Kuwait prepares for war on Shatt al-Arb outlet to Persian Gulf after Iranian proxy threat against mega-port. Al Qaida threatens Paris, tries to hitch a ride on Britain's mob riots. And Saudi Arabia is braced for dangerous Sunni street protests against the throne.

An air of crisis descended on the world Tuesday, Aug. 9 as markets continued to tumble steeply and in London, large parts of the city  succumbed to uncontrolled violence. Far East stocks leveled out at 3 percent, Europe fell 3.5-5 percent Tuesday after Wall Street slid 5-7 percent Monday. More than $70 billion were wiped out in global trading Monday hours after US President Barack Obama said America will always be a Triple A country. Israel could join world crisis if all protest demands are met.

An al Qaeda branch known as the Al-jamaa Al-islamiya Al-Mokatila is widely believed to be closely associated with rebel leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil and suspected of murdering the rebel commander Maj. Gen. Abdel-Fattah Younis on his behalf. This confirms Muammar Qaddafi's long-held allegations that al Qaeda is part of ...

Gen. Abdel Fatah Younis, commander of the Libyan rebel forces fighting Muammar Qaddafi, was put to death on the orders of Mustapha Abdul Jalil, head of the rebel TNC, debkafile's sources report. TNC officers abducted him and two aides and shot them in the head 20 kilometers outside Benghazi.

Jalil wanted the powerful Younis out of the way before the start of peace negotiations, for fear he would beat his own path to Qaddafi and head the future government alongside Saif al-Islam.

The theory is gaining ground on both sides of the Atlantic that the phone hacking scandal besetting Rupert Murdoch's London media is really aimed at infecting his mass media in the US and toning down their anti-Obama slant in the coming presidential election. British premier David Cameron takes serious ...

The News of the World hacking scandal hanging over Rupert Murdoch's global empire and British Prime minister David Cameron could conceivably erupt in Israel where tycoons with media holdings also aspire to determine who rules the country. Tabloid methods are just as dodgy in Israel, but the difference lies in the influence the British media have over the voter thanks to their high professional standards which attract huge audiences. Murdoch is already in the UK to stem the damage to his empire.
 

The US is willing to replenish NATO's empty missile and smart bomb arsenals but needs to know who is footing the bill. Robert Gates like British and French Libyan war commanders don't believe in NATO's ability to topple Muammar Qaddafi.

Russia cited NATO's "inclusive bombing of Tripoli" as grounds for objecting to the new UK-French-Portuguese  motion condemning the Assad regime for its violent crackdown on protest, and any other UN Security Council action against Syria. After a more than $4 billion outlay, debkafile reports NATO's campaign against Muammar Qaddafi is running short of funds and suffering war "fatigue." The US, Britain and France consider dipping into the estimated $45 million of frozen Qaddafi funds in their banks. Qaddafi' commands about $1 trillion in cash.

Two months after Muammar Qaddafi's vow "to purge Libya, inch by inch, house by house, zenga by zenga," he is closer to making good on his boast than even he imagined.  With the US out of the military picture, NATO allies are short of warplanes for stopping Qaddafi's progress and are divided over their mission goal. At odds on how to go forward, they are dropping by the wayside as Qaddafi gains zenga after zenga in Misratah and Ajdabiyeh.

While no one admits this, the military campaign to topple Muammar Qaddafi has stalled with no solution other than diplomacy. The first peace proposal has come from the coalition's target, Qaddafi himself.

Although the Western coalition has gone beyond just enforcing the no-fly zone, it has not crippled the pro-Qaddafi army or its ability to move large forces across long distances and keep its supply routes open.

In response to coalition air strikes, Qaddafi has adopted the tactic of embedding his forces within key rebel-held cities transforming his opponents into human shields for his army.

Four days after the Western-Arab coalition decided Saturday, March 19 to enforce a no fly zone over Libya, only six Western warplanes - American, British, Canadian and French - are in the sky at any one time, debkafile's military sources disclose. This is barely enough for a no-fly zone just over Benghazi. And so the anti-Qaddafi operation has run out of steam, slowed also by the falling-out between Washington, London and Paris over its nature and goals and the fading away of the Arab component.

debkafile's sources report the claim that Libya's integrated air defense systems were knocked out by Saturday's US-UK-French bombardment was overstated. Muammar Qaddafi had removed his sophisticated hardware - Russian-made SA-5 missiles which can hit medium or high-flying aircraft and his shoulder-launched K38 Igla9 (SA-18) missiles mounted on Italian Ivaco trucks - to hideouts in the south.
The Western-Arab coalition is split over Qaddafi's removal as endgame, while Arab League Secretary Amr Mussa has already criticized the air strikes.

Twenty French fighter jets destroyed a number of tanks in Benghazi Saturday, March 19, in the first shots of the Western-Arab operation authorized by the UN Security Council 1973 against Muammar Qaddafi, soon joined by British jet fighters. After the US stated it would not take part in the first action or send troops, a US submarine and UK warships fired 112 Tomahawk missiles at 20 Libyan targets east of Tripoli, among them the Libyan army's supreme command center.

Even before he takes office as head of the Mossad secret service, Tamir Pardo faces a British ruse to inveigle him into admitting Israel's hand in the murder of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai a year ago by an apology when he visits London next month. This is reported by the London Telegraph of Saturday, Dec. 25.  debkafile's intelligence sources: That sort of pressure will present Pardo with one of his first tests.   

The Swedish investigation into the country's first suicide bombing Saturday, Dec. 11, quickly found that the bomb car which exploded during a shopping rush in the heart of Stockholm was part of a well-planned, sophisticated terror operation, prepared several months in advance to inflict a large number of casualties.The Islamist terror group had drawn lessons from the failed Times Square car bombing. Unlike Faisal Shahzad who fled, Taimour al-Abdaly was a walking bomb arsenal.

The sharp differences between Israel and Britain came to the fore Wednesday, Nov. 3, during William Hague's first visit to Israel as Foreign Secretary. He was informed that Israel had halted the strategic dialogue with the UK in protest against the failure of successive British governments to repeal a law allowing its leaders to be arrested for war crimes on arrival in Britain. The visitor struck back by meeting and praising three groups leading the Palestinian anti-Israel protest movement.

Tony Blair has carved out for himself a role at Barack Obama's right hand and, uniquely for a non-American politician, climbed astonishingly to the top of the White House team of policy-makers, especially on the Middle East and Iran. His popularity in Washington is matched inversely by his falling ...

Who profited from dropping 91,000 confidential documents in the lap of Wikileaks.org website this week?
Why only classified US military documents? And how does the leak tie in with the undercover Washington-London feud in Barak Obama's term in office?
DEBKA-Net-Weekly digs deep for sources and motivations in its coming issue out Friday, July 30
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