Jerusalem insisted Monday that no Cairo notification had been received of the arrest of dual US-Israeli citizen Ilan Grapel as an alleged Israeli spy, while Washington is checking to see if any word came through. Western intelligence circles suggest Egypt may have preferred to "find" a Mossad spy even if they suspected him of working undercover for other Western organizations. debkafile: The US and Israel are seeking his quick release before agitation against an alleged fomenter of Muslim-Coptic strife makes this impossible.

The first Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood delegation ever has been allowed to visit the Gaza Strip and meet Palestinian Hamas leaders. An unparalleled wave of anti-Israeli venom in Cairo coincided with the delegation's arrival Sunday, June 12: a "Mossad officer" was accused of plotting to sabotage the Egyptian revolution and "inciting sectarian violence" against Copts; Israel was charged with contaminating farm products for Egyptian consumption and former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon implicated in ex-President Hosni Mubarak's "corrupt" gas transaction.

For more than 15 years, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, 38, slithered out of every US and Israeli undercover operation to nab him, often with minutes to spare. This week, his luck turned:The Somali sentries who shot him dead at a roadblock outside Mogadishu had no idea who he was.debkafile:The passing of this highly competent terrorist mastermind leaves al Qaeda's branch in East and the Horn of Africa and Somalia high and dry.

After the Americans drove Israel security contractors and the Mossad out of Abu Dhabi, the Ofer Brothers thought their business dealings through Palestinian middlemen were safe. US sanctions opened their eyes to this miscalculation.

Iran struck another blow in its nuclear offensive against the world: Wednesday, atomic chief Fereydoon Abbasi Davani said Iran's 20-percent uranium enrichment would be transferred from Natanz to Fordo near Qom this summer. Improved centrifuges would triple purification capacity. debkafile's military sources report that this move will substantially shorten Iran's road to weapons grade uranium of 90 percent. The Fordo facility, burrowed deep in a mountainside and protected by anti-air missiles, is all but invulnerable to air attack.

The deployment of Iranian "military submarines" in the Red Sea, announced Tuesday June 7, was Tehran's response to the latest International Atomic Energy Agency's report accusing Iran of nuclear work with "possible military purposes." It was also a pointed comment on the controversy in Israel over whether or not to go for the military option. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad then delivered his most uncompromising statement yet on Iran's nuclear program, calling it "a train with no brakes or reverse gear."

Syrian President Bashar Assad's security machine is creaking judging by its failure to raise thousands of Palestinian and Syrian volunteers to brave the Israeli troops manning the Golan Sunday, June 5. debkafile's intelligence sources reveal that even the few hundred willing to turn out demanded an exorbitant fee: $1,000 for every demonstrator who cut a piece of razor wire from the Israeli border fence and $10,000 for the families of volunteers shot by Israeli troops before they reached their goal.

Israel border units went on night alert Sunday, June 5 after a day spent beating back hundreds of Syrian-Palestinians attempting to storm the Golan border. Syrian TV reported a sit-in protest, claiming Israeli fire killed 20 people and injured 150 injured in round after round of assaults. Twice they breached the fortified border fence at Majd al Shams and Kuneitra but refrained from stepping across. Israeli troops arrested three would-be intruders. Sunday night, Israeli troops were attacked from behind by Majd al-Shams residents hurling rocks. 

Two unforeseen events Friday, June 3 rekindled Syrian protests with full force - just as Syrian President Bashar Assad was preparing to celebrate the suppression of the uprising against his regime with active Iranian and Hizballah help: The leaders of the Syrian opposition-in-exile meeting in Antalya under Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's aegis struck a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood which brought 100,000 Brotherhood loyalists back on the streets in Hama and evoked a fresh bloodbath.

By April 2011, Iran had accumulated a quantity of U-235 that can be enriched in short order to sufficient 90 percent (weapons grade) uranium to fuel four nuclear bombs - and attained "virtual" nuclear weapon state. This was revealed by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, America's scientific watchdog on world nuclear weapons production, in its June 2 report.  By breaking the IAEA seal at the Natanz enrichment plant, Iran gained another 6-7 months for concealing the work there.

