Because the powers concerned about Syrian bloodshed stick to a hands-off policy Assad and al Qaeda win a free field to fight it out.

Washington acted fast to hold back Lebanon’s anti-Syrian Lebanese forces from avenging the assassination of Lebanon’s top intelligence chief, Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hasan to save Lebanon from being ripped apart by a civil war. Assad and Nasrallah were allowed to get away with it.

Obama’s tactics for blocking Binyamin Netanyahu’s options for attacking Iran are now being applied to the Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan to hold him back from direct military intervention on the side of the rebels in Syria and dragging American in too.

An Iranian ex-diplomat and a lawmaker provide unknown details of the four years of secret American-Iranian exchanges on solving the controversy over Iran’s nuclear program which ended without results.

Both US presidential contenders, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, pledged to stand with Israel if attacked in their foreign policy debate in Boca Raton, Florida Monday, Oct. 22. But neither agreed in reply to the question to formally declare that an attack on Israel would be tantamount to an attack on America, especially in relation to a nuclear Iran. Romney and Obama agreed that a military option must be a last resort, although Romney, unlike Obama, said even a “nuclear-capable Iran” was unacceptable.

Barack Obama has agreed to hold direct talks on Iran’s nuclear program with its leaders, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Is this a surprise? On April 16, 2012, debkafile disclosed that Washington and Tehran were conducting back-channel talks in Paris and Vienna. Obama hopes that a summit will lift his chances of reelection. debkafile: He has so far accepted Iran’s right to enrich uranium, erasing all Israel’s red lines. His last demand is for 24/7 inspections which Tehran refuses.

The car bomb which murdered anti-Syrian Lebanese security chief Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hasan and seven others Friday, Oct. 19, in Beirut also dissipated hopes in the West and Israel of the Syrian civil war sundering the Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah axis, or that liquidating Iran’s nuclear scientists and cyber warfare would turn Tehran away from a nuclear bomb.  The Syrian bloodbath grows wider and more malignant and Tehran is closer than ever to a nuclear weapon. A reduced joint US-Israel war game begins Sunday.

Barack Obama this week clued Binyamin Netanyahu in on the latest US intelligence confirming Iran will have enough enriched uranium for 4-6 bombs by March 2013, debkafile reports. It was the first time Obama acknowledged that sanctions and diplomatic pressure are not working. Also revealed was that Iran had doubled the enrichment centrifuges at Natanz to 6,000, and that Iran needs no more than 2-3 weeks to upgrade enriched uranium from 20% to weapons grade. Obama still objects to an Israeli pre-emptive strike.

US President Obama wants a settling of accounts with the terrorists who murdered four diplomats in Benghazi before his next debate with Mitt Romney orbefore the Nov. 6 election at latest. Counter-terrorism and intelligence chiefs explain the operation requires time-consuming planning for coordinated attacks on multiple targets in several ...

The revised estimates compiled by US and French intelligence agencies on the relative strength of Syrian government and rebel forces have given Washington and Arab capitals backing the Syrian opposition pause.  The Obama administration built its policies around an estimated 70,000 rebel fighters, whereas the new figure, disclosed by debkafile’s intelligence sources, appears to be around 30,000 – one tenth of them Al Qaeda-linked jihadis. Challenging Washington, French President Frances is urging direct intervention now to save the Syrian revolt.

French President Francois Hollande convinced President Barack Obama to reverse his position against intervention in the Syrian with all possible speed to prevent Assad winning the war against the rebels. Turkey was given the green light to pursue steps against Syrian flights and airspace with a view to clearing ...

Netanyahu was in touch with Barack Obama and Mitt Romney before his UN speech last month and reached agreement with both that he would set up a centrist government with Labor after Israel’s January election and join them n getting set for a showdown with Iran in March.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to run for election on the stop-nuclear-Iran ticket opens the door for President Barack Obama, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah to put an oar in to determine its results. Obama may seek a breakthrough with Iran to impress the American voter and put a spoke in Netanyahu’s wheel; the Iranian and Hizballah leaders may fabricate a grave security crisis to test Netanyahu with a major predicament in mid-campaign. They are all are playing for high stakes.

Israeli Patriots were not deployed against further Iranian drone incursions but potential Iranian/Hizballah missile attacks from Lebanon or Syria. debkafile: US intelligence now warns President Obama that Iran’s nuclear breakthrough will be much earlier than predicted - late November, only seven weeks off. A Congressional Research Dept. report concludes Israel has sufficient air force and refueling capacities to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, including Fordo, alone. The two findings led to the new Foreign Policy proposal of a joint US-Israeli “October surprise.”

As US intelligence gropes in the dark in Syria – unable to pin down the rebel leader or a suitable candidate to follow Sadat - Saudi secret service chief Prince Bandar uses Al Arabiya TV to release “classified Syrian security documents” for his propaganda campaign against Assad and other ...

Obama’s endgame document for Iran is taking shape. It is setting forth six nuclear limits which Iran will surely not accept.

Turkish artillery continued to pound Syria Thursday, October 4, with the aim of carving out a 10-kilometer buffer strip inside Syria, debkafile reports. Several Syrian army bases and positions inside this strip have taken direct hits and a large number of Syrian troops were killed or wounded. Turkey hopes its artillery barrage will help Syrian rebels create a 50-km long protected corridor between Aleppo and the Turkish border. Ankara and Damascus have both imposed a blackout to keep events under control and avoid a full-blown war.

Al Qaeda’s Ayman Zuwahiri is preparing a string of terrorist attacks in the five weeks up to the presidential election as the sequel to the Sept. 11 Benghazi murders, says US intelligence. He seeks to influence the poll’s results, while building up his reputation as master of spectacular terrorist operations. debkafile: The Benghazi attack exposed al Qaeda networks' striking expansion across a broad region - Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Mali and Egypt (Sinai) - from which most US personnel have been quietly lifted out.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is reported by debkafile as berating Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for the powerful presentation of his case to the UN General Assembly for confronting Iran with red lines, instead of failed diplomacy and sanctions Thursday, Sept. 27. Neither released statements. President Barack Obama would not tolerate the Israeli leader having a say in his Iran agenda, she reportedly said, before announcing that the world powers had decided to go back to negotiations with Tehran.

Obama has concluded that nuclear diplomacy with Iran has run its course and has set a time the task of formulating end of the road benchmarks for the Islamic republic. At the same time, Tehran is playing with the temporary suspension of enrichment at Fordo by sabotage to bid ...