Since the US has taken the lead in the coalition backing the Syrian rebellion, the rebels are going for strategic targets, including anti-air missiles for knocking Assad’s bombers out of the sky.

President Obama admires President Morsi and wants him aboard his burgeoning anti-Iran Sunni alliance. The Egyptian street is baying for his blood.

Israel’s operation was an intel coup to shut Iran’s gateway to Cairo via Hamas.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu agreed to a ceasefire for halting the eight-day Gaza operation Wednesday night, Nov. 21, after President Barack Obama personally pledged to start deploying US troops in Egyptian Sinai next week. He said President Morsi had consented to the incoming troops going into immediate action against the Iranian smuggling networks. This means that the Gaza blockade is extended and the focus of combat moves from Gaza to Sinai. 

The Hamas brought the Israeli offensive down on the Gaza Strip by pushing out the military envelope too far against Israel while it was still the weakest cog in Iran’s radical terror machine. When Obama learned of Khamenei’s design to convert the Gaza Strip into Iran’s southern front, he ...

Barack Obama second term is a changed president. After approving Israel’s operation in Gaza he is no longer holding back from direct US military involvement in Syria and has big plans to plug the Sinai smuggling routes through which Iran arms and supplies its surrogates in the Gaza Strip ...

President Morsi is already being challenged by opponents in his own Muslim Brotherhood for his effort to calm the Gaza conflict instead of launching a holy war against Israel. Washington has let him know that to obtain desperately needed US aid, he must play ball for blocking Iran’s arms ...

The trio conducting Israel’s Gaza operation are reexamining their plan to launch a ground offensive now in view of strong pressure from US President Barack Obama to desist - although he solidly supported the Israeli operation until now. Netanyahu, Barak and Lieberman are weighing three options: Sending troops into Gaza regardless; delaying ground action until Wednesday or: launching immediate ground sorties  to test the ground. An Israeli delegation flew to Cairo when Obama insisted on giving failed truce talks another chance.

President Barack Obama, in a phone conversation with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu early Saturday, reiterated his support for Israel’s right to defend itself. He also spoke to Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Where does the sudden harmonious Obama-Netanyahu cooperation over the Gaza operation come from? debkafile: The US is using Israel’s Gaza operation to drag Iranian ruler Ali Khamenei to the negotiating table. Netanyahu hopes Obama will be led into a military confrontation with Iran. An Israeli ground operation is up to both.

Intelligence circles in the Middle East and Europe were fully abreast of Gen. David Petraeus’s fondness for the company of strong, ambitious women like Paula Broadwell and were not against exploiting those women’s garrulity for their own ends.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has decided against opening direct talks with the Obama administration, upsetting the reelected President Obama’s best-laid plans to solve the Iranian nuclear controversy by diplomacy.

The resignation of acclaimed national American hero David Petraeus as CIA Director is presented by his friends as an honorable act in the light of an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, 39 - and nothing else. An FBI probe of Broadwell for accessing his e-mail is cited. Neither explanation is really convincing. Republican Party faithful, smarting under Mitt Romney’s election defeat, are trying to connect it to an alleged cover-up of the circumstances surrounding the murder of four US diplomats in Benghazi. 

Obama has decided to break through the Syrian stalemate by sending scouts out to find a Syrian rebel with leadership qualities who is fighting Assad in Syria. When this leader is found and approved by the president, the United States will provide him and his militia with advanced hardware ...

Obama is keen on Muslim Brotherhood collaboration in the war on al Qaeda and other terrorists, including those sponsored by Tehran, and offered to build a hi-tech security radar fence to defend the Suez Canal from the terrorists and smugglers infesting Sinai.

Barack Obama’s decision to go for direct talks with Iran comes too late to stop its nuclear program. He is left with bargaining over the size of the Iranian nuclear arsenal and its disposal with Ali Khamenei holding most of the high cards.

Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu kicks off his campaign for reelection in the January election on the wrong foot having played the losing horse in the US presidential election.

US President Barack Obama aims to launch direct, fast-track nuclear talks with Tehran in December with a three month deadline for their conclusion, debkafile reports. His advisers warn him that Iran’s campaign for its June 14 presidential election kicks off in March and Tehran cannot be expected to commit to a resolution of their nuclear controversy by then.  Iranian strategists would prefer to hold off nuclear diplomacy for eight months until after their election “just as Tehran waited for the US vote.”

The latest DEBKA-Net-Weekly out last Friday offers an expert forecast of how Barack Obama is approaching the region’s hot-button crises in his second term as US President. First, he will go for a “Grand Bargain” with Iran on its nuclear program – then, fast deals with Moscow and Beijing to cool the crises of a war-torn Syria, a burgeoning Muslim Brotherhood and a rampant al Qaeda. Will he keep US ties with Israel and other allies ambivalent? And will Obama diplomacy work better this time?
For pointers, click here to subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly

Some Middle East nations, including the Persian Gulf and Israel, view with trepidation four more years of Barack Obama. They envisage the continued hitching of US regional influence on the Muslim world – Sunni and Shiite alike – through the acceptance of a nuclear Iran and the sponsorship of Muslim Brotherhood rule of Sunni Arab nations. Israel is caught in a vise between Iran, whose leaders call openly for Israel’s extinction, which is achievable only by nuclear aggression, and the hostile Muslim Brotherhood.

Sources in Tehran put out word Sunday, Nov, 4, that Iran had suddenly suspended 20-percent uranium enrichment. An Iranian lawmaker called it a "goodwill" gesture ahead of a new round of talks with the US directly after the presidential election. Two days before the vote, Tehran is transparently throwing its weight behind Obama by suggesting to the American voter that he can solve the nuclear crisis without resorting to war and is Iran’s preferred partner for talks.