Just four days after the much-heralded opening of the Rafah crossing between the Palestinian Gaza Strip and Sinai, Cairo virtually shut it down Tuesday, May 31, by a series of tight bureaucratic measures in response to a US warning that since the crossing's opening, Palestinian and al Qaeda terrorists had been roaming at large across Sinai exposing the Suez Canal to attack. After the US informed Jerusalem of the new restrictions, an Israeli defense official arrived in Cairo to discuss security coordination.

Updates reaching debkafile's military sources say that Hamas had stockpiled more than 10,000 by early May – in defiance of Israel's partial blockade of the Gaza Strip. Following April 9, when the Palestinian extremists shot 133 rockets at seven Israeli cities, Egypt's military rulers persuaded Israel to accept a ceasefire in lieu of an operation for smashing this arsenal. By September, when Egypt holds elections that Hamas' parent the Muslim Brotherhood is heavily tipped to win, Hamas will have accumulated 11,000 missiles. 

Egyptian authorities plan to follow up on the permanent opening of the Gaza Strip Rafah crossing Saturday, May 28 - so ending its four-year siege - by liquidating EMG (the East Mediterranean Gas Company) and halting the supply of Egyptian gas to Israel.
Both are violations of Egypt's international commitments and both meet the demands of the Palestinian Hamas. They are also consistent with Cairo's post-revolutionary rulers' policy to distance themselves from the former peace relations with Israel.

US President Barack Obama corrected the harsh impression Israel gained from his May 19 Middle East speech in one of the most pro-Israeli addresses ever delivered by an American president. He explained to the 11,000 delegates at the AIPAC conference Sunday, May 22 that the final Israeli-Palestinian borders would differ from the 1967 lines because of the "mutually agreed swaps" he had also advocated.  The US president thus addressed the cardinal objection raised insistently by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Army and security services across the West Bank are out hunting for between five and eight Syria and Hizballah secret agents believed to have slipped across the Golan border under cover of the May 15 Palestinian mob incursion. debkafile's sources report that Hamas and Hizballah West Bank cell members drove them to their hideouts.
Syria plans its next mob border assault for June 5. Hamas is staging a mass offensive to smash the Gaza-Israel border fence Friday, May 20.

debkafile reports exclusively that President Barack Obama is ready to stamp down hard on Syrian President Bashar Assad in person for his inhuman crackdown on protest and the massacre of hundreds of dissenters. After five mass graves were found near Deraa, Obama may announce sanctions against the Syrian president even before his May 19 speech on US relations with Middle East Muslim nations, as well as recalling Ambassador Robert Ford from Damascus. Syria has threatened to hit back at Israel.

Syria's Bashar Assad and Hizballah had more than one objective in bussing thousands of demonstrators to Israel's Golan border Nakba Day, Sun. May 15. One was to show they could easily capture the enclave from Israel and the other, to put a spoke in Egypt's wheel for transferring Hamas' command centers from Damascus to the Gaza Strip. Israeli policymakers failed to appreciate this intelligence and so the IDF's Northern Command officers were taken off guard by the storming of Majd al-Shams.

On Sunday, May 15, Israel's enemies breached three of its borders – Syrian, Lebanese and Gazan - in an operation that caught its government, army and intelligence napping. Their reaction showed them to be muddled and incapable of an organized, rational tactical response to a multiple security crisis. The blanket directive to exercise "maximum restraint,"  a weakness which Tehran, Damascus, Beirut and Ramallah will have noted, paves the way for the next Syrian step – a military and terrorist offensive to "liberate the Golan."

Aviv Morag, 29, from Caesaria was killed shortly before his marriage and 17 people were injured - two in serious condition - after being run down by an Israeli Arab, 22, from Kafr Qassem in Tel Aviv, Sunday, May 15. The killer's truck swerved left and right along 2 kilometers of busy road in South Tel Aviv. After knocking over a traffic light, the driver jumped out and shouting Allah Akhbar! used the pieces to beat passers-by who eventually overpowered him.

Thursday, May 5, Israel augmented the units deployed on its border with Syria and the intersection of the Israel-Syria-Jordan frontiers in the Har Dov area against the spate of tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in flight from President Bashar Assad's bloody crackdown in Damascus and the Daraa region. The UN force on the Golan Heights – UNDOF – is likewise beefing up the contingents policing Israeli-Syrian ceasefire lines. Some, turned away at Turkish, Jordanian and Lebanese borders, are heading for Israel.