President Morsi’s respect for the peace treaty with Israel and respect for minority and religious rights will determine whether he is received at the White House, gains the $1.5 bn US aid package, and its help in releasing funds to buy food for the population.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has often before exploited his many medical problems for manipulation. Although “enjoying” ill health, he is very much in control of affairs of state in the Islamic Republic, although a crop of would-be successors are waiting in the wings for him to go. The radicals have a profound interest in keeping Iran's nuclear program, his pet project, afloat after he is gone, and are exploiting gossip about his ill health to speed matters up.

The high point of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s noteworthy 90-minute talk with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem Monday, June 25, was Putin’s firm assurance that Iran would not get a nuclear bomb. He stressed it would be against Russian interests, debkafile reports exclusively. “We [Russians] know more about what is going on with Iran’s (nuclear) capabilities than the Americans,” he said, indicating that Israel would be better served spending in Moscow some of the time taken up by endless palaver with the Americans.

 

Al Qaeda infiltrators from Libya are spearheading much of this month’s anti-Israel violence from Sinai and the Gaza Strip - a dangerous development Israel, Hamas, Egypt and the US prefer to conceal. It appears to tie in with the arrival of al Qaeda’s ex-Iraq fighters in Syria as part of its leader's master plan. Deeply concerned to check the spillover from Libya into Egypt, Cairo has posted its elite counter-terrorist “999 unit” in El Arish, on Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip and along the northern sector of its frontier with Israel.

The combination of lawless Sinai under the control of Bedouin bands, al Qaeda and Salafist militias and Cairo ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood is the recipe for strife between Israel and Egypt.

At a particularly sensitive moment in Israeli-Egyptian relations, Israel’s military leaders were caught napping by the June 18 terrorist attack from Sinai on the southern Route 10, in which an Israeli fence team worker was killed. Because they were too slow to catch on to the identity of the perpetrators (al Qaeda), those military chiefs aimed their reprisals at the wrong quarters (Hamas and Jihad Islami) and so set off a three-day, still ongoing missile-for-air strike cycle in Gaza.
Egyptian liaison officers meanwhile refuse to meet Israeli commanders.

Islamist candidate Muhammad Mursi did not wait for the ballots to be counted before proclaiming himself President of Egypt. Shafiq’s protest that final results were not in was drowned out by street celebrations preparing the masses to confirm the Brotherhood win. The Netanyahu government did not oppose Obama’s policy of bringing Muslims to power through the ballot box and now faces Moslem adversaries from a strategic pit. To recover its deterrent effectiveness, Israel must dismantle Iran’s nuclear program by force.

Egypt’s transitional military government assumes legislative powers after the constitutional court Thursday, June 14, dissolved parliament because one-third of its seats were gained illegally in an election which handed two Islamist parties a majority. Egyptians found they face a new general election two days before they vote in the presidential runoff.  The court also ruled that Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s last prime minister, would stay in the presidential race.

Col. Adam Zusman, Home Front Commander of Israel’s Dan region told AFP Tuesday, June 12, "In case of a missile attack on the centre of Israel, especially unconventional attacks and if buildings are destroyed, the population from Tel Aviv and other cities will be evacuated and relocated in other areas of the country."  The first Israeli official to speak openly of this prospect, he did not say to where the roughly three million inhabitants of Tel Aviv and its environs would be relocated. The threat came from Iran and its allies, he said..

Tehran early Sunday June 10 accused Syrian rebels of arming themselves with chemical weapons originating in Libya and acquiring training in their use - sending shudders of alarm through the West and Israel. They fear the Assad regime is preparing the ground for chemical assaults to finally crush its foes. Both sides to the conflict are talking about chemical warfare openly. If they go through with it, President Barack Obama will have to reconsider non-intervention and turn to limited force to stop the escalating horror.

Not all is dandy in the cyber war collaboration between the US and Israel. Since Stuxnet, Iran has made strides in its cyber war capabilities and attained a level largely unknown to Western intelligence.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Baku, Azerbaijan Wednesday, June 6, amid Ali Khamenei and Vladimir Putin’s deep disapproval of President Ilam Aliyav’s pro-Western orientation and fast-growing ties with Israel. Frictions center on Baku’s $1.6 billion arms transaction with Israel and even more, debkafile reports, on the fact that the deal is matched by expanding Azerbaijani investment in Israel’s Mediterranean gas and oil projects. This tradeoff is marked for expansion.

As Syrian ruler Bashar Assad stood before parliament in Damascus Sunday, June 3, declaring, “Not even monsters could have carried out the Houla massacre,” rebels attacked a Syrian Air Force base east of the southern town of Deraa opposite the Israeli Golan border – their first such attack in the 14-month uprising, debkafile’s military sources report. Several rebel teams firing mortars set fire to fighter aircraft and assault helicopters in their hangars at the As Suwayda air base and ripped up runways.

Two radical developments arising from the Syrian conflict are revealed by debkafile: In an astonishing about face, Turkey has abandoned its 14-month support for the Syrian revolt alongside the West and made common cause with Russia, i.e. Bashar Assad.  Further exacerbating fears of a “proxy war” involving Israel, Iran and Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah is preparing to transfer its Scud D missiles, capable of hitting any point in Israel, from Syria to Lebanon. Israel has threatened to stop their crossing by force.

Obama has come up with yet another seven-point plan for breaking down Iran’s resistance to abandoning its nuclear weapon aspirations. This time he believes it will work, after obtaining Iran’s consent. Our experts are skeptical.

US President Barack Obama, widely expected to pursue direct action against Syrian ruler Bashar following the Houla atrocity, is preoccupied with what he regards as the greater threat to the world: a potential grab for the huge Syrian stock of chemical and biological weapons by Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, to prevent which, debkafile reports, he has reached out to Russian President Vladimir Putin with a fresh plan for Syria: 5,000 international monitors, most Russian, to guard those stocks.

The rupture between the US and Israel over Iran’s nuclear program widened further Friday, May 25  when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were not available to hear the briefing brought to Jerusalem from Baghdad by Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman who headed the US delegation to the Six Power talks. She confirmed no progress due to Iran’s refusal to give way on enrichment. The IAEA discloses Iran doubled its 20-percent enriched uranium since February to 145 kgs.

After three months of exploring every possible diplomatic channel to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program, Obama enlisted Moscow’s help for getting messages to and from Tehran. But meanwhile his diplomatic network had become a maze in which the Baghdad talks lost their objective.

Iran is alarmed by Azerbaijan’s soaring trade relations with Israel, its ambitions to expand into Mediterranean oil and gas through Israel and large arms purchases from the Jewish state.

Israel has withdrawn its pledge to US President Barack Obama not to strike Iran’s nuclear sites before the November presidential election after he rejected its minimal demands for the nuclear negotiations with Iran. This is reported exclusively by debkafile as the Six-Power talks with Iran in Baghdad drag into a second day on Thursday, May 24. Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned Wednesday: “No one has to tell us what to do [or not to do]. All options are on the table.”