The crisis in US-Israeli relations took a sharp turn for the worse Friday night, March 12, with a phone call from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warning Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu that the relationship was at risk. debkafile reports: He was given to understand that Israel must make sweeping concessions to prove its interest in renewed talks with the Palestinians, including in Jerusalem, and accept the Obama administration's line on Iran.

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US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates arrived in Riyadh Wednesday, March 10, flying in unexpectedly from Kabul in Afghanistan, after the Saudis demanded urgent clarifications of the Obama administration's Iran policy. debkafile's military sources report the demand followed the failure of US Vice President Joe Biden's talks with Israeli leaders to resolve their differences on Read more

debkafile reports: The decision to add 1,600 housing units to Ramat Shlomo in East Jerusalem was taken in protest of the way US Vice President Joe Biden lay down the law on the Iran issue in his talks with Israeli government leaders Tuesday, March 9. The key objective of his visit was clearly to hold Israel back from attacking Iran's nuclear installations even after the US backtracked on its promises of tough sanctions instead.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's latest issue, out this Friday, reveals US officials are immersed in hush-hush contacts with Iranian regime elements marking the Obama administration's fourth and most dramatic zigzag on Tehran. US military chiefs, moderate Arab governments and Israel are deeply concerned about possible regional repercussions from this radical turnabout.
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debkafile's Middle East sources reveal that the US Middle East envoy George Mitchell presented his mission to Israeli and Palestinian leaders Monday, March 8, as getting direct talks between them started without delay and moved to Washington. Their lead negotiators have been appointed. They are the Israeli prime minister's adviser Yitzhak Molcho and the senior Palestinian negotiator Saab Erekat.

Preliminary Iraqi election results show incumbent prime minister Nouri Maliki returned with a commanding 100 parliamentary seats out of 325 and the ability to form a pro-American coalition with Iyad Allawi's secular alliance and the Kurdish bloc that will be stable enough for US troops to depart Iraq on schedule.

Despite Tehran's denial, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delayed his trip to Kabul by 48 hours when US defense secretary Robert Gates arrived suddenly in the Afghan capital Monday, March 8.
The Iranian president had set the scene for his visit by accusing the US of "fabricating" 9/11 as a pretext for invading Afghanistan and unveiling new missile production lines.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is unmoved by Western media inattention to his hate campaign against Jews and Israel. He is campaigning hard to plant the poison in the Muslim mainstream. Its malevolence recalls Nazi "final solution" propaganda. DEBKA-Net-Weekly first disclosed the existence of this manifesto on March 5, 2010. debkafile now makes it available to the general reader.

The US-British-Afghan force out to capture the Helmand provincial town of Marjah is still wide of its mark.

Its control does not go much beyond the municipal center and main police stations. But the Taliban has shown only minor resistance, saving its strength for the major showdowns ahead, most likely in Kandahar.

Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak warned that Hizballah and its 45,000 rockets - including "some which many sovereign countries do not have" - are directed by Iranian and Syrian civilian and military officials already present in Lebanon.  He termed the differentiation between Hizballah terrorists, the state of Lebanon and their sponsors artificial. Iran's nuclear program aims at jumping straight into the second- or second-and-a-half generation of nuclear warheads."