A single Patriot anti-missile battery was stationed Monday, May 24, at Morag in northwestern Poland, less than 40 miles from the Russian naval and air bases in the enclave of Kaliningrad. A hundred US troops were attached to the site for training Polish soldiers in its use.
Although the Patriot was a pale relic of the missile shield President George W. Bush planned for East Europe, it drew deep frowns in Moscow. Seekers of comments were referred to the Russian foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko's statement of a month ago that such unilateral moves by the US cannot be left unaddressed.
Russian pundits specializing in US-Russian relations took a somewhat sharper tone, describing the move as a deliberate attempt to undermine Russian-American relations.
What would the Russians have said if the United States, or any foreign power, had parked not a single air defense Patriot, but 800 Scud-D surface-to-surface strike missiles with a 700-1,000-mile range, capable of carrying chemical or nuclear warheads - not 40 miles, but less than 16 miles from their territory?
That is exactly what Syrian President Bashar Assad has done, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources reveal here. They are not part of the Syrian Army's array of missiles for deterring an Israeli invasion of Lebanon and Syria, but parked on the Syrian-Lebanese border, painted in Hizballah battle colors and assigned Hizballah store serial numbers. Each battery has its own Hizballah unit, attached after learning how to operate them at Syrian bases for the past half year.
Unparalleled bonanza for Hizballah
Wednesday and Thursday, May 26-27, tensions shot up several notches when Beirut lined up behind Damascus and Hizballah and boosted its army units on the South Lebanese-Israel border "against any emergency" and the Syrian army placed all its units on war preparedness, ordering its ballistic missile units to switch to firing positions.
Israel, which ended its homeland defense exercise against missile attack Thursday, May 27, prepared to join Greece next week in a joint naval and aerial exercise for practicing in-flight refueling.
(For details, see also HOT POINTS below)
The stages of the buildup approaching its peak were progressively covered in DEBKA-Net-Weekly and debkafile's reports. Even so, all our experts were astounded to learn that the unheard-of number of 800 Scuds had been assigned to Hizballah, a fact never disclosed until now.
The entire Scud D behemoth is now positioned ready for removal into Lebanon at one and-a-half hour's notice from Assad's green light. The Hizballah crews have been taught to launch them on the move at predetermined Israeli targets.
Syria, Iran and Hizballah have made military history - and that is why the Middle East is teetering on the brink of war. Four armies were on combat readiness Wednesday, May 26 after the Lebanese Army lined up behind Syria and Hizballah against Israel's Defense Forces and Syrian ballistic missiles were placed in firing positions.
Never has any army, least of all a terrorist organization like the Shiite Hizballah, ever commanded so many surface-to-surface strike missiles and held them ready to fire on a neighbor's cities.
By comparison, North Korea's arsenal is also estimated at around 800 ballistic missiles. They include long-range systems which could one day strike South Korea and Japan. But even that rogue nation has never placed those weapons in firing position at points abutting the borders of South Korea and Japan.
Deeply ingrained collaboration with North Korea
And how would the strategic position of the 100,000 US troops fighting in Afghanistan be affected if the Pakistani government were to suddenly and covertly let Taliban have 800 Ghauri surface-to-surface missiles (similar to the Scud D) for firing at Kabul from its South and North Waziristan sanctuaries?
This scenario would sound absurdly unreal anywhere in the world - even in trouble spots. Yet, in the Middle East, it is a cruel reality.
The Scud concentration on the Syrian-Lebanese border came off Syrian military industry production lines, our military sources report. Their manufacture is based on North Korean technology, diagrams and licenses. They are in fact a Syrian adaptation of the North Korean Rodong-1 missile, whose 1,000-mile range brings Japan within firing distance.
This missile is essentially a hybrid: Its Isayev 9D21 engine was upgraded with the help of Russia's Makeyev OKB industries as well as China and Ukraine, while the new TEL uses an Italian Iveco truck chassis and an Austrian crane.
Pyongyang's Rodong program was itself largely financed by Iran in return for permission to reproduce it as the Shahab-3 ballistic missile.
Iranian-Syrian military collaboration with North Korea is thus deeply ingrained with Hizballah now brought into the equation for the first time.
Yet for reasons outlined in the next article, no Western power has hindered the coming together of these hugely destabilizing elements.
For ten days, the US and Israel improbably joined forces with Syria, Lebanon and South Korea for a mighty effort to conceal the mammoth figure of 800 Scud missiles held ready for Hizballah in custom-built Syrian bases a 15-20-minute drive from the Lebanese border.
This effort was exhaustive enough to magic away the only media reference; an item in the Japanese Sankei Shimbun of Sunday, May 23; vanished overnight from the paper's Web site and the Internet.
But DEBKA-Net-Weekly managed to pin it down. Here is the quote:
North Korea has agreed to Syria's shipment of long-range Scud missiles to the militant Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. Syria is reportedly obliged to receive approval from North Korea the technology provider when handing over missiles to a third party. Citing unidentified sources, Japan says the North Korean embassy in Syria said it has "no intention to object to Syria's transfer of Scud missiles to Hezbollah." We speculate that the model Syria plans to provide the Lebanese militant group with is the Scud D with a range of 700 kilometers."
The Japanese item included the disclosure that the Syrian president needed North Korean approval for transferring the Scud Ds to Hizballah. Given the structure of the ruling regime in Pyongyang, the handover would have necessitated a nod from Kim Jong-il in person.
Red faces in Washington
All the parties concerned one way or another found the Japanese disclosure embarrassing enough to kill it.
The United States, for one, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Washington and military report, was not prepared to own up to the failure of its every effort (going back to the Clinton and Bush administrations) to curb the massive proliferation of nuclear and missile weapons technology originating in North Korea - most damagingly to the Middle East. Worse still, for the first time, the North Korean ruler actually authorized their transfer to a militia officially listed by the UN and the US as a terrorist organization.
As long as this level of nuclear and other dangerous weapon proliferation goes on unchecked, questions must be asked about the point of the "bold and pragmatic" program President Barack Obama submitted to the Washington summit of 47 world leaders on April 13, asking for their commitment to eliminate or lock down their nuclear materials within four years.
