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.

Israel and Britain are not on the same page, but both are smearing Iran for their own reasons: Netanyahu is concerned that sanctions against Iran will boost its urge to attack Israeli targets abroad, while the British fear the London Olympics of July 2012 will be targeted for joint ...

Shrugging off Western sanctions and Israeli recriminations, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad played a starring role in a widely televised spectacle by inserting his country’s first domestically-made fuel rod into the Tehran Research Reactor Wednesday, Feb. 15. The scene came after the announced cutoff of Iranian oil exports to six European countries - Netherlands, Spain, Italy, France, Greece and Portugal. Two hours later, the Iranian oil ministry challenged the announcement, spoiling the show by showing up differences in high regime ranks.

Israel's top IDF command is being reshuffled, tailored for the potential confrontation with Iran. When Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel takes over in May as Air Force chief, he will free the retiring AIF commander Maj. Gen. Ido Nehushtan to become Dep. Chief of Staff and bring his high technological ...

As the US and Israel continued to bicker over an attack on Iran, their war preparations continued apace. debkafile's military sources report that flight after flight of US warplanes and transports were seen cutting eastward over Sinai on their way to Gulf destinations, presumably Saudi Arabia, at a frequency not seen in the Middle East for many years. Sunday, Feb. 5, Alireza Forghani, strategic adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said, "It would only take nine minutes to wipe out Israel."

US President Barack Obama, by asserting Sunday, Feb. 5, he doesn't think Israel has decided whether to attack Iran, sought to keep Israel away from military action and set aside as a strategic reserve, while using its threat of attack to bring Iran to the table.  Monday, Feb. 6, Bashar Assad reportedly redoubled his deadly assault on Homs and, for the first time, Aleppo, taking advantage of the respite granted him by the Russian-Chinese veto. Syria is now a hub of the US-Iranian confrontation. 

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has been outspoken about a possible Israeli offensive being launched against Iran from April, but has not leveled about massive US war preparations. The question is no longer if armed hostilities are afoot, but when. Tehran too is gearing up with a new three-week "exercise" and calling allies to the flag, including Syria. There, the appalling bloodbath has reached a scale – 350 Saturday, Feb. 4 alone – which potentially rivals nuclear Iran as the trigger for a Middle East confrontation.

Israel's military (the IDF) is no longer hiding from view its preparations for an attack on Iran's nuclear program – most probably from the spring – and its expectation of armed hostilities erupting consequently on at least three fronts, Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas in Gaza. On Jan. ...