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Russia Sails Past Sanctions

Moscow Outplays Washington on the Iranian Chess Board

Lieutnant-General Alexander Zelin

Moscow has made two seemingly unconnected moves on the Iranian chess board in ten days. On August 11, it announced the deployment of the powerful S-300 interceptor missiles in Abkhazia on the Black Sea and, the next day, set Aug. 21 as the date for loading the first delivery of Russian fuel in the Iranian nuclear reactor in Bushehr marking the onset of its physical launch.

Unclear about possible reactions, anonymous Russian sources tried backpedalling on the latter by putting out word that the announcement was premature and Iran's first nuclear reactor would not be activated before Sept. 26.
In the event, administration circles in Washington shrugged it off with the remark that Russia has set datelines in the past and nothing came of them. In the parlance of the region, Moscow is adept at selling the same carpet (activating Bushehr) over and over but the merchandise has never changed hands.

Moscow used the same tactics with regard to the S-300's deployment in Abkazia - first publicizing it over Russian media, then having "spokesman" backtracking by remarking the missile interceptors were put there two years ago. This flatly contradicted the Russian Air Force commander Gen. Alexander Zelin, who said the missiles had been installed in the last few days. "We have deployed the S-300 system on Abkhaz territory which, alongside other aircraft defense systems of the ground forces, will solve the problems of air defense of the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia," he said.
But Russia's exercise in obfuscation did not stop there.

So what's the fuss about?

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Moscow sources report that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's office recruited Abkhaz foreign minister, Maxim Gvinjia, to tell the BBC that Gen. Zelin's remark about the S-300s had been misinterpreted.

Adding to the confusion, Sergey Shamba, the breakaway region's prime minister, claimed the missiles were in Abkhazia - and had been there for about a year. US State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley also bolstered the Russian line by saying Washington had been informed of the missiles' deployment two years ago. "It is our understanding," he said, "that Russia has had S-300 missiles in Abkhazia for the last two years. We can't confirm whether they have added to them or not."

According to our sources, both the Russian and American statements on the S-300 interceptors are misleading and wide of the facts. Moscow never notified Washington it was going to install a new advanced system of S-300 missiles at the Gudauta base in Abkhazia on the Black Sea coast, surrounding it with other anti-aircraft batteries, some of which were also deployed in South Ossetia.

Nor did Moscow ever let Washington know that the new missiles were in service and fully integrated in the networks of Russia's Crimean Peninsula naval and air bases and the Russian Black Sea war fleet.

US commanders know better

The common assumption of US military commanders in the Black Sea and Mediterranean regions, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, is that the Russians emplaced their most sophisticated anti-air anti-missile weapon on Abkhazia's Black Sea coast to counteract US Sixth Fleet warships in the two seas and the two big American air bases near the Black Sea in Romania and Bulgaria - Mikhail Kogalniceanu Air Base near the city of Constanta, and Bezmer Bulgarian Air Base just 50 kilometers from the coast.

Strategic planners of US and Israeli Air Forces, whose air crews are training at these bases, have no doubt that Russia moved the S-300 into Abkhazia in order to seal a potential Israeli air corridor to Iran's northern nuclear installations over the Caucasus and Caspian Sea.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did in fact call the White House and asked for clarifications on the intelligence he had received that Moscow had finally determined to get the Bushehr plant finished after endless delays. He was told that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime MinisterVladimir Putin had assured Washington they would keep their promises to President Barak Obama not to activate the Bushehr reactor this year.

Those promises went by the board ten days later with Moscow's public announcement of the August 21 date for its activation.
By then, Israel's leaders - though not its intelligence chiefs - appeared to be too deeply mired in the scandals surrounding the IDF generals' battle for the post of next chief of staff to take much notice of the Russian moves. (See a separate item in this issue on the imploding Netanyahu government.)

Moscow goes back to justifying Tehran's nuclear ambitions

Seeing neither Washington nor Jerusalem connecting the dots or reacting to Moscow's two interconnected steps - even Medvedev's Abkhazia visit for a last check on the military set-up there ahead of the Bushehr inauguration went unnoticed - Putin gave the go-ahead for shipping the fuel to be loaded at the Bushehr reactor this coming Saturday.

Monday, Aug. 16, Moscow announced that Sergei Kirienko, a former Russian prime minister and current head of Rostom, the Russian state nuclear corporation, would arrive at Bushehr with Russian energy minister Sergei Shmatko on Friday, August 20, in time for the transport of Russian fuel to the Bushehr reactor the next day. The event is to be marked by a press conference held jointly by the head of the Iranian Nuclear Energy Committee Ali-Akhbar Salehi and his Russian guests.

Moscow also stressed its undertaking to supply the reactor with fuel for the next ten years - a warning to any would-be attackers that the Iranian project was now under Russian protection.
Russian and Iranian officials jointly emphasize the peaceful nature of the Bushehr reactor and underline its lack of military applications.