With US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Beijing this week (May 23-25) for discussions centering Iran's nuclear program and a bid for Chinese support for UN sanctions, Washington could not afford to let it be known that the world's top nuclear violator Kim Jong-Il had more leverage over war and peace in the Middle East than any other Asian, or even European, leader.
There might also have been quite a few red faces if the presence of 800 Scud D missiles under Hizballah's hand had been discovered during Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri's first White House visit Monday, May 24. It would have signaled the collapse of the Obama administration's policy of wooing Assad and exposed a US intelligence fiasco, to boot.
How would Netanyahu and Barak explain how it happened?
In any case, no sooner was Hariri home to Beirut when he lined up behind Syria and Hizballah in boosting his southern units against "a war emergency," despite his promise to the US president to try and abate rising war tensions.
Israeli leaders would also have been seriously discomfited by this discovery (see the separate item on the debate over Israel's restraint in the missile threat), because the public would demand answers to at least three questions:
1. How did North Korea, a country far from Israeli consciousness, manage to grab a leading role in the schemes for its destruction for the second time in three years? The first time was in 2007, when Pyongyang helped construct the Syrian plutonium reactor at A-Zur which Israel destroyed before it was up.
2. How could Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak let 800 Scud missiles pile up on the Syrian-Lebanese border for no purpose other than to destroy Israel's cities without stepping in to destroy them? That many Scuds imperils Israel's very existence no less than the plutonium Syria would have produced had the Israeli Air Force not bombed its reactor in 2007.
3. Hizballah's leader Hassan Nasrallah makes no secret of his plan to devastate Israel's population centers with hundreds of missiles and rockets while at the same time fighting to capture sections of northern Israel. (See Issue no. 430 of DNW from January 22 – Iran-Hizballah Mark out Patches of Northern Israel for Capture). So is the Netanyahu government sitting on its hands and letting it happen?
Lebanon's leaders President Michel Suleiman and the prime minister had an obvious interest in keeping the 800 Scuds hidden from sight. Their discovery would have shown them up as the stooges of Syrian president Bashar Assad and Iran's surrogate Hizballah who are free to manipulate Lebanon according to their interests.
Assad capitalizes on the secrecy for buck-passing on the impending war
As for Bashar Assad, who built up the Scud stockpile, he is exploiting the missile controversy to pass the buck for the flare-up of hostilities he is engineering to the United States and Israel.
In an interview with the Rome newspaper La Repubblica on Monday, May 24, the Syrian ruler said the United States had lost its influence in the Middle East by failing to contribute to regional peace. In his view, US President Barack Obama had "raised hopes" in the region but failed to follow through with substantive peace moves.
Assad also boasted about a new world order which, he said, had cut the United States down in the world by refusing to wait for roles to be handed out by Washington. He was referring to the bloc formed by Turkey, Brazil, Syria and Iran and sponsored on the outside by Russia and aiming a side swipe at Obama's White House welcome for Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, by showing that Damascus calls the shots in Lebanon - not Washington.
By keeping the 800 Scud D stock poised for handover to Hizballah dark, the United States and Israel played into Assad's hands and let him get away with engineering the elements of an impending Middle East war while pinning them blame on them.
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On Wednesday afternoon, May 26, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel handed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an invitation from President Barack Obama to meet him for a working meeting at the White House Tuesday, June 1 on his way home from Canada.
Emanuel's visit - he arrived on May 23 - was described as a private family trip to celebrate his son's bar-mitzvah in Jerusalem. But the US president found his right-hand man's journey useful for tying the hands of prime minister Netanyahu and Defense minister Ehud Barak, in case they contemplated mounting an attack on the 800 Syrian Scud-D missiles piled up on the Lebanese border to prevent them reaching the hands of the Lebanese terrorist Hizballah - or even going ahead and striking Iran's nuclear sites.
(See the first item in this issue on the placement of these missiles on the Syria-Lebanon border).
A day earlier, May 22, John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was dispatched to Damascus to try and dissuade Syrian president Bashar Assad from shifting the Scuds the last few miles into Lebanon.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington report the Obama administration is going all out to ward off a military showdown in the Middle East because it would interfere with his plans to resume nuclear dialogue with Iran.
But Thursday, May 27, brought high noon closer. Netanyahu flew off on trips to Paris and North America that morning and Israel's five-day homeland defense exercise drew to a close. However, the night before, Syria placed all its armed forces on combat readiness for the first time since the 2006 Lebanon War and ordered its missile units to take up firing positions.
(See HOT POINTS below for details)
Washington turns its face to diplomacy, not war
In the midst of these war signals, Washington forged ahead with its policy of diplomatic engagement for solving conflicts on all fronts - against all the odds. But President Obama did not neglect to shore up his assets ahead of the talks by sending a nuclear submarine to cross the strategic Strait of Hormuz past the Iranian coast Thursday, May 27.
Tuesday, May 25, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton summed up her two days of talks with Chinese officials in Beijing to reporters: "We discussed at some length the shortcomings of the recent proposal put forward by Iran in its letter to the IAEA. There are a number of deficiencies (in the Iranian-Turkish-Brazilian nuclear agreement) which do not answer the concerns of the international community."
Her comment could be taken to mean that there is some basis for discussion in the new proposal and if the flaws are repaired, the agreement may be acceptable.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly 446 of May 21 (It May Not Be All Bad, Say Obama's People) outlined the changes the administration wants to see.
The day before (Monday, May 24), Washington asked the UN Secretary General to pass on the message that if the Brazilian-brokered enriched uranium deal for half of Iran's stock to be swapped for nuclear rods in Turkey were accepted and implemented, it might serve as an important confidence-building measure for opening the door to a negotiated resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue.
In other words, there was room for discussion.
