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Found 1241 articles

Palestinian Unity Ploy Will Steal Gaza Military Initiative from Israel

July 12, 2008, 9:48 PM (GMT+02:00)

Mahmoud Abbas: Double game

The Cairo effort to broker a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas proves now to have been no more than a cover-up for the real game afoot: a move brokered by the Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade to mend the feud between Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah and the fundamentalist Hamas. Palestinian peace talks were secretly launched Friday, June 6 in Dakar at the end of the Organization of Islamic Conference summit for the creation of a unity government. By taking over the Gaza administration, the PA will relieve Hamas of responsibility for wages in the public-sector (for which the Ramallah government turns over cash to Hamas anyway) and supplies of basic commodities - food, fuel and medicine. Hamas’ hands will be free to fight Israel with greater energy than ever before and proceed to seize control of the West Bank to create a base for attacking Israel far more dangerous than Gaza. Once Hamas vacates Gaza’s government administration – even if this is just a formality – and PA guards man the border crossings, Israel can no longer sustain its blockade of the territory. Neither can Israel’s military hit back when Hamas and its terrorist allies shoot missiles and mortars against its population.
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Iranian Early Warning Station, Anti-Air Base on Lebanese Peak

July 12, 2008, 9:43 PM (GMT+02:00)

Mt. Sannine, Central Lebanon

To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly click HERE . In the past few weeks, Hizballah at the behest of Iran and Syria has commandeered the 7,800-foot Mt. Sannine, a strategic asset capable of determining the outcome of the next war, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly 356 revealed. Radar-guided missile positions and an early warning station have since been deployed on its summit, which are capable of monitoring and threatening US Sixth Fleet movements in the eastern Mediterranean and Israel Air Force flights. This development was serious enough for Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak to repeat three times in as many days that the IDF is keeping a close watch on events in the northern front, especially the deepening ties between Syria and the Lebanese Hizballah. Barak travels to Washington this week.
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Would Obama come to terms with Iran as a nuclear power?

July 12, 2008, 9:36 PM (GMT+02:00)

It was obvious that US president George W. Bush’s denunciation of those who would negotiate with “terrorists and radicals” had put the Democratic candidate, Senator Barack Obama, on the spot. Minutes after the words had been spoken on Thursday, May 16, in a special 60th anniversary session of the Israeli parliament, Obama shot back with an attack on the president: “George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists.” Some of the flak which landed on the senator was directed against his lobbyists, whose arrival to woo Israeli and Jewish support was timed to coincide with the presidential participation in Israel’s anniversary celebrations. Obama’s lobbyists, DEBKAfile’s sources report, made a point of talking to most of the American Jewish leaders attending the international conference and asked them to support the Democratic senator’s bid for the presidency. DEBKAfile’s sources heard from some of them that their chief concern is that, if Obama wins the nomination, Clinton’s Jewish supporters will be lost to the Democrats and drift all the way over to the Republican candidate instead of voting for Obama.
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Iran Achieves a Four-Front Missile Command, Breakthrough on Nuclear Missile Warheads

July 12, 2008, 9:36 PM (GMT+02:00)

Gen. Mohammed Ali Jafari, chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps

DEBKAfile’s military sources disclose that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps have created a separate missile command, in which Syria’s missile force is to be integrated. The joint command was formalized in a new mutual defense treaty signed by the Syrian defense minister, Gen. Hassan Turkmani in Tehran last week. Israeli military sources judge the operational merger of Iranian and Syrian missile corps to be a major strategic hazard to the Jewish state. Western and Israeli military experts connect it with other indications that Iran’s program for developing missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads has gone into high gear and reached an advanced stage. They believe the Iranians have beaten most of the technical difficulties holding it up. On May 26, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, which often goes easy on Iran, released a harsh report confirming Iran’s progress in “missile warhead design.” Military experts comment that Tehran’s centralized control of four hostile missile fronts will virtually neutralize the American and Israeli anti-missile defense systems in the region. In a related development, DEBKAfile’s Gulf sources report that next week, Iran’s supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Syrian president Bashar Assad launch a major campaign to further isolate American influence and bludgeon moderate Arab governments into alignment with their extreme anti-US, anti-Israel line.
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Mossad Chief Empowered to Prepare Groundwork for Iran Strike

July 12, 2008, 9:36 PM (GMT+02:00)