By these statements, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources note, Moscow has reverted to its former position that the West had never proved Iran's nuclear program was anything but peaceful and its military component was pure surmise.
Driving this point home, a Russian spokesman said: "A nuclear power plant just generates electricity. There are two dual-purpose elements – enrichment and spent fuel management. Both of these elements are taken out of Iran's responsibility, because we are going to supply the Bushehr power plant with nuclear fuel."

Tehran's unique nuclear logic

On the same Monday, the Iranian nuclear expert Mehdi Mohammadi placed his government's intentions, backed by Moscow, on the table when he said that, by enriching uranium at home, Iran would guarantee its access to fuel supplies from world markets.

"Experience has shown that if Iran fails to produce nuclear fuel inside its territory, international markets will not be open to it."

Even Russia's decision to ship fuel to Iran, he said, rests on its confidence that Iran is itself technically capable of producing fuel. He added, "We are confident that if enrichment in Iran comes to a standstill for whatever reason, the country's access to international markets will face serious problems. The Russians, who claim they are committed to supply fuel to the Bushehr reactor, will in the future refuse to do so or set illogical conditions."
Mohammadi brushed aside a diplomatic accommodation with the West when he maintained, "We realized that since we were incapable of enriching uranium to 20 percent level or did not want to do so at that time, the Western parties imagined that they could take advantage of the issue and make other requests such as the suspension of enrichment."

(Last year the Six-Power negotiations with Iran broke

down over Tehran's refusal to send low-enriched uranium for reprocessing abroad.)

The Iranian expert concluded that the higher the enrichment level Iran is capable of attaining, the more nuclear cooperation it can expect from Russia and the other nuclear nations, like China and India.

Russia bids to supplant America in lead role on Iran

Putin's green light Monday for the final steps for bringing the Bushehr reactor on stream drew congratulations from Tehran - although they were typically grudging.

In fact, Salehi's remarked Tuesday, August 17, that while Iran is grateful to Russia for commissioning the Bushehr nuclear power plant, "the Russians, for their part, should thank us because the launching… provides them with a good opportunity to show the world their capabilities and even enhance them."

Moscow took these half-hearted congratulations in good spirit because the Iranian nuclear chief had a point - or, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly's analysts find, five net gains from its "favors" to Tehran:

1. By concluding its outstanding Bushehr business with Tehran, Moscow aims to ride into position for supplanting the Obama administration in its lead role on the Iranian nuclear issue. In the next round of talks between the P5+1 forum (US, Russia, the UK, France, China and Germany), Moscow will not sit alongside the United States but move to the Iranian side of the table, so weakening the US-led forum.
(The talks were supposed to resume next month but Wednesday, Aug. 18, spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stipulated that America must first lift sanctions.)

2. Moscow is rounding off the circle President Medvedev started drawing on July 12, when he advised a group of Russian diplomats to eschew "simplistic approaches" on the Iranian nuclear problem because, he explained, possession of nuclear weapons does not violate any international charters including the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to which Tehran is a signatory; it only prohibits their distribution to other countries or parties.
Moscow's move was not challenged by Washington, which uttered no word of protest or applied any sort of pressure on the Kremlin to reconsider.

Russian S-300 interceptors defend Iran - from outside its borders

3. The Russian deployment of S-300 in Abkhazia told Washington that Moscow is keeping faith with the Medvedev-Putin commitment to Obama not to let Iran have this sophisticated anti-air missile. Instead, they are deployed in an outer protective ring around Iran against sites from which Moscow perceives US or Israel is preparing to strike the Islamic Republic.

Moscow suspected such preparations were afoot last month by Israel from US air bases in Romania and Bulgaria - hence the Abkhazia deployment.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly adds: This pattern was repeated in Azerbaijan, hitherto within the American and Israeli military and intelligence sphere of influence. In July, Rosobornexport, which handles Russian armament exports, quietly informed Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that S-300 missiles would be made available to his country.
This transaction, valued at around $300 million, is the costliest one-time weapons purchase by a former Soviet Republic. Even if Moscow tries to deny the sale, ruling and military circles in Baku are treating it as a done deal.
4. By commissioning the Bushehr reactor, Moscow seeks to undermine faith in the Persian Gulf region, especially in Saudi Arabia, in the Obama administration's promises not to let Iran acquire a nuclear bomb. Their trust that at the end of the day, Israel would take military action to abort a nuclear-armed Iran was also badly dented this week by Israel's failure to utter a word against Russia's launching of the plant.

5. The efforts Russia, along with China, India and Turkey, have invested in recent weeks to blunt the impact of US and European sanctions on Iran have made good headway.

Not only are the penalties failing to achieve the goal formulated by President Obama of halting the Iran's military nuclear program, but that program is steadily gaining momentum.

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US Plan of Attack for Iran

Targeted Is Iran's Ahwaz Military Infrastructure Which Guards Bushehr

Click on the image to get full-size map!

http://www.debka.com/dynmedia/photos/2010/08/19/src/2.jpg

The exclusive DEBKA-Net-Weekly map attached to this article is the first publication of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff's targeting plan for striking the military infrastructure guarding Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr and its oil region.