To persuade the American public that the administration was not again bending over backward to let Iran get away scot free, a leak was dropped into the Tuesday, May 25, US media revealing that Gen. David Petraeus, chief of the US Central Command, had last September signed an order authorizing clandestine military operations in allied and hostile Middle East, Central Asian and Horn of African nations for surveillance and cooperation with local security forces. Iran appeared from the document to be singled out for covert operations - most likely for gathering intelligence about the country's nuclear program or identifying dissident groups that might be useful in a future military offensive.
It was hoped in administration circles that people would forget how cynically Tehran trifled with the sharp ultimatums President Obama slapped down exactly a year ago when Iran was discovered to have hidden a clandestine uranium enrichment facility (since abandoned) in a mountain near the holy city of Qom.
Israeli leaders agreeable
In Jerusalem, Netanyahu had no trouble giving Rahm Emanuel the same promise Assad gave Senator Kerry, namely that, barring unexpected events, he would do his utmost to cool border tensions and keep them from flaring into a fully-fledged war.
The Israeli prime minister was delighted with the affection showered on him now by the White House in Washington after a year of Obama's icy aloofness - which, incidentally, helped him keep his government coalition on an even keel. He expects his White House welcome Tuesday, June 1 will be a lot warmer than the last two.
For both Israeli and Syrian leaders, "barring unexpected events" is a catchall caveat in case they choose to be let off the hook of their promises.
Netanyahu in particular may not be allowed to stay the course of restraint in the face of rising criticism from Israel's military and security chiefs.
(This is discussed in detail in the next article.)
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When the Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu returns from his working meeting with President Barack Obama in the second half of next week, he and defense minister Ehud Barak will have their hands full dealing with disgruntled generals and security chiefs, our military and Middle East sources report.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi is of one mind with the policy-makers (and Washington) on the need for utmost military restraint, but most national security and military leaders maintain that the 800 Scud D missiles, which are capable of carrying nuclear or chemical warheads, pose too great a peril for Israel to allow them cross into Lebanon and become operational.
They offer three arguments:
1. Israel stood idly by for the build-up of thousands of Iranian and Syrian missiles smuggled to the Lebanese Hizballah, but the Scud D missiles' presence in Syrian bases minutes away from the Lebanese border must be seen - even in Jerusalem - as the last straw which broke the camel's back.
The scenario of a chemical attack on Tel Aviv was drilled Tuesday, May 25, the third day of the Israel Home Front defense drill, 'Turning Point 4' (May 23-27).
The results and conclusions were disturbing.
More than 65 percent of the population lacks protection against an attack using toxic chemicals. Israel may suffer an estimated 3,300 casualties including up to 200 dead in conventional Syrian or Hizballah long range missile attacks, but if those missiles carry chemical warheads, the casualty figure would soar to 16,000 and leave more than 200,000 homeless.
Tiny Israel with its small population cannot possible afford casualties on this scale, say the government's critics.
2. Iran and Syria will use the Scud D menace as a card for squeezing more concessions when the US faces Iran in negotiations on the new enriched uranium swap deal brokered by Turkey and Brazil. By allowing this to happen, Israel will strengthen Tehran's hand and help bolster the hostile "Northern Alliance" of Iran, Turkey, Brazil and Hizballah.
3. In the view of most Israeli military and security leaders, if Netanyahu and Barak hold back from a timely strike against the menacing Scud missiles, they will ultimately shrink back from hitting Iran's nuclear facilities as well. This pattern of non-response will lead Israel into coming to terms alongside the Obama administration with a nuclear-armed Iran.
Lawmaker Tzahi Hanegbi, Chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, has been going around later warning that Iran's attainment of nuclear weapons would pose Israel with mortal danger. He speaks for a large body of well-informed security and military chiefs - and is not the only one.
Israel's top security-military echelons up in arms
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources disclose comments at a closed-door lecture by General (res.) Amos Gilad, senior political-security advisor at the Defense Ministry, which are gaining ground among broad circles of high-ranking IDF and junior officers.
After serving a series of Israeli defense ministers as senior strategic adviser, Gilad is now voicing in private circles, exasperation with the policies Israel has followed in the decade since Bashar Assad came to power and vis-à-vis Hizballah. These policies, he maintains, were costly in terms of Israel's deterrent strength and have left the country exposed to the current outburst of aggression from the North.
Unusually outspoken, Gen. Gilad says Israel came away from the 2006 Lebanon war, which was triggered by a Hizballah cross-border attack, with hardly a single strategic gain. Its outcome was harvested by Syria and Hizballah to upgrade Hizballah and transform the terrorist militia, ordered by the UN Security Council to disband, into a professional military force for confronting Israel's armed forces.
Gilad asserted that the relative calm of the ensuing four years on Israel's borders with Syria and Lebanon owed nothing to Israel's deterrent power, as defense minister Barak and Chief of staff Ashkenazi were fond of stating; they owe everything, he says, to the quiet needed for Iran and Syria to finish arming Hizballah with the sophisticated tools of war for attacking Israel at the earliest opportunity.
Assad is not susceptible to diplomacy, only force
Regarding Israel's waning deterrent strength, the Defense Ministry adviser drew attention to the fluctuations in Syrian ruler's bellicosity, which peaked before Israel demolished his North Korean-built plutonium reactor in September 2007 and damped down right afterwards. But when Assad realized eighteen months later that the attack was a one-off, he went back to his threatening rhetoric for Israel and the open pursuit of brutal steps for subjugating Lebanon.
By May, 2010, his stridency and aggressiveness had reverted to their old level.
It's about time we took Bashar Assad's measure, said the defense ministry adviser. We all know he is tremendously cunning, but we have to remember that this guy gets up every morning, looks in the mirror and asks himself – What can I do today better than my late father (Syrian President Hafez Assad, who ruled Syria with an iron fist from 1971 to 2000)?
Gilad stresses that Bashar's driving force is the urge to outdo his father.
Therefore, because Hafez forged a strong alliance with Tehran to preserve his regime at the head of his minority Allawite sect, Bashar felt compelled to deepen that alliance still further. In following in his father's footsteps, he constantly needs to go that extra step.