Meir Dagan appointed to seventh year as Mossad Director

By extending the Mossad director, Meir Dagan’s tenure for another year until the end of 2009, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has put in place a vital constituent for a possible eleventh-hour unilateral strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities. In his six years on the job, the 61-year old external intelligence has proved his covert mettle in a variety of counter-terror operations, graduating most recently to a highly successful intelligence coup leading up to the demolition of Syria’s North Korean plutonium reactor in al Kebir last September. Appointed by former prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2002, Dagan’s first four years as the Mossad’s tenth chief were dedicated to counterterrorism rather than tracking Iran’s nuclear activities or monitoring Iran’s burgeoning strategic ties with Syria and Hizballah. From mid-2006, the former general shifted the agency’s priorities to include these targets, while the Mossad continued to show its fearsome counter-terror paces in Damascus, Beirut and other Arab capitals.
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Damascus Talks Peace, Bids for Sophisticated Military Hardware

July 8, 2008, 1:21 PM (GMT+02:00)

Russian Yak-130 gunship

To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly click HERE . When Damascus confirmed peace talks with Israel on May 21, a secret high-powered military purchasing delegation, headed by air force-air defenses commander Gen. Akhmad Ratyb, was already in Moscow. With a $5 billion allocation in hand from Tehran, the delegation was bidding for the most advanced products of Russia’s munitions industry. The six main categories of interest to Damascus are disclosed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources as – 1. The latest model of the Russian Iskander-E, a surface-to-surface tactical missile with a range of 280 km and a 480-kilo warhead. This missile is considered one of the most advanced of its type in the world today, partly because of its cruise attributes which enable it to home in on target undetected and with high precision. Iskander-E can be guided by pilot-less air vehicles or satellites. 2. Fifty of the latest MiG-29SMT fighter-bombers.
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Iran Has Technology for a Nuclear Warhead to Fit Shehab-3 Missile

July 8, 2008, 1:21 PM (GMT+02:00)

Urs Tinner, evidence against him destroyed

Some Western military and intelligence were shocked to learn that Iran had the blueprints for making a nuclear warhead that could fit onto its Shehab-3 missiles. The discovery was released by the former UN weapons inspector, David Albright, Sunday, June 16, ahead of the report on his investigation of the nuclear smuggling ring run by the father of the Pakistan nuclear bomb Abdul Qadeer Khan. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s exclusive sources disclosed on May 30 that these nuclear blueprints were sold in underhand deals to those countries - and possibly also to al Qaeda - in the second half of the 1990s. Tehran has therefore had those designs for between 10 and 13 years. It is now evident that not only North Korea and Iran have known for some time how to build and deliver a nuclear warhead, but unknown recipients of A.Q. Khan’s merchandise, including terrorist organizations, may also command hazardous nuclear knowledge. To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly click HERE .
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Secret US-Iranian Dialogue Brings Oil Prices down, Shakes up Mid East Alliances

July 8, 2008, 1:20 PM (GMT+02:00)

To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly click HERE . Oil prices suddenly slumped Tuesday, July 8, as predicted by DEBKA-Net-Weekly on June 27, under the impact of the secret American-Iranian talks embarked on last month to solve burning issues by diplomatic engagement. These talks between the US and Iranian delegations, representing President George W. Bush and Iranian supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have yielded ad hoc understandings on controversial issues. One is an agreement not to allow the price of oil to rocket past $150 the barrel. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s exclusive Gulf and Iranian sources disclosed that the bilateral negotiations were deliberately masked by the war fever engineered by Washington in the form of a stream of leaks indicating that a US or Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear installations was imminent. At the same time, neither nation has sheathed its military option.
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Israel’s Missed Boat in Lebanon

June 23, 2008, 11:07 AM (GMT+02:00)

Hizballah special forces in Beirut

Sunday night, May 11, the Israeli army was poised to strike Hizballah. The Shiite militia was winding up its takeover of West Beirut and battling pro-government forces in the North. When he opened the regular cabinet meeting Sunday, May 11, prime minister Ehud Olmert had already received the go-ahead from Washington for a military strike to halt the Hizballah advance. The message said that President George W. Bush would not call off his visit to Israel to attend its 60th anniversary celebrations and would arrive as planned Wednesday, May 14 - even if the Israeli army was still fighting in Lebanon and Hizballah struck back against Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion airport. Prime minister Ehud Olmert, defense minister Ehud Barak and foreign minister Tzipi Lvini, the only ministers in the picture, decided not to intervene in Lebanon’s civil conflict. Iran’s surrogate army consequently waltzed unchecked to its second victory in two years over the United States and Israel.
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