Tehran is seeking a postponement of the nuclear negotiations with world powers set for April 13-14 in Istanbul, debkafile’s Iranian sources report. Washington and Jerusalem see Iran’s maneuvers as guided by two objectives: Having the venue removed from Istanbul and buying a couple more months before the diplomatic crunch - and so delaying any military option that Israel or possibly America may choose to exercise if last-chance diplomacy fails.  Russian rhetoric targets the US military and naval buildup around Iran.

Not 24 hours after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that a pre-emptive strike (by the US and/or Israel) would violate international law, Moscow put muscle into his warning: Tuesday, April 3, the Russian guided missile destroyer Smetliviy arrived in the Syrian port of Tartus for a naval exercise. The ship, which carries anti-air, anti-ship and anti-submarine missiles, will hold drills with its support vessels in the same expanse of E. Mediterranean as the US-Israeli-Greek “Noble Dina” exercise.

Iran, Syria and Hizballah are celebrating Assad’s victory over the 12-month uprising against him and counting the advantages it confers on Tehran against the US and Saudi Arabia. The Iran-Syria-Hizballlah axis is now successfully shored up against the Obama administration’s strategy of isolation and sanctions for squeezing Iran into making concessions at the nuclear negotiations in two weeks.  Both are fading. It also serves as a warning to those Israelis who advocate passing the buck for preempting a nuclear Iran to Washington.

The most violent event of Palestinian-backed Earth Day Friday, March 30, was a battle around the Gaza-Israeli Erez crossing between Israeli forces and snipers of the Iran-backed Palestinian Jihad Islami, debkafile reports. The Jihad shooters were laying down fire to cover a mass Palestinian rush on the Israeli border so as to force Israeli soldiers to shoot into the crowd.  Intervention by Hamas internal security personnel helped IDF defuse the incident with one casualty. A planned or a spontaneous collaboration?

Despite Israeli warnings, the Palestinian Authority is for the first time making the annual Israeli-Arab Earth Day Friday, March 30 a joint Palestinian-Israel Arab event, organizing mass anti-Israel disturbances in Jerusalem, Jaffa and other places, while also instigating West Bankers to smash through Israeli border checkpoints. Syria too will bus thousands of Palestinians to storm Israel’s northern border on the Golan. Both also aim to shake up the Arab summit in Baghdad. The PA is broke after Arab aid was cut off.

After Binyamin Netanyahu was assured of an inner cabinet majority for a strike on Iran, he sent Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz to Washington with a clear timeline for attacking Iran. Three months are left to stop Iran’s nuclearization in its tracks, after which Israel will strike.

US President Barack Obama hauled Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas over the coals when they talked by phone Monday, March 19. He coldly demanded that the Palestinians return without further delay to the talks in the Jordanian capital of Amman which they quit abruptly after several rounds. Their conversation ended on a harsh note when Abbas refused to return to negotiations.
Monday, Palestinian ex-prime minister Ahmad Qurai (Abu Ala) proclaimed the death of the two-state solution in an Al Quds article.

Two car bomb attacks on Air Force Intelligence and Security Police Headquarters in Damascus killed at least 27 people and wounded 97 Saturday, March 17. A third bomb exploded on a bus carrying members of the pro-Iranian Palestinian Liberation Army in the Al Yarmouk suburb.
debkafile: As well as Syria and the Gaza Strip, Iran’s hand links a widening circle of Middle East violence. Russian technicians man the Pantsyr-1 air and missile defense batteries shielding Syria from foreign intervention.

Israel Thursday night, March 15, gave Egypt and Hamas two days to halt the five-day missile offensive from Gaza or expect IDF action against the shooters. debkafile reports that the missile operation has been taken over by a small group of Salafi Palestinians linked to al Qaeda. And Hamas leader Mahmoud A-Zahar is currently visiting Tehran and being urged by his Iranian hosts to block a ceasefire so as draw the Israeli military into a messy showdown with the Salafis.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood secretly turned to mending its fences with Iran on the back of the Israeli-Palestinian clash over the Gaza Strip using Hamas as go-between. The Sunni Brotherhood, the dominant political force in post-Mubarak Egypt, decided two weeks ago to forge ties with Shiite Iran, causing a major upset for United States and Israeli ...