The Obama administration and Israel have made no impression on the Syrian ruler because they missed his most basic motive, which is the compulsion to beat his father at his own game, according to Gilad. It explains why he is so unresponsive to any form of diplomacy rooted in rational political expediency, or even gain. But he is very sensitive to any display of force, especially if it menaces his dynastic grip on the regime
Ex-General Gilad's arguments have been making the rounds and influencing members of the IDF high command.
The high command and its ministerial supporters are increasingly critical of the way the Netanyahu-Barak duo is handling the 800-Scud D missile crisis. Their clamor for Israel to take the weapons out before they cross into Lebanon is getting louder.
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2010 FIFA World Cup Soccer Match 5 takes place between the US and British national teams at 20:30, June 12 at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenburg, South Africa.
The event would undoubtedly be an attractive draw for many jihadist terrorist organizations. An attack would be witnessed live by a worldwide television audience and it would target not one - but two - of the leading Western powers fighting Islamist terror in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, the Middle East and Europe.
It would become the most talked-about terrorist outrage since the Palestinian Black September murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Rustenburg ("Town of Rest" in Afrikaans and Dutch), where the Royal Bafokeng Stadium is located, is a city of nearly half a million inhabitants situated at the foot of the Magaliesberg mountain range in the North West Province of South Africa, close to Phokeng. It is there that the England national football team is setting up base camp.
This too could be a possible terrorist target.
The US team' chose Irene Country Lodge, between Johannesburg and Pretoria and a twenty-five minute drive from Johannesburg International Airport, for its base camp because it offers better protection against attack than the locations chosen by the other 31 teams taking part in the tournament.
A notorious Al Qaeda mastermind surfaces
Irene Country Lodge is a lot like the Camp David US presidential retreat and has served as such for a number of South African leaders. Surrounded on three sides by forests and gardens, its façade overlooks a large lake. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources report the site is already off-limits to guests and visitors. South African security services are guarding the grounds, while US security is responsible for the site's interior and training facilities.
Meanwhile, several Western intelligence agencies took anxious note of the release of a US report on May 13, under the caption: "Iran eases grip on Al Qaida." The report reveals how Al Qaida operatives detained in Iran for years are quietly making their way in and out of the country, suggesting that Iran is loosening its grip on the terror group to let it replenish its ranks.
What most worried the agents engaged in combating Al Qaida was the following paragraph:
"Most recently, the concern (of the U.S.) focused on Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian-born confidant of Osama bin Laden, who is on the FBI's most wanted list in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In the past year or so, intelligence officials circulated a bulletin saying al-Adel, one of al-Qaida's founding fathers, was traveling to Damascus, Syria. The U.S. is offering a $5 million reward for his capture.
The Damascus connection ultimately was disproved but, underscoring the difficulty of monitoring the men, U.S. intelligence officials are divided on whether Saif has been allowed to travel in the region. The senior counterterrorism official said there's no clear evidence Saif has left Iran."
Al-Adel suspected of plotting World Cup attack
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counterterrorism sources suspect, like the other Western officials, that US intelligence agencies inserted this paragraph for fear that Saif al-Adel was on an al-Qaida mission to organize a terror attack at the World Cup match between the US and England, or possibly, one of their base camps.
Our sources note that Al Qaeda has chosen him to orchestrate from inside Iran every politically-oriented wave of terror of major significance, with the exception of the 9/11 attacks in America.
In 2003 and 2004, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri put Saif al-Adel in charge of organizing a series of devastating strikes in Saudi Arabia against the Royal Family and American and British targets in the kingdom. Their objectives were to topple the throne - or at least enfeeble it, and eliminate the Western and pro-Western presence in Riyadh and other major Saudi cities, including entities linked to the oil industry.
Some of those attacks, which took three years to curb, focused on gated Western residential compounds.
Al Qaeda experts in US, Saudi and Egyptian intelligence identified Saif al-Adel as the live wire behind this outbreak of terror. They knew he was working out of a headquarters in Iran.
Tehran, of course, denied this outright, but did not refuse to negotiate terms with Saudi and Egyptian secret service chiefs for his extradition. Typically, the Iranians did not engage in diplomacy for the sake of results - any more than they do in the dialogue on their nuclear violations - but rather as a tactic for squeezing political or economic concessions, while buying time to keep going - in this case, with their policy on Al Qaida.
The Pentagon: Iran is behind deniable attacks against US and Israel
Ex-CIA officer Bruce Riedel, a top American expert on Al Qaeda, whom President Barack Obama often consults on Bin Laden's organization, Afghanistan and Pakistan, admitted recently: "What exactly is the level of Al-Qaida activity in Iran has always been a mystery. This has been a dark, black zone for us."
The US Department of Defense was more definite in its "Unclassified Report on Military Power of Iran" of April 2010, to Congress: "We assess with high confidence that over the last three decades, Iran has methodically cultivated a network of sponsored terrorist surrogates capable of conducting effective, plausibly deniable attacks against Israel and the United States."
The suspicion that Saif al-Adel was back at his old game was prompted by reports surfacing in early April of a deal struck last year by Tehran and Al Qaeda for the release of an Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Pakistan's tribal areas in 2008.
It was carried out in two stages. First, Iran freed Osama's daughter, Iman bin Laden, in December 2009. She was kept waiting at the Saudi Embassy in Tehran until March, before being allowed to be reunited with her mother and some of her brothers in Syria.
Then, on March 30, the Iranian press reported a heroic Iranian Special Operations Force had liberated the kidnapped diplomat held in Pakistan's Tribal Areas.
A few weeks later, a message from Mustafa Hamid - better known as Abu'l-Walid al-Masri the father-in-law of Saif al-Adel - appeared in an Iranian blog.
This was taken by Western counterterrorism officials as a signal that Iran had freed a batch of high-profile Al Qaeda operatives, including Saif al-Adel, in exchange for the Iranian diplomat. It was a straight trade; there never was an Iranian operation in Pakistan.
Whereabouts of The Fridge - a mini-nuke - is unkown
The same officials perked up again when shortly after this incident, small groups of jihadis were spotted on their way to Europe to set up attacks. They took it to mean that al-Adel, notorious for his high-speed reflexes, had hardly gained his freedom when he was again activating the Al Qaeda sleeper-networks under his exclusive control.