On August 1, Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said the United States had a military plan for attacking Iran. He told several interviewers, "I think the military options have been on the table and remain on the table. It's one of the options that the president has. Again, I hope we don't get to that, but it's an important option and it's one that's well understood."
A Revolutionary Guards spokesman responded Thursday, Aug. 19, with a threat of their own: If American attacks Iran, he said, we will strike the enemy anywhere in the world.
The map presented here indicates the targets selected by the US military around the city of Ahwaz, capital of the largely Arab-speaking, restive Khuzestan province in southwest Iran, where most of the country's oilfields are concentrated and the Bushehr nuclear plant located.

Our mapmakers have marked as US targets many of the military facilities and logistics centers assigned to the Iranian forces defending the reactor from air and missile attack, marine raiders coming in from the Persian Gulf, or special forces infiltrating the sensitive region from the Gulf or by helicopter.
Any such US attack would set back Iran's nuclear program and take down the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) defenses for its oilfields.

The key to the map is provided here by number:

1. The Ahwaz steel plant in the suburbs turns out metals for the centrifuges operating in Iran's uranium enrichment plants. Experiments are underway for improving the metals' quality for increasing spin velocity at higher temperatures.

2. IRGC Ahwaz Headquarters, which is responsible for Khuzestan regional security, including Bushehr.

3. IRGC Ahwaz Armored Forces HQ - until 2000, the Guards General Staff Headquarters in the province.

4. The Somiyah military base for the IRGC Brigade responsible for tribal areas in the remote province of Boyir Ahmadi and Kohkiluye. These fairly isolated tribes are monarchist, remaining loyal to the shah and adamantly opposed to the revolutionary regime in Tehran. Western and Persian Gulf intelligence agencies find willing collaborators in this region.

5. A secret IRGC facility, marked only by a code, is the address of frequent comings and goings by military personnel. Its purpose remains a mystery although there is speculation that its location at the foot of a mountain points to its use as a storage site for radioactive materials.

6. The 92nd Armored Corps of Ahwaz's ammunition depots.

7. The Emam Reza Military Hospital which belongs to the IRGC medical branch. It is a modern and well-equipped hospital built with thick, bomb-proof concrete walls. This facility has several field hospital units which can be rapidly deployed.

8. The Command HQ of the 92^nd Armored Division and its 1^st Brigade.

9. The Habib-Allahi military base (named for a martyr) for combat training.

10. IRGC training school for foreign volunteers, used for recruits to Iraqi Shiite terror organizations, such as Jeish A-Shaabi, Lebanese Hizballah fighters and Palestinian terrorists. Its name is unknown.

11. Ahwaz 92^nd Division commando companies, which operate independently under their own command and are better known as "independent companies." This site is also used by elements of the division's 2^ndArmored Brigade.

12. IRGC 92^nd Armored Division's 3^rd Armored Brigade.

13. The IRGC's Isfahan Artillery Brigade.

14. Fuel depots which serve IRGC and Iranian security forces in and around Ahwaz City. They are located midway between Ahwaz and Andimeshk.

15. The Zargan power station for the military camps in the region which runs on gas.

16. The Ramin power station in the Sheyban-Molla Thani region near the Ahwaz-Masjed Soleyman highway.

17. The old Ahwaz industrial zone, home to several important steel and aluminum plants supplying Iran's military industry and an oxygen plant for smelting and other smaller factories.

18. A yacht and speedboat marina, recently renovated, for the private use of Revolutionary Guards commanders based in the region.

19. Ahwaz airport for mostly local traffic.

20. A light aircraft airport for ferrying farm produce..

21. A 500-meter-wide canal, which links the Karun River to the Majnoun islands in Iraq. Huge barges stand by there in case of an emergency calling for troops to be moved quickly inside the Khuzestan province.

22. A missile-anti-aircraft gun cluster for defending Ahwaz and its environs.

http://www.debka.com/article/8984/

Secret US-Russian sanctions vs Bushehr deal tied Israel's hands
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis August 21, 2010, 6:11 PM (GMT+02:00)

Tags: Iran nuclear Israel US

Only photo allowed of Bushehr start-up

The Obama administration and Netanyahu government greeted the start-up of Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr with extraordinary meekness, given the grim military and strategic hazards it represents for the region and Israel in particular. Yet nary a squeak of protest came from Washington or Jerusalem when Russian technicians began loading 162 rods of 82 tons of fuel into Iran's nuclear reactor - a process that will take two weeks - Saturday, Aug. 21 - notwithstanding US-led sanctions, Israel's military preparations and international diplomatic posturing.
The State Department said Saturday after the event that Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant has "no proliferation threat" - a statement that was completely beside the point. debkafile reveals that both the Kremlin and the State Department have joined in concealing the secret deal whereby Russia votes for UN Security Council sanctions against Iran in return for US silent acquiescent to Moscow's activation of the Bushehr reactor.

