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.

After talks with Iran’s security director Saeed Jalili, Bashar Assad said Sunday, Feb. 3 that Syria was able to confront "current threats... and aggression.” debkafile: They discussed activating the secret mutual defense pact binding Iran, Syria and Hizballah in retaliation for Israel’s reported attack on a Syrian military complex. They took into account a harsh Israeli counter-response in the light of Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s tough warning in Munich that Assad’s fall was imminent and would be a major blow for Iran and Hizballah.

Monday, Nov. 26, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he was quitting political life after 47 years but staying in defense until the January 22, 2013 general election. debkafile: His action ties in closely with President Barack Obama’s decision to embark on direct US-Iranian nuclear talks and his plans to bring Tehran to the table in a more amenable frame of mind. The Gaza operation was part of those plans. Should a major war erupt meanwhile and force a delay in voting, Barak would still be at his post.

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.

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.

Less than a week after Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu struck Iran with a red marker, the dire Iranian nuclear threat is thrust aside in Israel by an acute case election fever. debkafile: None of the politicians citing Feb. 13, 2013 as the date of an early election is privy to the prime minister’s carefully calculated agenda. Will that date see a poll followed by messy cabinet-building, or presage a decisive step for preempting Iran’s advance to the threshold of a nuclear bomb? And what other surprises are in store?

Not all the Israeli units taking part in a major military exercise on the Syrian-Lebanese borders on Sept 19 returned to base after Iran airlifted elite al Qods fighting strength and weapons into Syria and Lebanon. An estimated two IDF divisions are in place in case Syria and Hizballah with Iranian reinforcements go on the offensive against Israel. The Iranian buildup continues. US intelligence sources have since accused Iran of “secretly transporting to Assad large quantities of weapons and military personnel by civilian aircraft - almost daily.”

Obama shuns advice to stay Israel’s hand against attacking Iran by offering a solemn pledge of a US strike or by presenting Tehran with a credible US threat. US-Israeli dialogue is going around in circles.

Barack Obama’s quarrel with Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak is becoming more intense and personal the closer Israel comes to attacking Iran’s nuclear program before the US Nov. 6 vote.  Read the coming DEBKA-Net-Weekly out next Friday, and find out how that feud fires up certain opposition political circles at home and fuels their virulent campaign to tie the Netanyahu government’s hands and so push it out of office.
And don’t miss our insights into the Muslim Brotherhood’s coup against the Egyptian army and the Syrian conflict.

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In a radio interview Thursday, Aug. 9, Defense Minister Ehud Barak stoutly refuted reported disagreements between the US and Israel, and himself and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu over a military attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Both see eye to eye on the matter, he said, as do US and Israeli intelligence evaluations.  “A nuclear Iran is taking shape before our eyes” Barak stressed, and new US intelligence findings make a decision on a possible attack “extremely urgent."

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz are rightly using a necessary austerity package as a lever for getting the country on track for a war economy, without saying so. They avoid discussing the consequences and duration of the new measures because they can’t tell how long a war, which they believe may be close, will last or how it will end. debkafile estimates that they are quietly building a $25-30 strategic financial reserve for the worst-case scenario.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has often before exploited his many medical problems for manipulation. Although “enjoying” ill health, he is very much in control of affairs of state in the Islamic Republic, although a crop of would-be successors are waiting in the wings for him to go. The radicals have a profound interest in keeping Iran's nuclear program, his pet project, afloat after he is gone, and are exploiting gossip about his ill health to speed matters up.

Not all is dandy in the cyber war collaboration between the US and Israel. Since Stuxnet, Iran has made strides in its cyber war capabilities and attained a level largely unknown to Western intelligence.

Why did Netanyahu and Barak agree to subscribe to Obama’s latest game plan for Iran and again delay a strike on its nuclear facilities? They were promised that harsher sanctions would be imposed against Iran, even in the course of negotiations.

Israel has withdrawn its pledge to US President Barack Obama not to strike Iran’s nuclear sites before the November presidential election after he rejected its minimal demands for the nuclear negotiations with Iran. This is reported exclusively by debkafile as the Six-Power talks with Iran in Baghdad drag into a second day on Thursday, May 24. Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned Wednesday: “No one has to tell us what to do [or not to do]. All options are on the table.”

Russia is preparing a surprise proposal for the resumed P5+1 powers nuclear negotiations with Iran in Baghdad Wednesday, May 23, debkafile reports exclusively. By tabling an independent plan, Moscow would break ranks with the “unified front on Iran” declared by US President Barack Obama at the G8 summit Saturday and enhance Iran’s bargaining position.
Israel would be the loser. Israeli ministers warned the six powers that their demands of Iran are far below the bar needed to curb its nuclear program.

Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned Thursday 17, that a nuclear Iran would change the whole Middle East landscape and “we must do something to block” what he called “a catastrophe.” The impending agreement would permit Iran “to deceive the world” and continuing building a nuclear bomb. Western diplomatic sources disclose that Iran has moved this process forward by starting in mid-negotiations to instal new centrifuge cascades at Fordo to double or triple near-weapons grade enriched uranium production.

Binyamin Netanyahu, freed from the shackles of an election campaign, is more empowered by his new expanded coalition tackling Iran’s nuclear threat by military measures. The Obama administration must think up new devices for holding him down.