The Al Qaeda mastermind's freedom to resume his jihad against the West aroused another pressing concern.
According to intelligence reports, when al Adel arrived in Iran in December 2001, after Kandahar fell to the US-led NATO forces, he was described as having with him a nuclear device called "The Fridge" - a version of the infamous "suitcase nukes," whose existence Washington and Moscow have denied a thousand times.
The Fridge is essentially a mini-nuke with the explosive equivalent of 6 kilotons of TNT. Reports still persist that several Soviet-made "nuclear suitcases" did in fact reach the hands of Al Qaeda.
Would it still be operable after a decade or more? The experts say yes.
One Western nuclear source reckons they can survive for many years if wired to electrical power. They also have battery backup. If this runs low, the weapon's transmitter sends a coded alert to its owner.
The possibility can therefore not be ruled out that the Al Qaeda ace, now on the loose, may be plotting to hit the 2010 FIFA World Cup with a nuclear device or dirty bomb.
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May 21, 2010 Briefs
• Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel arrives in Israel with family Friday to celebrate son's Bar Mitzva at Western Wall. From Ben Gurion, he flew for the weekend to Eilat, from which he dropped in to Aqaba, Jordan.
• New Iran sanctions will not prevent Russia supplying Iran with advanced S-300 interceptors, says Russian lawmaker.
• US Congress overwhelming approves President Obama's $205 million request for developing Israel's Iron Dome anti-rocket system. It is designed to counter Hamas' Qassams, Hizballah's rockets against civilians.
• Israeli air force strikes three Gaza tunnels after Qassam fired Thursday night.
Troops shoot dead two Palestinian gunmen from Gaza. Israeli soldier hurt
21 May: A Palestinian sniper in the Gaza Strip injured an Israeli soldier Friday, May 21, shortly after a firefight with Palestinian gunmen who managed to cross into Israel from the southern Gaza border and advance some 100 meters into Israel while exchanging fire with troops of the Givati Brigade. The incident ended with two terrorists killed by tank fire, no Israeli casualties.
Hamas spokesman said the gunmen were sent on "an operation to attack Israel." Jihad Islami also claimed responsibility.
debkafile's military sources report a rising number of Palestinian infiltrations from the Gaza Strip in recent weeks, although they were never got as far as they did Friday. The Palestinian Hamas, Hizballah, Jihad Islami and al Qaeda-linked groups are believed to be bringing pressure on Israel's borders ahead of the countrywide homeland security exercise Turning-Point 4 beginning Sunday, May 23.
Hizballah's South Lebanon commander Nabil Qauq announced Friday his organization was on war preparedness and thousands of fighters were on their way to the Israeli border region.
Lifting US ban on Russia's S-300 sale to Iran blows hole in Israel's security
22 May: Israel's security suffered a major setback exercise from three Obama administration concessions, granted to buy Moscow's backing for a weak UN Security Council sanctions against Iran. It scrapped sanctions against the Russian state arms export agency and three other Russian entities that were penalized in the past for transferring sensitive technology or weapons to Iran. Also lifted were penalties against a fourth Russian entity for illicit arms sales to Syria, including technology for developing the very missiles against which Israel's five-day exercise is preparing the public next week.
May 23, 2010 Briefs
• Israeli ministerial panel approves "Gilead Shalit Bill" cancelling visits and other privileges for jailed Hamas terrorists. Hamas's Israeli captive has had no visits of any kind since he was kidnapped four years ago.
• US-born Imam Anwar al-Awlaki urges Muslims to kill US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and on their way there. On new videotape from his hiding place, he said was proud of protégé Nidan Hasan who murdered 13 US soldiers at Fort Hood.
• Taliban claims Sat. night attack on Kandahar Air Field, NATO's biggest base in S. Afghanistan.
Special NYPD protection for Fifth Ave. Salute Israel parade
The New York Police laid on exceptionally heavy measures to protect the annual Salute Israel parade on Fifth Avenue, New York, against terrorist attack. Sunday, May 23. debkafile's counter-terror sources report that all the entrances to Fifth Avenue between 55th and 83rd Streets were blocked by patrol cars and huge trucks packed with cement as counter-measures against car bombs, as around ten thousand marchers celebrated Israel's 62nd anniversary under a sea of waving blue and white flags.
Israel general: IDF can be ready to fight within hours
23 May: Three top US emissaries, Sen. John Kerry, Rahm Emanuel and Jeffrey Feltman, are in the Middle East to try and allay the war tensions as Lebanon and Syrian play up Israel's homeland missile defense exercise.
As the exercise began, OC Northern Command, Brig. Gady Eisenkott, said: "No party concerned has an interest in another showdown, but the IDF could be ready to fight within hours. [If confronted] Israel could take on both the Syrian-Lebanese front and Gaza."
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the weekly cabinet meeting that the drill is just routine, not the consequence of any unusual security event. Israel seeks calm, stability and peace, he stressed, adding: "It is no secret that we live in a region beset with rocket and missile threats."
The five-day exercise covering the whole country will test local and national authorities' responses to simultaneous missile and rocket attacks against civilian locations from Lebanon, Syria, Iran and the Gaza Strip.
Syria has placed its air force and air defense forces on high alert, while Hizballah has transferred thousands of its militiamen to South Lebanon and placed the border region on a war footing against a supposed Israeli attack.
May 24, 20101 Briefs
• Only 60 pc of all Israelis are equipped to withstand chemical attack, says Homeland Defense Chief Brig. Yair Golan on Day 2 of exercise.
• Iran notifies nuclear watchdog of uranium swap deal struck with Brazil and Turkey, but says deal is off if US imposes sanctions.
• Ahmadinejad says Israel's destruction is near.
• Egyptian intelligence minister Omar Suleiman in Israel, holds talks with Israel's Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv.
• Ex-PM Ehud Olmert is questioned for 8 hours by police Tuesday on bribes charges - for the first time as a private citizen.