The price the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government paid was prohibitive: Vladimir Putin was allowed to jump the Iranian nuclear drive miles forward toward a capacity for producing weapons-grade plutonium. (Moscow claims the rods will be returned, but Iran's capacity for deception and concealment in the entire last decide s well documented.)

Both Obama and Netanyahu had been beguiled into trusting that President Dmitry Medvedev's tougher line on Iran would prevail in the Kremlin. But Medvedev was nowhere to be seen last Monday, Aug. 15 when Putin took the risk of ceremonially assigned Sergei Kirienko, head of Rosatom, with shipping fuel to Bushehr within a week and getting the reactor on stream, after years of delays.
The Russian leader got away with showing the Muslim world the worth of Moscow's backing - upstaging the side show put on in Washington the day before when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the onset of direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on Sept. 2 - a process which the greenest of Middle East pundits appreciates as having nowhere to go.
The Netanyahu government was supposed to have all its worries swept away by the US assurance that the Iran threat is not imminent but eleven months away, as the New York Times reported Friday, Aug. 20. The next day the London Telegraph mocked this assertion by explaining that US officials were really saying that "the process of converting nuclear material into a weapon that worked would take at least 12 months" - a prospect hardly likely to ease Israel's concerns.

Omitting any comment on the Bushehr reactor, Prime Minister Netanyahu stated that Israel's security would be paramount in a deal with the Palestinians. He issued a list of stipulations, such as the demilitarization of territory handed to the Palestinians - only side arms for police; Israel would retain control of the Jordan Rift Valley bordering the Kingdom of Jordan and the mountain ridges forming the spine of the West Bank, they key to defending Jerusalem and Israel's coastal plain.
Many will recall the prime minister's solemn reiterations that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose an existential threat to Israel and noticed how fast they have faded.
His "security pledges" regarding a future Palestinian state on the West Bank should therefore be taken with a hefty grain of salt. Indeed, according to debkafile's Washington sources, the prime minister may already be listening to a US proposal to assign the policing of the Jordan Valley and West Bank mountain peaks to NATO troops, most of them American.

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Direct Israel-Palestinian talks

Obama May Personally Launch the Dialogue from Cairo

Martha and Barack Obama

President Barack Obama may travel to the Middle East in September to lead a grand ceremony in Cairo for launching direct Israel-Palestinian talks. If he does, he may also spend 36 or 48 hours in Israel - so rebuffing complaints that since taking office he has visited Arab states during Middle East trips, but pointedly skipped Israel.
A decision will be taken, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Washington sources, after the president consults with his advisers during his 10-day summer vacation at Martha's Vineyard for which he left Washington Wednesday, August 18.
The first family is to be joined there by counterterrorism executive John Brennan, National Security Council chief of staff Denis McDonough and senior advisers Valerie Jarrett and Pete Rouse.
An alternative plan is to send Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to inaugurate the peace conference in his stead.
The argument for Obama making the trip is that a visit to the region and Israel would give Democrats facing election in November a leg up and offset some of the damage caused by the president's comment in favor of a mosque and Islamic center going up near Ground Zero in New York - from which popular ire forced him to partly backtrack.
Obama would also like to use his opening of direct Israel-Palestinian talks as the occasion for addressing broader issues, such as the end of the US combat mission in Iraq and Iran.

Why venture into a minefield?

But five obstacles must first be considered and dealt with:

1. Some of his advisers judge the time and place for an Obama speech inappropriate. An upsurge of terrorist operations is forecast by intelligence to strike Iraq in the aftermath of the US withdrawal. It could well be magnified to overshadow the president's appearance in the region, shout down his Cairo address and give his political foes extra fodder.

2. Peace efforts involving the Palestinians have historically drawn its opponents into horrifying terrorist acts. This time, Iran and its affiliates, the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, would pitch in to ruin the effort by inflaming border tensions

3. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas are not too happy about Obama or Clinton making a speech for kicking off their talks. Both are worried, especially Netanyahu, that the US president would depart from any agreed script and introduce views they do not accept on such intractable issues as Jerusalem, permanent borders and the Palestinian state.

The launch of direct talks is no breakthrough to anything

4. Some of Obama's White House advisers say the launching of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks is no big deal - certainly not big enough or novel enough to rate a presidential appearance - or even that of a secretary of state. The scales are weighted heavily against their success, say these advisers. and, in any case, contrary to much propaganda, their relevance to major Middle East events is marginal and does not rate a dramatic intervention by the US president.
The possible transition from proxy talks to direct negotiations does not impress former US Middle East adviser Aaron David Miller either. He said Wednesday, August 18: "It would be a mistake of epic proportions to conclude that we've now reached a fundamental turning point that is going to produce quick or easy progress, let alone results." President Obama would do better to "park" the issue until after November mid-term congressional elections, rather than risk "another fight with the Israelis," Miller said.

