhard Schindler said that following a 'thorough analysis', the regime must have been the perpetrator, and the government is the only actor which possesses chemical agents such as sarin.

The BND believes that the use of sarin may have been meant as a deterrent against rebel forces, but that the military used too much of it by mistake.

'The new information from the BND could become important in the coming days,' Der Spiegel said. 'Thus far the U.S. has only noted that after the attack, intelligence agencies had intercepted internal government communications indicating concern about a possible UN inspection of the site.

'The telephone conversation intercepted by the BND could be an important piece in the puzzle currently being assembled by Western intelligence experts.'

Despite the findings, Germany is unlikely to join any military action by the West after both Angela Merkel and her main election rival ruled out an attack.

Britain also seems certain to stay away from the front line of any conflict after David Cameron's Government was defeated in a vote in the House of Commons last week.

By contrast, Barack Obama is expected to win the support of the U.S. Congress after leading figures from both the Democratic and Republican parties came out in support of intervention.

The French parliament is today set to debate a possible military response, although the vote is considered much less important than in Britain or the U.S. because of president Francois Hollande's large majority and relative freedom of action.

'If you want a political solution you have to move the situation,' foreign minister Lauren Fabius said this morning. 'If there's no sanction, Bashar Assad will say, "That's fine, I'll continue what I'm doing."'

Adding to the tension in the eastern Mediterranean, where Israel and the U.S. test-fired a missile yesterday, Russia today ordered a missile cruiser to take over its operations in the region.

The ship, named Moskva, will be joined by a destroyer from Russia's Baltic Fleet and a frigate from the Black Sea Fleet.

'The Cruiser Moskva is heading to the Gibraltar Straits,' a military source told the state news agency. 'In approximately 10 days it will enter the east Mediterranean, where it will take over as the flagship of the naval task force.'

Russia is Assad's most powerful global ally, and has consistently opposed Western intervention in Syria's long-running civil war, calling instead for negotiations to reach a diplomatic solution.

Mr Putin suggested in an interview yesterday that Russia would support a UN resolution on military strikes if Assad is proven to have carried out the chemical attack.

However, he insisted that it would have been 'ludicrous' for the regime to draw the opposition of the international community by using banned substances such as sarin.

'From our viewpoint, it seems absolutely absurd that the armed forces, which are on the offensive today and in some areas have encircled the so-called rebels and are finishing them off, that in these conditions they would start using forbidden chemical weapons while realising quite well that it could serve as a pretext for applying sanctions against them,' he said.

'If there are data that the chemical weapons have been used, and used specifically by the regular army, this evidence should be submitted to the UN Security Council.

'And it ought to be convincing. It shouldn't be based on some rumours and information obtained by special services through some kind of eavesdropping, some conversations and things like that.'

The Russian president said he was sorry that Mr Obama had cancelled a one-on-one meeting which was due to precede the G20 summit in St Petersburg this week.

'President Obama hasn't been elected by the American people in order to be pleasant to Russia,' he said. 'And your humble servant hasn't been elected by the people of Russia to be pleasant to someone either.

'We work, we argue about some issues. We are human. Sometimes one of us gets vexed. But I would like to repeat once again that global mutual interests form a good basis for finding a joint solution to our problems.'

One country which is likely to support any Western action is Turkey, one of the leading regional powers, whose prime minister said today that he would join an international coalition designed at reining in Assad.

Syria's civil war has been raging for two and a half years, since Assad started cracking down on protests inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, and has killed more than 100,000 people.

It was revealed this week that more than 2million Syrians had been forced out of their homeland by the fighting, with the vast majority ending up in Lebanon, Turkey or Jordan.