Ankara threatens reprisals if Israel halts flotilla for Gaza
24 May. A secret message from Ankara to Jerusalem threatens reprisals if Israel impedes the Turkish-led "Freedom Flotilla" of nine vessels reaching Gaza Port for the avowed objects of breaking Israel's naval blockade on the Gaza Strip and delivering humanitarian aid. Israel has imposed a 20-nautical mile closure on the enclave, beefed up its naval forces and warned Turkey the convoy will be stopped before it reaches Gaza's shores.
It is backed by the unreported presence of a helicopter on one of the Turkish vessels for challenging Israeli Air Force support for the naval blockade.
The venture, on behalf of the Hamas-linked Turkish-based Humanitarian Aid Foundation is sponsored personally by Prime Minister Recep Erdogen.
In Gaza the UN Relief and Works Agency protested the vandalization by extremist Islamic groups of one of its 435 holiday camps for a quarter of a million Palestinian teens and children.
In the past month, the Hamas regime has sanctioned five executions - three last Tuesday in front of their families - and dumped their bodies in the Shifa hospital.
Tags: Gaza 
Israel Turkish flotilla
The Turkish government sent a secret message to Jerusalem Monday, May 24, threatening reprisals if the Israeli Navy prevents the "Freedom Flotilla" of nine boats from reaching the Gaza Strip on May 27 for the avowed objects of breaking Israel's blockade on the Hamas-ruled territory and delivering humanitarian aid. debkafile's military and intelligence sources report that the Turkish message was an ultimatum to Israel threatening retaliation against Israeli interests. It is backed by the unreported presence of one or more helicopters on one or more of the Turkish vessels for challenging Israeli Air Force support for the naval blockade.
Three boats set sail from Turkey Sunday, May 23, to rendezvous en route with vessels from the UK, Greece, Algeria, Ireland, Sweden and Kuwait carrying 750 assorted pro-Palestinian activists and $20 m worth of cement, medical equipment and schools supplies. The venture, on behalf of the Turkish-based Humanitarian Aid Foundation is sponsored personally by Prime Minister Recep Erdogen. This foundation is quietly sponsored by Turkish intelligence and all its operations, including the Gaza flotilla, the most ambitious yet for breaking the Israeli blockade on Gaza - drawn from the prime minister's office in Ankara .
Israel has imposed a 20-nautical mile closure on the Gaza coast and vowed to prevent the Turkish-led flotilla from entering port. A fleet of private Israeli vessels is on its way from the Herzliya marina to protest its arrival. They are flying banners protesting eight years of Gaza missile fire against Israel and photos of kidnapped soldier Sgt. Gilead Shalit, held for four years.
Our sources report Erdogan has approved a plan of action whereby when Israeli warships and naval commandoes board the vessels to prevent them reaching Gaza , the helicopter carrying the leading activists will take off, fly over their heads and land in Gaza . The assumption is that the Israeli Air Force will not dare to intercept the helicopter and bring it down while still offshore for fear of an international outcry against a purported humanitarian mission.
Jerusalem has not yet replied to the Turkish ultimatum. It is standing fast as yet - barring provocations or shooting from the convoy to gain media attention - by the decision to block the flotilla's entry to a Gazan port. The vessels will be diverted to an Israeli port, if necessary by Israeli naval units boarding them, and the people aboard detained at a special camp thrown up to house them.
The cargo will be unloaded and, if it contains no materials usable for Hamas' military effort against Israel , trucked to the Gaza Strip and handed over. Ankara is perfectly aware that Israel does not object to overland deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza . Its "Freedom Flotilla" is therefore aimed solely at breaking the blockade thrown up around the terrorist enclave by Israel and Egypt .
In Gaza the UN Relief and Works Agency protest the vandalization of one of its 435 holiday camps for a quarter of a million Palestinian teens and children.
In the past month, the Hamas regime has sanctioned five executions - three last Tuesday in front of their families - and dumped their bodies in the Shifa hospital.
May 24, 2010 Briefs
• Hizballah leader Nasrallah threatens to sink any vessel bound to or from Israel if its navy blockades Lebanon and its ports.
• North Korea cuts all relations with South amid war preparations.
• Gaza offensive against Ashkelon continues with two mortar shells on coastal farm-land after two missiles which fell short earlier Tuesday. No one hurt.
• Iron Dome in numbers planned is not an effective shield against short-range missiles-rocket attacks.Avi Dichter, chairman of Knesset subcommittee on security, said military systems must guarantee civilian populations against becoming a front line of attack.
• Australian opposition accused government of expelling Israeli diplomat to win Arab support for UN Security Council seat. He was expelled because Canberra accused Israel of faking Australian passports for Dubai hit against Hamas leader. Dep. opp. Leader Julie Bishop retorted: Australia forges passports too, and there is no hard proof against Israel.
North Korean army on war readiness
25 May: North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il ordered his military to prepare for all-out war after Barack Obama ordered the 28,000 US soldiers stationed in Korea to "work closely with the Republic of Korea to ensure readiness and deter future aggression."
Military observers in the Korean Peninsula and Japan were predicting limited skirmishes on land, sea and air or even that North Korea might go all the way to test-fire a nuclear warhead for the first time. Iran is closely following the crisis - especially China's reactions, which have disappointed Washington's hopes of a move to calm the dispute caused by the North Korean torpedo attack on a South Korean Chenan in March.
debkafile's military sources point to the Korean crisis's impact on current Middle East war tensions. North Korea and Iran have worked closely together in their clandestine nuclear weapons programs. The two rogue powers often pursue the same diplomatic tactics for fobbing off international pressures. For Syrian president Bashar Assad, the brazenly defiant Kim Jong-Il is a role model.
Above all, Pyongyang is the primary source of nuclear technology and sophisticated missiles for Iran and Syria.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis May 25, 2010, 10:42 AM (GMT+02:00)
Tags: Iran Korea war threat US
North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il ordered his military to prepare for all-out war after Barack Obama sent the US military to work with Seoul to prepare for future aggression and plan a joint submarine maneuver for the near future.
Tuesday, May 25, military observers in the Korean Peninsula and Japan were predicting limited skirmishes on land, sea and air. Some sources found North Korea capable of going all the way to test-firing a nuclear warhead for the first time.