Moscow stands in the way

5. In the last 48 hours, the Russians have put in their oar on Middle East peacemaking and, like on the Iranian nuclear issue, insist on getting their views across. They have made it clear that they would veto Middle East Quartet (the US, the EU, Russia and the UN) support for an Obama speech unless it incorporated the Arab demands for Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines, dismantle all its settlements and continue the construction freeze on the West Bank and in Jerusalem beyond September 25.
US officials tried hard to explain that if the US supported these demands in advance, the Israelis would back out and there would be no negotiations. But the Russians were not listening.

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Israel's Generals Prey to Intrigue

Netanyahu Struggles to Keep His Government from Breaking up

Ehud Barak and Gabi Ashkenazi

Benjamin Netanyahu's government coalition may be heading for a breakup just eighteen months since he took office - and not only over a policy or other foul-up, but because it was hit by a loose cannon which came out of the blue.
At least one Israeli government has sunk under the political and emotional weight of security scandals. The most notorious occurred in the 1960s, when governments led by the larger-than-life founders of Israel David Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett and Levi Eshkol were swept away by what became known as the Lavon Affair (named for the officiating Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon).
An Israeli undercover operation in Cairo turned bad and the Egyptian security authorities rounded up a number of Israeli military intelligence agents and Egyptian Jews who belonged to an Israeli spy ring. Some were executed, others given long prison sentences.
Those governments did not fall over this fiasco but were crushed by the intrigue and false recriminations which tore the ruling Mapai (Labor) party apart. One faction of politicians and intelligence officers forged documents to incriminate their rivals in the misfortune.
To this day, half a century later, it is not known who ordered the disastrous Cairo operation. But the infighting fragmented the party irrevocably and paved the way to Mapai's fall from power and the rise of the opposition Likud. Since then, government in Jerusalem has swung between the two camps.
The prime minister whose government may be on the skids today is Likud's Netanyahu.

Routine jockeying turns ugly

What happened was that some fairly routine jockeying by a small group of generals for the top post of chief of staff after Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi ends his tour of duty early next year was hit by a wild card called the Galant Document. It was named for a leading contender, GOC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant and is said to outline in detail a campaign for bringing Galant the desired job, raising his loyalists to plum positions and smearing his rivals.
The document itself has never been released. Aside from establishing that the logo belonging to a PR firm was forged, its content appears to vary depending on where its copies turned up.
One reposed in the chief of staff's drawer for weeks without him taking any action. This week, he handed it to the police who have been called in to the get to the bottom of the mystery.
Ten days after the document first appeared, it is beginning to look as though its author may never be discovered - a feature shared with the Lavon Affair.
Another shared feature is the widening circle of officers, active and reserve, political wheeler-dealers, journalists, media figures, politicians and publicists drawn relentlessly into the scandal.
Theories as to the author's motives vary from hour to hour. Was the document drummed up by the Galant campaign to boost his chances or by his rivals to discredit him? How many hands tampered with how many copies?

Netanyahu lays a safety net under his rule

Until Wednesday, Aug. 18, Netanyahu kept his feet out of this murky pond. But as more revelations unfolded, people started asking why the prime minister was not getting a grip and halting the rot of intrigue and acrimony taking hold of the military and defense establishments - especially at a time that Israel may well have to prepare for its most crucial war against Iran.
As the political fallout and sense of drift gained, the prime minister summoned the defense minister and chief of staff and told them to put an end to the preoccupation with the Galant document affair and get back to concerted work for national security.
This intervention was not masterful enough to have much effect.
But on the quiet, Netanyahu has taken three steps to spread a safety net under his government in case his coalition breaks up, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports:

1. He is talking secretly to opposition Kadima leader Tzipi Livni to persuade her to join his government.

2. He is keeping his distance from his erstwhile senior partner, the Labor leader and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, whom he has begun referring to in private as "someone who has become a burden."

3. Because he would like to be rid of Barak and not lose Barak's party, Netanyahu and Livni are trying to organize a Labor revolt to oust the defense minister as its chairman.

4. This step was revealed Thursday night, Aug. 19 just before we closed this issue: The attorney general and police commissioner received strict instructions to release an interim report on their probe stating that no member of the general staff, the IDF or the defense ministry was found to be involved in producing or circulating the Galant Document.

The Attorney General accordingly gave the defense minister the red light to go back to the process of choosing the next chief of staff which was held in abeyance until the end of the inquiry.
The police were told to continue their inquiry until the author of the poisonous document, now proved to be a forgery, is identified.
If this proves to be a cover-up, which the free-and-easy Israeli media will soon discover, the crisis will rumble on after Chapter One was closed Thursday night.
For now, public confidence in the high Israeli command and the prime minister as a firm leader with a steady hand in national affairs has been seriously damaged.
Historically speaking, Israel takes many wasted years to recover from a malaise such as the one generated by the Galant Document.

