; "Foreign Ministers Saud al Faisal and Ali Akbar Salehi")
Saudi Arabia is exploring dialogue with its great regional rival Iran for ending the Syrian conflict and assuring Lebanon’s political future, debkafile’s Gulf sources report. Riyadh has given up on US policy for Syria in view of Russia's and Iran's unbending support for Bashar Assad; his battlefield gains aided by Hizballah and Iranian Bassij forces; and Turkey’s failure to react to the Reyhanli bombings. These perceptions generated a get-together between the Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers Monday, May 13. in Jeddah.
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; "Russian nuclear submarine")
May 12, 2013, 7:19 PM (IDT)
Russian Navy Admiral Viktor Chirkov said Sunday, May 12, that a permanent staff of 20 officers is in place to run Russian fleet operations in the Mediterranean Sea. It will comprise five to six warships and possibly nuclear submarines which, say our military sources, are armed with nuclear ballistic missiles. debkafile: Russia’s step aims at safeguarding the Assad regime and securing its Hizballah and Iranian allies. It also signals Moscow’s Middle East comeback after a 21-year absence - to confront Israel and Turkey.
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sets off for the Black Sea town of Sochi Tuesday to call on President Vladimir Putin for a last-ditch bid to avert the sale to Syria of advanced S-300 anti-air missiles. His chances of success are extremely slim.
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The Obama administration’s slowcoach policy on Syria has given Iran and Hizballah unfettered access to intervene in the Syrian civil war, magnifying its lethality and prospects of its spilling over into Israel, Turkey and Jordan, says debkafile. It will further deteriorate when Washington’s expectations of an international conference are not recprocated by Moscow.
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As the Syrian army makes further gains against rebel forces, debkafile reports Hizballah and Israel appear to be in the process of relocating their lines of confrontation from Lebanon to Syria. An Israeli enclave is forming around the IDF medical facilities on the Golan, while Hizballah is taking command of three pockets.
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Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu, while in Shanghai, faced a sharp dressing-down from President Vladimir Putin Monday, May 6 and a warning that further Israeli attacks on Damascus would not be tolerated. Putin said highly advanced Russian weapons, including S-300 air defense systems, would be supplied at speed to Syria.
More>Apr 24, 2013, 8:53 PM (IDT)
Tamerlan Tsarnaev established links with al Qaeda’s Caucasian networks for terrorist attacks in America, starting with the Boston bombings. In 2011, Russian intelligence notified the ... More...
Feb 26, 2013, 3:42 AM (IDT)
Syrian peace talks are set to open in Moscow on March 5 between the Syrian opposition and Assad regime representatives, debkafile reveals. The ... More...
Jan 18, 2013, 7:04 PM (IDT)
Neither France nor the US has learned from the Afghanistan War that aerial warfare won’t defeat al Qaeda – certainly not when they are highly-trained ... More...
Dec 19, 2012, 11:28 AM (IDT)
debkafile Exclusive: The Russians have given Bashar Assad his most sophisticated weapon thus far – the Iskander cruise missile which has a hypersonic ... More...
Israel insists its air force attacks on Syria targeted Hizballah and its Iranian weapons shipments. This does not cover explain the targeting Sunday, May 5, of Mt. Qassioun, moving Assad to threaten a war of attrition. The US plans to follow the Israeli operation with arms supplies for Syrian rebels and US air strikes.
Syria's Faisal Mekdad said the strike at Syria overnight Sunday, May 5, represented a "declaration of war" by Israel. Russia Today claimed killed at least 300 members of the Syrian Army’s 501st Unit. debkafile: This unit operates the Mt. Qassioun chemical weapon facility.
US officials recently gave a video demonstration of an upgraded bunker buster bomb able to destroy Iran’s Fordo underground enrichment plant - in a bid to dissuade Israel from a unilateral attack on Iran, while thousands of Basij militiamen arrived in Syria from Iran.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has a novel plan for peace talks on two simultaneous tracks – Israel versus the Palestinians and, for the first time in its history, Israel facing the Arab League, debkafile reports exclusively. After obtaining Arab approval for “minor border amendments,” Kerry says more work remains to be done before talks.