Monday, May 24, President Barack Obama ordered the 28,000 US soldiers stationed in Korea to "work closely with the Republic of Korea to ensure readiness and deter future aggression." President Lee Myung-bak said Pyongyang must pay a price for the torpedo attack on a South Korean Chenan that killed 46 sailors in March. Officials accused Kim of personally ordering a submarine to sink the corvette.
Seoul also suspended inter-Korean trade, investment and non-humanitarian aid and banned North Korean merchant ships from passing South Korean waters.
Washington and Seoul have been hoping Beijing would step in to cool the crisis and avert a clash on China 's doorstep. But US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who attended the two-day annual US-Chinese conference in Beijing , failed to persuade Chinese President Hu Jintao to rein in the North Korean ruler and calm the crisis.
China is also reluctant to joint South Korean plans backed by the US and Japan to bring the issue before the UN Security Council for further sanctions against the North. Past penalties for its nuclear activities have already ravaged the North Korean economy.
debkafile's military sources point to the Korean crisis's grave repercussions for current Middle East war tensions. North Korea and Iran have worked closely together in the development of their clandestine nuclear weapons programs. The two rogue powers often pursue the same diplomatic tactics for fobbing off international pressures. For Syrian president Bashar Assad, the brazenly defiant Kim Jong-Il is a role model. Above all, Pyongyang is the primary source of nuclear technology and sophisticated missiles for Iran and Syria .
The plutonium reactor which the Israeli Air Force destroyed in September 2007 in northern Syria was made in North Korea and, according to debkafile's intelligence sources, North Korean nuclear scientists and technicians are back at work in the country.
While Israel regards the Korean conflict as remote, Tehran and Damascus are studying its every twist and turn and drawing lessons on the responses of the world powers for their own use. They are especially interested in China 's handling of this crisis as a pointer to whether or not it will veto the sanctions before the UN Security Council against Iran .
By and large, Beijing seeks to manipulate the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs as levers for reducing American influence in Asia and the Middle East alike. Therefore, a decision by Hu to go easy on Pyongyang in the current crisis may well be a good-news signal for Tehran .
May 26, 2010 Briefs
• Netanyahu is invited to meet Obama at White House next week.
• White House C-of-S Emanuel meets PM in Jerusalem Wednesday with the invitation.
• Netanyahu denounces Iran's uranium swap deal with Brazil and Turkey as a piece of trickery.
• Homeland defense exercise sirens are heard across Israel at 11 a.m.. It was the signal to run for cover in sheltered spaces. and test emergency, first aid and police responses to missile attack.
• Air Force attacked Hamas training base, Rafah airfield, two tunnels following concentrated missile-mortar attacks on Ashkelon Tuesday.
Syrian points 1,000 ballistic missiles, Hizballah 1,000 rockets at Israel
26 May: The colossal Syrian-Hizballah missile deployment funded by Iran points in only one direction: Israel. It is controlled from a joint Iran-Syria-Hizballah-Hamas command center established in March at Syrian GHQ in Damascus for coordinating attacks on Israeli military and civilian sites, including the Tel Aviv region's dense population.
Syria has smuggled most of its stock of liquid-fuel powered ballistic missiles over to Hizballah in Lebanon, while its own production lines have been working day and night for five months to upgrade its stock solid fuel-propelled missiles, so improving their accuracy. North Korean military engineers and technicians are employed on those production lines.
Tags: Hizballah Israel Syrian missiles
A colossal Iran-funded and directed armament program has enabled Syria to field 1,000 ballistic missiles and Hizballah 1,000 rockets - all pointed at specific Israeli military and civilian locations, including the densely populated conurbation around Tel Aviv, debkafile's military sources reveal. Syria has smuggled most of its stock of liquid-fuel powered ballistic missiles over to Hizballah in Lebanon , while its own production lines have been working day and night for five months to upgrade its stock solid fuel-propelled missiles, so improving their accuracy. North Korean military engineers and technicians are employed on those production lines.
According to Western military sources, a command center for coordinating a missile offensive against military and civilian targets in Israel has been operating at Syrian general staff headquarters in Damascus since early March with the help of Iranian, Syrian, Hizballah and Hamas liaison officers.
The command center, operating under direct Iranian command, was formally established at a gala banquet attended by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Damascus on February 25. Its primary mission was defined as "target unification" - military lingo for interaction at the command level to make sure that Tehran , Damascus , Beirut and Gaza do not send short-range missiles flying toward the same Israeli target at the same time.
Each of the four has been assigned one of four Israeli sectors and given specialist training in its features.
The new joint command gave Hizballah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah the confidence to sneer at Israel 's five-day, countrywide home front missile defense exercise, which ends Thursday, May 27.
In a speech on Tuesday, May 25, he said: ' Israel wants to reassure its people and make them feel strong and properly prepared to stand up to all possible war situations. But this assurance is false. So carry on with your drills," he said, "but when the rockets start falling on the occupied territories, we'll soon see how much good they are."
The command center's central strategy, say our military sources, is to eliminate the Israel Air Force's edge by releasing a simultaneous deluge of missiles and rockets from hundreds of stationary and mobile launching sites in remote parts of Syria, Lebanon, Iran and the Gaza Strip.
Most of the projectiles in the Syrian, Hizballah and Hamas arsenals are propelled by liquid fuel and therefore take 50 minutes to 1 hour to load and loose at assigned targets. During this time gap, they are vulnerable to air attack. As a bridging device, western intelligence sources believe the joint command in Damascus plans to attack Israel with synchronized missile fire from Iran and Syria during the time Israeli warplanes are hammering, say, Hizballah batteries in Lebanon.
The thinking in Tehran and Damascus is that the Israeli Air Force will find it hard to tackle three or four fronts simultaneously.
Tehran and Damascus are therefore building air shields around their missile bases and launching sites, for which purpose Assad asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to speed up the delivery of the advanced Russian Pantsir anti-aircraft missiles when the latter visited Damascus on May.
