Turkey and three Gulf nations as well as France and Britain are pushing hard for a no-fly zone to be imposed on Syria to protect safe havens. Obama continues to resist direct US military intervention. Without a US lead, the no-fly plan is a non-starter.

Russia is ready to supply Iraqi Kurdistan with assault helicopters after Obama refused the KRG leader’s request for an air force. Moscow has acquired a stake in the oil of Kirkuk and accepts the Kurds’ need of an air force to protect it. Iraqi prime minister Maliki plands to ...

As the US State Department and CNN dueled over the late US ambassador's diary, his murderers, the Libyan Ansar al-Sharia, headed off to meet their al Qaeda controllers and ask for more missions, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reveals in its latest issue out Friday. Disbanding - as Tripoli was encouraged by the State Department to claim - was far from their minds. Still, in Washington, President Obama danced around calling the Benghazi attack which killed four US diplomats “terrorism,” admitting only that it “wasn’t’ mob action.”
To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly, click here

US President Barack Obama's assertion Sunday, Sept. 23, to CBS - that on national security decisions, he would do what is right for America and “block out any noise that’s out there” – finally dashed any hopes entertained by Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak of US military cooperation for cutting down a nuclear Iran. Obama’s words rounded out an Iranian general’s dismissal of Israel as lacking the military ability and courage to attack his country.   So will Netanyahu go to New York after all?

By shunning the “terrorist’ label, denying al Qaeda was still alive and kicking, and espousing the Muslim Brotherhood, Barak Obama exposes the United States to one strategic debacle after another.

King Abdullah faces a Muslim Brotherhood ultimatum to announce before the end of September his acceptance of constitutional rule and democratic elections or go down under an Arab Spring insurrection.

Emboldened by certainty that its nuclear program was safe from attack, Iran’s atomic energy chief Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani felt free to heap abuse on the International Atomic Energy Agency. In Vienna Saturday, Sept. 17, he accused the watchdog of a cynical approach and mismanagement, being influenced by “certain states” and infiltration by “terrorists and saboteurs [the US and Israel].” Abbasi was further bolstered by the US-Israel row on Iran and the fresh US-led bid to revive nuclear diplomacy with the Islamic republic.

Washington is no longer under the illusion that positioning US forces in up to18 places in the Islamic world can quell the mounting wave of anti-US Islamist protests now encompassing 21 countries. The unrest poses Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and fellow regimes with a hard choice between expanding their ties with the US - or bowing to violent radical Islamist pressure to turn their backs on America and give them a place in government. The Arab Spring and President Obama’s outreach to Muslims are going up in smoke.

Hundreds of Palestinians lobbing rocks clashed with Jerusalem police Friday as they marched from Temple Mount, Jerusalem, to Damascus Gate - their first protest against the anti-Muslim film made in the US. Mounted police using stun grenades stopped them reaching the US consulate. Protests erupted too in the Gaza Strip and the Israel Bedouin town of Rahat. Islamists continued to batter the US embassies in Cairo and Sanaa, riot in Bangladesh and Lebanon and also attack the British and German embassies in Khartoum.

President Barack Obama’s refusal Tuesday Sept. 11 to see Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu because “the president’s schedule will not permit that,” left Jerusalem thunderstruck – and Washington too. At one stroke, round after round of delicate negotiations on Iran between the two governments collapsed. By rebuffing Netanyahu, Obama turned the clock back to the nadir in relations marked by Gen. Martin Dempsey when he said on Aug. 30: “I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it” – meaning attack Iran.

President Obama will throw his last bid to stop an Israeli attack on Iran when he meets Netanyahu in New York Sept. 28. In the same week, Iran is due to have completed its stock of 270 kilos of 20-percent enriched uranium for a single nuclear bomb.

A third US aircraft carrier, USS Stennis, is moving into place for leading 25 nations in a 12-day naval exercise off Iran’s Gulf coast. A large-scale minesweeping drill will simulate the prevention of Iranian efforts to block the Strait of Hormuz. debkafile:  President Barack Obama plans to see Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sept. 27, the last day of the exercise, hoping to forestall an Israel attack on Iran’s nuclear sites by demonstrating that the US is serious about military action, a message also addressed to Tehran.

The big guns the Obama administration is firing in its dogged battle to head off an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program may be hitting an impenetrable wall. The dynamic of this titanic contest is explored in the latest DEBKA-Net-Weekly out last Friday, with a rundown of the military preparations set in motion by the US, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, the UAEA, Iran, Hizballah and Israel itself.
Don’t miss this and more exclusives: Which country is giving Iran its most powerful sanctions-beating mechanism?

To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly, click here
More...