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The Lebanese Spy Who Told All

Israel Could Have Pierced Assad's and Nasrallah's Personal Security

Bashar Assad and Hassan Nasrallah

Both Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah have always assumed they were targeted for assassination - especially by Israel - and tirelessly concocted the most ingenious and convoluted methods for baffling their enemies.
The extreme measures Assad takes to stay alive are the stuff of legend in the Middle East, especially since Israeli Air Force jets were undetected by Russian Pantsir-S1 (Nato-named SA-22 Greyhound) interceptors and Syrian radar three years ago when they struck the North Korean-built plutonium reactor in northern Syria and Israeli Special Forces were dropped by helicopter to blow up other Syrian nuclear facilities.
Ever since then, the Syrian president never leaves Point A for Point B without first laying down an elaborate net of diversionary measures, including decoy road convoys and flights heading in multiple directions.
The Hizballah chief moved into his top-secret bunker four years ago after his war with Israel ended in a ceasefire and has lived there ever since. His underground lair was custom-built for him by Iranian Revolutionary Guards as his home and place of business.
All his public appearances are video-taped, their theatricality in sharp contrast to his furtive underground existence. One of his rare public appearances in the flesh pccurred on May 25 this year when he was summoned to a summit meeting in front of cameras in Damascus by his bosses, the presidents of Iran and Syria.

Obsession with personal security

Nasrallah no doubt steals out of his burrow from time to time, passing through one of the secret tunnels going in different directions to openings inside buildings. He too practices diversionary tactics and swears to secrecy any persons he plans to meet. Sometimes, he stands up VIPs with whom he has appointments - politicians or military officers of his own Hizballah. They may be kept waiting for hours without a word until they realize he is not coming.
So jealous is the Hizballah chief of his security that, three months ago, he declined an invitation by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to pay a historic visit to Ankara as a guest of state. He decided to forego this signal honor after judging the various options for his security to be less than foolproof.
The Hizballah leader's obsession with security has always attributed to his conviction that the Israelis were after his head and if they got the chance they would finish him off - by means of an assassin, a bomb or a missile fired from an unmanned aircraft.
In early August, Assad and Nasrallah were shocked to learn that all their precautions against an Israeli attack were wasted effort because Israel's undercover agencies had been receiving running accounts of those measures and could have hit either leader at any time.
The inordinate and bewildering security with which both surround themselves would have delayed word of their deaths reaching their aides for many hours.

Security executive betrays secrets to Israel

Those running accounts were delivered to Israeli intelligence by no less an insider than Fayez Karam, 62, the person closest to Nasrallah's ally, the pro-Syrian, anti-West Michel Aoun, head of the Lebanese Christian Free Patriotic Movement (FPM).
Since his arrest by the Lebanese authorities on August 19, Karam, a former director of the Lebanese army's anti-terror and counter-espionage unit, has made a clean breast of exactly how he relayed all this information and more to his Israeli handlers. Currently the owner of a dry-cleaning business in France, Karam sat quietly in a Beirut court and showed no signs of nervousness.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report that the volume of secret knowledge in Karam's head is formidable. For the last six months, he coordinated and participated in the five secret meetings his boss, Michel Aoun, and Hassan Nasrallah held in the latter's underground lair. He performed the same task for Aoun and Nasrallah when they twice met President Assad secretly in Damascus.
If anyone was privy to the elaborate security practices of Nasrallah and Assad, it was Fayez Karam.
His arrest on suspicion of spying for Israel was therefore a shocker for Lebanon, leaving many at sea over how far Israel had reached into the top of the ruling pyramids of the Syrian regime and Hizballah.
Interestingly, Aoun is a recent convert to a pro-Syrian pro-Hizballah orientation.
In fact, he spent decades in France as an exile from Syrian-occupied Lebanon, forced to leave the country at the end of Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war when Syria overpowered its tiny neighbor. The Christian leader only returned home in 2005, a month after Syria was forced to pull its army out of Lebanon and end its 29-year domination.

Too many cell phone calls gave Fayez Karam away

Yet, three years later, in 2008, this erstwhile enemy of the Assad regime jumped sides, entering into a controversial alliance with Hizballah and its Iranian and Syrian sponsors. His visits to Damascus and Tehran have stirred outrage in Beirut.
As for the arrested spy Fayez Karam, he never left Aoun's side through every change of allegiance.
In 1990, he was arrested by Syrian troops occupying Lebanon and spent five months in the notorious Syrian Mazzeh jail. After his release, he crossed into Israel through South Lebanon which Israeli troops held at the time as a buffer against attack. From there, he went to France and started a dry-cleaning business there.
It is not known exactly when karam first began spying for Israel. He may have started a decade ago to get back at Damascus for his harsh treatment at Mazzeh prison.
Lebanese intelligence sources which took part in his interrogation say that his modus operandi was very simple. Under cover of his business, he traveled to Paris every three months, joined up with his Israel handlers and handed over the latest crop of information he collected.
When data needed to be passed urgently, he would call his controllers through at least three cell phones with European numbers and set up a rendezvous in France.
It was this large number of European phone numbers called by Karam which alerted Lebanese military intelligence, say Lebanese sources, and led them to put him under surveillance.
Syrian intelligence and Hizballah security have appointed special teams for a joint effort to pin down all the information Karam passed to Israel, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report. Their probes focus on the meetings President Assad and Hassan Nasrallah held in recent years with Michel Aoun and the people close to him.
This week, Iranian intelligence officers stationed in Damascus and Beirut joined the investigation.

