debkafile reveals one of the CIA’s most dramatic scoops in many years, an epic disaster for Iran. Our most exclusive Iranian and intelligence sources disclose that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s personal cameraman, Hassan Golkhanban, who defected from his UN entourage in New York on Oct. 1, brought with him an intelligence treasure trove of up-to-date photographs and videos of Iran’s top leaders visiting its most sensitive and secret nuclear and missile sites. He is staying at an undisclosed address.

The special report commissioned by the Congressional research center on a possibly Israel strike against Iran has some spectacular new findings which debunk the Obama administration’s conventional wisdom on Israel’s capacity. For instance, Israel would only need one-third of its air force to strike Iran.

Obama’s endgame document for Iran is taking shape. It is setting forth six nuclear limits which Iran will surely not accept.

The Iranian government Wednesday, Oct. 3, invoked the emergency measures drawn up for the 2009 protests to deploy large Bassij militia forces in the capital and put down the first angry protests against mounting economic hardship and the plummeting rial.  Money changers and gold merchants attacked police, torched their cars and threatened a general shutdown of trading and the Bazaar. The government decided to draw the line in Tehran before the anti-government unrest spreads further.

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?

The sabotage of the Fordo uranium enrichment facility’s power lines on Aug. 17, gave Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu the extra leeway to move his original red line for Iran from late September 2012 – now – to the spring or early summer of 2013, debkafile reports.  But Tehran hit back fast with two aggressive actions on Israel’s doorstep: an al Qods military buildup in Syria and Lebanon, and Assad’s withdrawal of chemical weapons from storage and likely transfer to incoming Iranian units.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is reported by debkafile as berating Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for the powerful presentation of his case to the UN General Assembly for confronting Iran with red lines, instead of failed diplomacy and sanctions Thursday, Sept. 27. Neither released statements. President Barack Obama would not tolerate the Israeli leader having a say in his Iran agenda, she reportedly said, before announcing that the world powers had decided to go back to negotiations with Tehran.

Obama has concluded that nuclear diplomacy with Iran has run its course and has set a time the task of formulating end of the road benchmarks for the Islamic republic. At the same time, Tehran is playing with the temporary suspension of enrichment at Fordo by sabotage to bid ...

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?

Iran was stunned to discover this week how easy it was to disrupt its nuclear program, even its underground facilities. The Fordo enrichment plant was disabled and damaged by the simple device of cutting its power lines by a series of blasts. No major military, air or missile operations ...

Iran is holding and intensively grilling three suspects who entered the country from Azerbaijan to discover their role in the mid-August explosion of the power lines to the underground uranium enrichment site at Fordo, debkafile’s exclusive Iranian sources reveal. Tehran is also questioning the engineers, planners and company heads who built the facility to find out why it was not provided with an independent power generator, an omission which exposed the plant to sabotage. Cutting off Fordo's power also disarmed its security system. 

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.

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.

US, Iranian and Israel planners have moved past discussion on whether Israel can be prevented from attacking Iran before the November election and are now talking about their various versions of a second strike option, which all agree will be more devastating than the first.

Iran has found a big hole in the Western sanctions regimen, Oman’s Musandam Peninsula, which channels to Iran all the goods denied the Islamic Republic under sanction.

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?

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