DEBKAfile Special Report
January 7, 2010, 9:25 AM (GMT+02:00)
Obama: "We are at war."
Announcing the completion of the security reviews he ordered on the failure to anticipate the attempted airliner bombing, the US president Barack Obama refrained from firing any officials as some people expected. In his second speech in two days, he said: "It was not the fault of any single individual or organization but systemic across agencies.
"We are war," with violent extremists, said the US president, but must not succumb to a siege mentality.
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Obama finally forswears tough sanctions on Iran. Jerusalem says nothing
DEBKAfile Special Report
January 6, 2010, 12:14 AM (GMT+02:00)
Letting Iran off the US hook
Taking advantage of the ado surrounding the failed airliner bombing and the new prominence of the al Qaeda peril, the Obama administration has finally given up its sanctions strategy for averting the rise of a nuclear-armed Iran. US secretary of state Hillary Clinton announced Monday: "The Obama administration wants to keep the door to dialogue open with Iran."
In Jerusalem, the Netanyahu government clings to the Obama administration's coattails, keeping up the pretence that sanctions are still a viable option.
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US intelligence: Southern Gaza is the next Yemen
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
January 5, 2010, 10:00 AM (GMT+02:00)
Scene in Yemen already replicated in Gaza
The year 2010 will see a new Israeli military operation in Gaza - not against the Palestinian Hamas, but the al Qaeda bastions spreading across the southern Gaza Strip, say intelligence circles close to the Obama administration and the CIA. DEBKAfile's intelligence and counter-terror sources cite a senior White House terror expert as assessing that the strengthened al Qaeda networks in the Gaza Strip would be as menacing
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Palestinian missiles fly against Israel after feuding Gaza factions try to kill clan leaderDEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 8, 2010, 11:18 AM (GMT+02:00)  Zakaria Doghmush DEBKAfile's military sources report that a bitter feud within the Popular Committees, climaxing in a failed attempt to murder the group's leader Zakaria Doghmush, triggered the mortar volleys against the Kerem Shalom goods crossing and missile attack on Ashkelon Thursday, Jan. 8. It also marks weakened Hamas control. Israel retaliated Thursday night with air strikes on smuggling tunnels and a missile foundry. | ||
New Egyptian-Saudi peace plan to be presented to Obama FridayDEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 7, 2010, 10:10 AM (GMT+02:00)  Saudi FM Saudi al-Faisal, prime mover Egypt's minister of intelligence Omar Suleiman and foreign minister Ahmad Abul Gheit are due in Washington Friday, Jan. 7, to present US president Barack Obama with a new Egyptian-Saudi proposal for reviving Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. At its core is a presidential letter of guarantee for Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority, underwriting a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on pre-1967 borders with adjustments called for by demographic changes in the interim years. | ||
The US can't afford to open a Yemen front or rely on its president
DEBKAfile Special Analysis
January 4, 2010, 9:22 AM (GMT+02:00)
US embassy in Sanaa - a perpetual target
US official spokesmen have stepped up their rhetoric against al Qaeda in Yemen but do not have the manpower resources to open another anti-terror warfront in addition to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and to a lesser degree Somalia,DEBKAfile's Washington sources report.
Washington's problem with Yemen president Abdullah Salah is his dual policy: While posing as America's faithful ally in the war on the Islamist extremists, he maintains close back-door ties with al Qaeda.
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