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HOT POINTS

A Digest of DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock Exclusives in the Week Ending August 19, 2010

Russia posts S-300 air defense missiles in Abkhazia

12 Aug. US and Israeli military sources told DEBKA Thursday, Aug. 12, that Russia had posted its advanced S-300 interceptor batteries in Abkhazia and air defense weapons in South Ossetia on the northern shore of the Black Sea - not against Georgia, as Moscow officially maintained, but rather as a move in the rising military tension over Iran.
Israel's helicopter exercise last month in Romania had alerted Moscow to the possibility of US or Israeli warplanes taking off from those bases to strike Iran's nuclear facilities over the Black and Caspian Sea skies. Russian deployed its interceptors to block this route.

August 13, 2010 Briefs
• Turkey accused of using chemical weapons against Kurdish PKK - Der Spiegel.
• German court releases on bail Israeli "Uri Brotsky" accused of passport forgery for Dubai killing. Extradited from Poland, he was allowed to fly to Israel.
• Two British servicemen killed in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
• Moscow: S-300 interceptor deployment in Abkhazia is not contrary to any international accords Russia has signed.
• Four African migrants shot dead in Sinai in gun battle with Bedouin traffickers demanding more money to take them to Israel. The traffickers had tied up 300 illegal migrants, but several escaped and grabbed weapons. Egyptian sources say 200, fled, 100 were captured and two shot dead. Some 20,000 illegal job-seekers manage to sneak into Israel each month.

Flap in Jerusalem over Aug. 21 activation of Iran's first reactor

14 Aug. Sudden word from Moscow and Tehran on Aug. 11 that Russia will activate Iran's first nuclear power reactor on Aug. 21 by loading the fuel has caused a major flap in Israel in view of its military aspects. DEBKA reports: Only last week, Russian leaders assured Washington that it would not go on line this year.
Former Bush adviser John Bolton commented that once the rods are in, Israel can no longer attack this reactor because of spreading radiation. Jerusalem is also worried by the news that Russia has stationed S-300 anti-missile batteries in Abkhazia on the Black Sea because it ties in with the imminent activation of the Bushehr reactor. It is taken as a signal that Israel's air route to Iran is hereby closed and Moscow will do its utmost to thwart an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.
According to debkafile's military sources, the Bushehr reactor billed as a peaceful project is in fact integral to Iran's military program because the fuel rods powering it can also produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Azerbaijan releases to Iran Israeli embassy, radar station bomb plotters

14 Aug. Israel was taken by surprise by the Azerbaijan government's release of two Lebanese Hizballah terrorists and an Iranian citizen from prison sentences for plotting attacks in Feb. 2009 on the Israeli embassy in Baku and a key early warning radar station guarding against Iranian missile fire.
debkafile's counter-terror sources report that Israel, which has extensive and strategically important ties with Azerbaijan, is dealing discreetly with a setback as potentially damaging as the breach with Turkey.
The two Hizballah operatives were sentenced to 15 years for plotting to blow up the Israeli embassy and the Daryal radar station, which is situated on the northeastern Azerbiajan mountaintop of Gabala for tracking missile and satellite activity inside Iran.
The attacks were scheduled for February 2009, on the anniversary of the death of the organization's commander in chief Imad Moughniyeh.

August 16, 2010 Briefs
• A Palestinian terrorist shot dead by IDF force while attaching bomb to Gaza border fence opposite Kibbutz Nirim. One Israel soldier slightly hurt by sniper fire from Gaza.
Two Qassam missiles then fired from Gaza, exploding on Eshkol farmland.
• Russian nuclear chief and energy minister to visit Iran's first nuclear reactor in Bushehr Friday. Russian fuel to be loaded in reactor Saturday under Moscow's 10-year supply pledge.
• Netanyahu pays official visit to Greece Monday. On July 10, debkafile reported Greece replacing Turkey as key Israeli strategic partner.
• US-French accord for UNIFIL to serve another six months in Lebanon.
• Large 11-day maneuver begins with 50,000 South Korean, 30,000 US troops taking part.

Putin pushes ahead with fueling up Iran's reactor Saturday

16 Aug. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin decided it was safe to go ahead and load Iran's first nuclear reactor with fuel on Aug. 21 - effectively making it active - after the US and Israel did not seem troubled by the prospect of the reactor going on stream, debkafile reports. Either the two governments had been caught flatfooted, he figured, or come to terms with Iran's capacity to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
Iran is to build 10 more uranium enrichment plants in fortified mountain caves.
Russian and Iranian officials are bending over backwards to assure the world that Bushehr is a harmless and peaceful project for manufacturing electricity, whereas, as debkafile has previously reported and American experts stressed Monday: "Once fueled and operational, Bushehr will produce plutonium 239 which can be used to make nuclear weapons."
They also confirmed the warning by former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton (that once the fuel is loaded, Bushehr will be immune from attack because of the risk of spreading radiation) by repeating: "…once it has gone critical, any attempt to do so (attack the reactor) would risk the release of a radioactive plume that might kill civilians and poison surrounding areas."
Bolton gave Israel and the US less than a week - that is until Aug. 21 - to put the reactor out of commission before it was too late.

