The Obama administration’s slowcoach policy on Syria has given Iran and Hizballah unfettered access to intervene in the Syrian civil war, magnifying its lethality and prospects of its spilling over into Israel, Turkey and Jordan, says debkafile. It will further deteriorate when Washington’s expectations of an international conference are not recprocated by Moscow.

In a striking reversal, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in Abdu Dhabi Thursday, April 25, that US intelligence now believes the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against its own people.

Red lines have been flattened by Iran’s rapid progress toward a nuclear weapon and by Bashar Assad’s mockery, backed by Tehran, of US President Barack Obama’s warning that “proof of chemical weapons use would be a game changer.” Two Israeli ex-intelligence chiefs Tuesday, April 23 underlined Israel-US differences.

Israel’s chief of staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz warned Monday, April 22, that tribal and ethnic warfare on the scale of Afghanistan awaited Syria. debkafile: Two heavily armed Hizballah combat brigades are fighting for Bashar Assad south of Homs.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s Middle East trip was supposed to present the $10 billion US arms sales to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE as a signal for deterring a nuclear Iran. The Boston bombings shifted the onus of his trip to Syria and al Qaeda. Russian cooperation was a vital source of intelligence for nabbing the two bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Friday, April 19. Russian President Vladimir Putin will almost certainly claim his quid pro quo in Syrian currency.

Although Obama has approved the deployment of 200 US troops to Jordan, no one knows whether he will order enough military strength to save King Abdullah if his kingdom comes under Syrian attack.

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Wednesday, April 17, that 200 troops of the US 1st Armored Division had been sent to Jordan to give the United States the ability to "potentially form a joint task force [with Jordan] for military operations, if ordered" by the President.  debkafile’s military sources report that they are ranged on the Jordanian-Syrian border to counter a potential Syrian attack. In a potential war between Syria and Jordan backed by US troops, Israel would almost certainly become involved.

US and South Korean armed forces went on the highest level of alert - Watchcon 2 - Thursday, April 11, ready for multiple launches after at least one North Korean ballistic Musudan missile was sighted fueled and ready to launch at any moment. Some Western intelligence sources attribute Pyongyang’s saber-rattling to a power struggle ongoing between Kim Jong-Un’s military backers and the generals who judge him unfit for the top command. He may order a missile launch to assert his authority against his detractors.

For the first time, two terrorist organizations, al Qaeda and Hizballah, have acquired unconventional arms. Al Qaeda and affiliates are in position for bio-chemical strikes from Syria on five Middle East countries.

When Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak met US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon Tuesday, March 5, he heard for the first time in years American criticism of the Israeli army for under-reacting – in this case to the chemical weapons threat emanating from Syria. Israel was also berated for under-estimating this menace and failing to take into account the likely need to send troops into Syria. Barak received official US confirmation that chemical weapons had reached HIzballah.

debkafile reports: The collapse of Bashar Assad’s defense lines on the Israeli and Jordanian borders has left a large Syrian expanse of no-man’s land and generated a new strategic situation of major import for both Israel and Jordan. Defense Minister Ehud Barak hopes to align positions with the US on this matter when he meets Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon next Tuesday. Most observers doubt this outcome, given the Obama administration’s decision to pass the Syrian question to Moscow.

UK Premier David Cameron has been pushing US, French and Israeli leaders to accept that an Iranian nuclear bomb capacity is too real to stop and sanctions are futile. Publication of an active Iranian plutonium bomb plan Tuesday, Feb. 26, was aimed at selling the Cameron contention to incoming US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on the day of his endorsement. Equally, rumors of Hassan Nasrallah’s terminal cancer – vehemently denied by Hizballah – will not put a spoke in Russian-Iranian plans for Syria.

Jerusalem is unhappy about Obama’s new appointments to his Middle East desks. They are uniformly anti-interventionist, anti-military engagement and unsympathetic to Israel’s security concerns.

At a joint news conference Friday, Jan. 11, retiring Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs, Gen. Martin Dempsey, cleaned the Pentagon’s Syrian desk ready for incoming Secretary Chuck Hagel.  Boiled down to essentials, their triple message was that Bashar Assad could not be stopped from using chemical weapons if he chose to do so, that securing the CW sites after Assad’s fall was the job of the “international community,” and that no US ground troops would be sent to Syria.

After five months of silence, Binyamin Netanyahu is again talking to his close advisers about the urgency of a military attack to preempt a nuclear Iran, because the window of opportunity won’t stay open more than a month or two. The domestic opposition he faced last September has ebbed.

Khamenei is at his old tricks of spinning out nuclear negotiations while developing Iran’s nuclear capabilities and grabbing strategic assets in the Middle East. No longer fearing a US military strike, he is now bent on pumping Obama for more concessions on Iran’s nuclear program. He and his advisers decided that the same old tactics which worked  for 12 years would do perfectly well for the second Obama administration team, especially if Chuck Hagel and John Brennan are approved as Secretary of Defense and CIA Director.

Since the US pulled its fleet away from Syrian shores and the rebels’ arms supplies began drying up, Turkey and Israel assumed defensive postures vis a vis Syria, while the rebels began thinking about reconciliation with Bashar Assad.

Barack Obama’s choice of Chuck Hagel and John Brennan – both champions of his pro-Muslim policy - as Defense Secretary and CIA Director respectively, raises a signpost to his next steps in the Middle East and the war on terror. While Israel is clearly concerned, the coming DEBKA-Net-Weekly out next Friday offers exclusive eye-openers on how those signs are read by Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Saudi King Abdullah, Syria’s Bashar Assad, and Ayman Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s leader.
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President Obama sent US Undersecretary for Defense Intelligence Michael Vickers to Cairo Sunday, Jan. 12 to try and revitalize the counter-terror war in Libya and Sinai. debkafile: Obama needs to show action on fighting terror before the murder of US Ambassador Christ Stevens in Benghazi by al Qaeda comes up in congress and hampers the endorsement of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary and John Brennan as Central Intelligence Director, who were nominated Monday.