Israel used the Gaza missile war to test and improve three new systems. The brief campaign occasioned the most extensive cyber war Israel has ever conducted, as well giving a new intelligence command and control system its first field test and marking out the many gaps in the big cities' defenses against ...

Iran and Russia both won ground on the Syrian battlefield at America’s expense with this week’s Assad victory over rebels in Idlib, say DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s strategic analysts in its next issue out Friday.  The indecisive way the Israeli confrontation with Iran’s Palestinian proxy Jihad Islami wound down also added points to Tehran - and Moscow less directly - after Washington backed away from the Gaza episode and Israel threw in the sponge. These players were testing the ground for a possible Israeli-Iranian clash.
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Six mortar rounds exploded on empty ground in the Eshkol farm district abutting on the Gaza Strip shortly before Tuesday March 13 noon, less than 12 hours after Cairo announced a ceasefire. debkafile reports Palestinian organizations, including Hamas, are resolved to keep up a low level of fire on Israeli civilian locations so as to establish their prerogative for shooting at will regardless of any ceasefire deals. Israel is apt to accept this arrangement to avoid a head-on clash.

Top Iranian and Hizballah missile experts posted in Gaza at Hamas and Jihad Islami HQ went to work Sunday, March 11, to puzzle out counter-measures for disarming the Iron Dome. For the Palestinian Jihad’s operation to be counted a success, its mobile multiple Grad launchers must bring devastation and multiple fatalities to an important Israeli town. This goal has eluded the Palestinian extremists after 160 rockets in three days - thanks to the Iron Dome interceptor posted in three key cities.

A special intelligence assessment listing the prospects and risk of the various options for Ayatollah Khamenei conclude that Barack Obama will not hazard an attack on Iran before the November election but if he is returned to the White House he will go to war early in 2013. The ...

Washington suspects Saudi Arabia and Israel have revived their intelligence cooperation. The Obama administration will bend over backwards to prevent Israel using Saudi or other Gulf bases for an attack on Iran, even to providing refueling planes for Israeli bombers conducting the attack.

The US Pentagon and Israel’s high command are taking Tehran’s threat of preemptive action with the utmost seriousness as changing the rules of the standoff. It was issued to provide Iran with grounds for claiming international legitimacy for any preemptive military action launched against Israel or American targets as ...

Tehran this week hardened its nuclear and military policies regardless of forthcoming international nuclear talks. The threat by Iran’s armed forces deputy chief Gen. Mohammad Hejazi of a preemptive strike against its “enemies,” was accompanied by its refusal to allow UN nuclear watchdog inspectors to visit the Parchin facility, following which the IAEA chief cut their mission short. The transfer of 20 percent uranium enrichment to Fordo is estimated to have shortened Iran’s race for weapons grade material to six weeks.

Iran continues to behave as though it is calling the shots. The first formal announcement of the resumption of Iran-world powers nuclear talks (confirming debkafile’s exclusive) came from its Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Selahi who Sunday, Feb. 19, named the venue as Istanbul, Turkey. Saturday, two Iranian warships got away with delivering arms for Bashar Assad’s crackdown without US or Israeli interference. They docked at Tartus port Saturday alongside a Russian naval flotilla, symbolizing their joint effort to preserve Assad.

US President Barack Obama is convinced that the resumed international nuclear negotiations he has worked hard to set up will not only avert war but lay to rest once and for all the problem of Iran’s nuclear bomb program. But the imminence of Iranian talks with world powers has already had the negative effects of sparking a wave of Iranian terror against Israeli overseas targets and seriously devaluing sanctions, debkafile reports. Anyway, Tehran has no intention of yielding on its drive for nuclear arms.