Bomb kills Iran's military drone program chief

16 Aug. On Aug. 1, Reza Baruni, the father of Iran's military UAV program, died in a mighty explosion that destroyed his closely secured villa, debkafile' reports. He lived in the high-scale neighborhood secluded for high Iranian officials in the southern town of Ahwaz in oil-rich Khuzestan.
Very few people in the country outside the top leaders and air force knew about his job and so his death was not generally appreciated as fatally stalling Iran's military drone program for many years.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence source report that bombs were planted in at least three corners of the building and expertly rigged to explode simultaneously and bring the ceilings crashing down on its occupants. The bomber must therefore have had access to the Baruni home.
The authorities tended to fix the blame on underground organizations representing the local Arab-speaking Ahwazis' fight for self-rule against the repressive regime. Some suspect certain Gulf Arab emirates' intelligence services commissioned the Baruni murder.

August 17, 2010 Briefs
• Suicide bomber kills at least 60 people, wounds 119 at Iraqi army recruitment center in downtown Baghdad Tuesday.
• Three US soldiers killed in bomb attacks Afghanistan.
• Two Israeli soldiers patrolling border injured in mortar attack from S. Gaza.

Iranian fighter downed near Bushehr, drones slam into reactor

17 Aug. Two mysterious incidents are reported by debkafile in the run-up to the fueling-up of Iran's first nuclear reactor Saturday, Aug. 21. Tuesday, Aug. 17, an Iranian F4 Phantom fighter jet was claimed by Tehran to have crashed 6 kilometers north of the Bushehr nuclear reactor in southern Iran. debkafile's military sources report it was shot down by Russian-made TOR-M1 air-missile defense batteries guarding the reactor. On Aug.1, three unidentified drones slammed into reactor drone, killing five people.
Our sources ask: How did the Phantom penetrate to a distance of 6 kilometers from the reactor when its skies up to a 20-kilometer radius are a no-fly zone?
All the Bushehr defensive systems have been on the highest alert since a previous incident first revealed on Aug. 6 by DEBKA-Net-Weekly 456:.
On Aug. 1, three unidentified UAVs slammed into the reactor buildings, scaring the townspeople who were sure the plant was under American or Israeli attack.
After the heads of government in Tehran put their heads together to try and identify the drones, without success, the defense ministry emerged with a communiqué reporting that a single drone had crashed on the nuclear reactor's dome, but insisted it was launched by Iran's Revolutionary Guards to test the alertness of the air defense personnel guarding it and the effectiveness of its anti-air radar system.

August 18, 2010 Briefs
• Three Gaza targets bombed by Israeli Air Force Tuesday night.
• During the day, two Israeli soldiers patrolling border injured in mortar attack from S. Gaza.
• Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv turned over to Israeli authorities Palestinian man who broke into building and tried to take hostages.
• Netanyahu: Israel does not accept pre-conditions for direct talks with Palestinians.

Unfolding revelations rock top IDF brass, hang over defense minister

18 Aug. The "Galant document" expose started out last month as a shabby ruse trumped up, or forged, to sway defense minister Ehud Barak in his choice of the next chief of staff. It has ballooned into a major scandal sweeping up Israel's top generals and hanging over the defense minister's head and edging close to the Netanyahu government.
Tuesday, Aug. 17, Chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi told police investigators he had received the document weeks ago and not reported it. However he explains his inaction, Gen. Ashkenazi cannot come out of this affair looking good. As army chief, he is in no position to pass the buck and name the culprit or culprits. He will have to explain why he failed to stop matters getting out of hand on his watch. So too will Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
The media will also take flak for taking sides in the contest among the generals and other interested parties. They will be accused of biased reporting to puff up the story, thereby exacerbating rivalries and dissent within the IDF and defense establishment and blowing them out of proportion - and out of control

US ends Iraq war, two civil conflicts on the boil

19 Aug. The crossing of the US 4th Stryker Brigade and 2nd Infantry Division from Iraq into Kuwait Thursday morning, Aug. 19, ended America's combat involvement in the seven and-a-half year Iraq war. But for Iraq, it is just beginning: At least two civil conflicts are at boiling point - Sunni-Shiite strife and hostilities between the two Muslim factions and the Kurds of the North - and Iran's followers stand ready to seize Iraq's oil-rich South potentially sparking yet another world conflagration.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's refusal to step down or join a unity government is unsustainable and the cause of a rising spiral of violence. Instead, he is raising Shiite forces to crush the Sunni factions, while the Kurds, disappointed in the US failure to solve the Kirkuk issue are preparing to seize the strategic city and its oilfields. Iran for its part plans to take over all of southern Iraq with its oil riches and shrine cities.