John Kerry faces more obstacles than realistic prospects for his many small steps toward reviving the Middle East peace process and bring Hamas as well as Abu Mazen to the negotiating table. For this he is counting on help from the Turkish prime minister and Qatari emir.

Before ending his Middle East trip, Barack Obama finalized with Israeli, Turkish and Jordanian leaders his plans for a US-led military intervention in Syria to liquidate its chemical and biological arsenals.

After patching up the feud between Israel and Turkey, US President Barack Obama faces a much tougher task: brokering ties between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. To address the looming Syrian chemical arms crisis, President Obama needs a united anti-Assad Arab-Islamic front. He faces a choice between two blocs for the lead role: Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Abu Dhabi, or Turkey and Qatar. Most Arab rulers want no truck with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, which is why he vents his frustration on Israel.

The Turkish-Israeli reconciliation effected by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s apology was urged strongly by US President Barack Obama, because Ankara urgently needed to revive the military cooperation it cut off with Israel in 2010. debkafile:  Without access to Israeli military technology, Turkey’s armed forces are hamstrung. And without full Israeli, Turkish and Jordanian coordination, Obama’s plan for a joint US-led command center against a Syrian chemical warfare contingency can’t take off. But the apology also went down as a gratuous affront to Israeli military pride.

The Turkish prime minister believes a resolution of the long and bloody feud with the Kurdish PKK will bring him the presidency in 2014. Iran will do its best to thwart a deal that grants more autonomy to Turkish Kurds as an undesirable precedent for stirring up its own ...

The trio conducting Israel’s Gaza operation are reexamining their plan to launch a ground offensive now in view of strong pressure from US President Barack Obama to desist - although he solidly supported the Israeli operation until now. Netanyahu, Barak and Lieberman are weighing three options: Sending troops into Gaza regardless; delaying ground action until Wednesday or: launching immediate ground sorties  to test the ground. An Israeli delegation flew to Cairo when Obama insisted on giving failed truce talks another chance.

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.

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.

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 ...

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 ...

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.

The US has quietly crafted a new Kurdish state in northern Syria. It is linked to the self-governing Kurdish republic of Iraq and defers to its rulers. Turkey and Iraq feel betrayed by Barack Obama, fearing their own Kurdish minorities like Iran’s Kurds will be swallowed up by the long dreamed-of ...

Saudi Arabia and Turkey agree to set up a joint command for coordinating preparations for a combined invasion of Syria and the creation of buffer zones protected by their air forces. Ankara is putting pressure on NATO to help defend Turkish borders against Iranian reprisal. Both partners ...

On March 25, in Seoul, President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan agreed on the six-point US policy outline the latter would carry to the Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ahead of Iran’s forthcoming nuclear talks with six world powers. The exercise was not a success. Khamenei has still not answered the president’s missive and Tehran has turned its guns on Erdogan. The six points published here were first revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly on March 29.

A new US intelligence position paper addressed to the Oval Office makes Tayyip Erdogan the linchpin of Obama’s Middle East and Iran policies after he showed the flag by accepting a US radar station, part of NATO’s anti-Iran missile shield. This won him a harsh dressing-down by ...

Russian-Iranian solidarity was dented this week by Tehran’s games to stall the nuclear talks scheduled for mid-April. Moscow wants diplomacy started without delay because Middle East tensions are close to boiling point. Iran vetoes Istanbul as the venue and refuses to talk under military or financial pressure.

The US President has tacitly indicated to the Iranian leader that if elected to a second term he will have more room for maneuver and a freer hand for pursuing policies agreed in their back-channel dialogue. So please, Iranian officials, speak more kindly about America.

Obama’s Grand Diplomatic Offensive for using a pacified Syria to persuade Iran to be accommodating at the coming nuclear negotiations is not yet in the bag. It is dogged by Saudi objections and problems with its policy Syria due to flawed US intelligence both about Assad’s survivability and the ...

Erdogan won an ultra-cool welcome in Tehran after he was discovered pumping anti-tank missiles to the Syrian rebels after Bashar Assad began helping Turkey’s PKK Kurdish faction. His Iranian hosts gave him the runaround before he was received by Khamenei to hand over Barack Obama’s message.

US President Barack Obama sits down with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in Seoul, South Korea Sunday, March 25. Earlier, Obama gave the Turkish leader - and Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu too - a lesson in political expediency: March 20, Washington awarded 11 nations exemptions from new US financial sanctions against Iran. The downscaling of sanctions caught Israel by surprise and angered Turkey, most of all as the outcome of unknown secret US-Iranian talks.