Medvedev promised to accede to this request.
debkafile's military sources recall that the same Russian Pantsir missiles were ineffective in preventing the September 2007 air strike, by which Israel destroyed the North Korean plutonium reactor financed by Tehran at Al-Azur in northern Syria .
May 27, 2010 Briefs
• Gazan Palestinians intensify missile-mortar attacks. Wednesday night, a Qassam explodes outside a kibbutz south of Ashkelon, two mortar rounds land near another kibbutz in Eshkol region, a third blows up over Gaza fence. No one hurt.
• South Korean Navy, Air Force launch major anti-submarine exercise off western coast. Obama announced earlier the US military would take part.
• Netanyahu sets off Thursday for Paris, Canada and a White House working session with Obama Tuesday. Before leaving, he orders Navy to prevent Turkish-led flotilla from anchoring in Gaza - politely without jeopardizing lives. Aid supplies aboard the 9 vessels to be requisitioned, inspected for terrorist materials and sent overland to the Gaza Strip. The pro-Palestinian activists aboard will be detained.
Syrian ballistic missiles on standby
27 May: As Israel's homeland defense exercise entered its fifth and last day Thursday, May 27, debkafile's military sources disclose that all Syrian military units were placed on combat standby with missile batteries ordered to take up firing positions and armed with new "target updates."
In Athens, it was announced that a joint Israeli-Greek air force exercise focusing on new in-flight refueling methods begins next Tuesday, June 1.
Western intelligence sources report that Wednesday night, long military convoys carrying mobile missiles were sighted rolling down Syrian highways - especial in the North.
In Athens, Greek military sources announced a joint Israeli-Greek naval and air force two-day exercise beginning next Tuesday, June 1, over the mainland and the Aegean and Ionian Seas. Exercise Minoas 2010 would serve Israeli Air Force F16s and F15s (five each) for drilling long-range flights covering roughly the same distance as between Israel and Iran and new in-flight refueling methods using Israeli KC-807 flying fuel tankers. Greece will deploy 15 F16s.
With all parties on the move, including the boosting of Lebanese army units on the Israeli border, the war tensions swirling around Israel's northern borders show no signs of early dissipation.
Tags: Israel-Greece Syrian missiles
The night before Israel's exercise for defending the home front against missile attack entered its fifth and last day on Thursday, May 27, the Syrian Chief of Staff placed all Syrian military units on standby, followed in the morning by a second directive for missile units to go on a war footing and take up firing positions. Reporting this, debkafile's military sources disclose that missile battery commanders were given "target updates," meaning new Israeli targets for attack.
Western intelligence sources report that Wednesday night, long military convoys carrying mobile missiles were sighted rolling down Syrian highways - especial in the North.
In Athens, Greek military sources announced a joint Israeli-Greek naval and air force two-day exercise beginning next Tuesday, June 1, over the mainland and the Aegean and Ionian Seas. Exercise Minoas 2010 would serve Israeli Air Force F16s and F15s (five each) for drilling long-range flights covering roughly the same distance as between Israel and Iran and new in-flight refueling methods using Israeli KC-807 flying fuel tankers. Greece will deploy 15 F16s.
With all parties on the move, including the boosting of Lebanese army units on the Israeli border, the war tensions swirling around Israel 's northern borders show no signs of early dissipation.
Two years ago, 100 Israeli Air Force bombers of different types covered the distance between Israel and Greece and back to demonstrate that Iran and its nuclear sites were within reach. Then, Athens permitted Israeli jets to practice strikes against the Greek Army's sophisticated S-300 interceptor missiles of the type Iran expects to procure from Russia .
The same drill may be repeated in the coming joint maneuver.
debkafile's military sources have learned that across the border the just-boosted Lebanese army units Wednesday afternoon practiced firing anti-air missiles and other weapons against Israeli warplanes near the village of Kuzah in southern Lebanon .
They also report that, back in March, Iran , Syria , Hizballah and Hamas prepared for the current war escalation by setting up a joint staff center for coordinating their missile and rocket attacks on Israeli military and civilian locations. The center which is staffed with liaison officers of the four participants was installed at Syrian Military General Headquarters in Damascus .
As debkafile reported May 26, a colossal Iran-funded and directed armament program has permitted Syria to field 1,000 ballistic missiles and Hizballah 1,000 rockets - all pointed at specific Israeli military and civilian locations, including the densely populated conurbation around Tel Aviv.
US nuclear sub in Strait of Hormuz
27 May: Western sources confirm Tehran's report that an Iranian naval patrol Thursday, May 27, detected a US nuclear submarine sailing through the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which most of the oil produced by Persian Gulf states passes on its way to world markets. Tehran placed its navy and air force on high alert.
The arrival of a US nuclear submarine in the Persian Gulf also ties in with rising Middle East war tensions. It confirms debkafile's May 20 report that President Obama had decided to boost US military strength in the region.
http://www.debka.com/article/8812/
DEBKAfile Special Report May 27, 2010, 7:45 PM (GMT+02:00)
Tags: Iran Strait of Hormuz US nuclear sub
Tehran reports that an Iranian naval patrol Thursday, May 27, detected a US nuclear submarine sailing through the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which most of the oil produced by Persian Gulf states passes on its way to world markets. debkafile's Iranian sources report Tehran has placed its navy and army on high alert.
Western intelligence and naval sources confirm that a nuclear-armed American submarine has in fact entered the Persian Gulf . This confirms debkafile's report of May 20 that the Obama administration had decided to boost US military strength in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf regions in the short term with an extra air and naval strike forces and 6,000 Marine and sea combatants. Carrier Strike Group 10, headed by the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, was due to sail out of the US Navy base at Norfolk , Virginia Friday, May 21.
On arrival, it was to raise the number of US carriers off Iranian shores to two.
Thursday's arrival of a US nuclear submarine also ties in with the currently rising military tensions along Israel 's borders with Syria and Lebanon .
Up until now, President Barack Obama kept just one aircraft carrier stationed off the coast of Iran , the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Arabian Sea, in pursuit of his policy of diplomatic engagement with Tehran .
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