The Iranian nuclear impasse and the Syrian civil war are more tightly interlinked than ever by President Barack Obama’s decision to cooperate with Moscow for solutions of both - a partnership that promises the eventual three-way carving-up of Middle East influence. The six-month break Israel allowed Obama for diplomatic solutions before exercising its military option, gives Tehran the freedom to defy the six powers in nuclear negotiations and ties US hands against Bashar Assad’s atrocities. Obama's diplomatic path is already cluttered with obstacles.

After three months of exploring every possible diplomatic channel to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program, Obama enlisted Moscow’s help for getting messages to and from Tehran. But meanwhile his diplomatic network had become a maze in which the Baghdad talks lost their objective.

Delaying an attack on Iran as Barak Obama wants means that Iran will continue to enrich uranium at will. It is already achieving its second goal or diminished sanctions thanks to the concessions offered by the US president.

Israel has withdrawn its pledge to US President Barack Obama not to strike Iran’s nuclear sites before the November presidential election after he rejected its minimal demands for the nuclear negotiations with Iran. This is reported exclusively by debkafile as the Six-Power talks with Iran in Baghdad drag into a second day on Thursday, May 24. Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned Wednesday: “No one has to tell us what to do [or not to do]. All options are on the table.”

Barack Obama is winning his Herculean battle to stave off a strike on Iran’s nuclear sites until he is safely reelected in November. His policy of “non-solutions for unseen problems” is working just fine: Iran keeps up its nuclear bomb momentum, and al Qaeda expands its foothold in Egypt, Syria and Yemen. Israel and its military option are shoved out of sight.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly in its latest issue out last Friday analyses Obama’s chances of maintaining this posture for seven months.  To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly, click here.

Syrian rebels have received their first “third generation” anti-tank weapons, 9K115-2 Metis-M and Kornet E, debkafile reports.  They are supplied by Saudi and Qatari intelligence agencies following a secret message from President Barack Obama upping the military stake in the effort to oust Assad. It is hoped that the sight of blazing tanks will undermine morale in the Syrian army and regime. Ankara was also advised to start providing Syrian rebels with IEDs for roadside bombing of government vehicles.

On the return flight to Moscow, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov filled in the space left by his Prime Minister Dmitri Medvadev’s silence at the G8 summit Saturday, May 20 with a large dose of skepticism on Iran.
Contradicting President Barack Obama’s statement that diplomacy was preferable to military action, he spoke of “many signals that the military option is… realistic.” Less realistic were NATO decisions on the eurozone and the military exit from Afghanistan at the weekend Chicago summit.

Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak have decided to stand back for Barack Obama to put his interim deal with Iran to the test, debkafile’s sources report. They are going along with it despite reservations after receiving assurances from the White House that Iranian violations would result in the immediate termination of negotiations and bring military action forward as the sole remaining option for stopping a nuclear Iran. Saturday, debkafile exclusively revealed the eight-point interim deal the US put before Iran.

The Iranian leadership is torn by a serious debate over a preemptive strike on Israel. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei fears it will jeopardize his credibility and upend his direct confidential dialogue with Barack Obama. He faces tough opposition from Iran’s war faction.

The Obama administration has invested major diplomatic and military efforts into persuading the Persian Gulf emirs to unite in a federation and mutual defense treaty according to two alternative Saudi blueprints – a NATO or a EU style pact. But those efforts were met with extreme reluctance.

Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned Thursday 17, that a nuclear Iran would change the whole Middle East landscape and “we must do something to block” what he called “a catastrophe.” The impending agreement would permit Iran “to deceive the world” and continuing building a nuclear bomb. Western diplomatic sources disclose that Iran has moved this process forward by starting in mid-negotiations to instal new centrifuge cascades at Fordo to double or triple near-weapons grade enriched uranium production.

Iran’s latest proposals contain a couple of concessions but are essentially a bargaining vehicle for using its clandestine dialogue with the US for acceptance of its nuclear program in one form another but equally important recognition as America’s respected regional partner.

Binyamin Netanyahu, freed from the shackles of an election campaign, is more empowered by his new expanded coalition tackling Iran’s nuclear threat by military measures. The Obama administration must think up new devices for holding him down.

While US officials are upbeat about the prospects of Tehran’s willingness to strike a deal on its nuclear aspirations, Israel sees Iran forging ahead with the concealment of its suspect nuclear sites in “zones of immunity.”

The unity government which Binyamin Netanyahu formed Tuesday May 8, is not just the broadest coalition ever to govern Israel, but also the first with three former chiefs of staff who are fully capable of directing an attack on Iran.  It was this feature which caught Washington’s attention as the first reports of Netanyahu’s stunning U-turn away from an early election filtered through. All the same, US sources expect the new government to give Obama a few months’ space before a decision on Iran.
 

Continuing our exclusive blow-by-blow reporting since March on the backdoor nuclear negotiations between Washington and Tehran, the latest DEBKA-Net-Weekly out Friday revealed that Iran has put together a new package of proposals ahead of the next formal session between Iran and the Six Powers in Baghdad on May 23. They affect its nuclear program and aim to test Barack Obama’s willingness for a strategic partnership in the Persian Gulf region.
To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly, click here.

Two stalwarts of the Western confrontation against a nuclear-armed Iran suffered election defeats this week: Nicolas Sarkozy was swept out of the Elysee by the Socialist leader Francois Hollande Sunday, May 6. Three days earlier, the two parties forming UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s government coalition were trounced in local elections across Britain.  Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who faces an election in four months, never imagined he would so soon be left on shifting sands against the Iranian nuclear threat.

Because Israel received no answers from Washington about concessions Obama had made to Tehran in secret talks, and because Israel believes that Iran’s bomb-building capability will outrun progress in negotiations, Israel intelligence advise bringing forward the date for a military strike to stop Iran in its nuclear ...

By dragging the Iranian nuclear issues onto the hazardous ground of theological polemic on the value of Shiite fatwas, Obama has added to Israel’s mistrust and appalled the Arab world’s Sunni rulers and peoples, especially in the Gulf and Egypt, who accuse him of pro-Shiite bias which ...

After the “achievements” gained for its nuclear program from diplomacy with the West, Iran now wants sanctions lifted. European sources expect the Obama administration to soon start ending sanctions in stages. Israel’s drive against a nuclear Iran is assuming personal overtones: Three Israeli researchers question the evidence of a 2005 fatwa supposedly issued by Supreme Ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prohibiting Muslims from building a nuclear weapon. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has held it up as “an entryway into negotiations.”