Al Qaeda and its affiliates have retired to five African and Middle East deserts as safe, remote launching pads for their re-energized campaign of terror in the Middle East and beyond.

Jerusalem is unhappy about Obama’s new appointments to his Middle East desks. They are uniformly anti-interventionist, anti-military engagement and unsympathetic to Israel’s security concerns.

Obama’s preoccupation with Iran and Syria was signaled by his green light for Israel’s air strike in Syria and the announcement of his coming visit to Israel for consultation with Binyamin Netanyahu on those subjects, leaving the peace process with the Palestinians for a later date. This change of ...

Middle East leaders note the absence of an American military foothold in any of the region’s trouble spots, be they Syria, Mali, Algeria or Yemen. Obama is seen to have stepped back from the Middle East and turned his face toward the Pacific.

The latest DEBKA-Net-Weekly out last Friday offers an expert forecast of how Barack Obama is approaching the region’s hot-button crises in his second term as US President. First, he will go for a “Grand Bargain” with Iran on its nuclear program – then, fast deals with Moscow and Beijing to cool the crises of a war-torn Syria, a burgeoning Muslim Brotherhood and a rampant al Qaeda. Will he keep US ties with Israel and other allies ambivalent? And will Obama diplomacy work better this time?
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Some Middle East nations, including the Persian Gulf and Israel, view with trepidation four more years of Barack Obama. They envisage the continued hitching of US regional influence on the Muslim world – Sunni and Shiite alike – through the acceptance of a nuclear Iran and the sponsorship of Muslim Brotherhood rule of Sunni Arab nations. Israel is caught in a vise between Iran, whose leaders call openly for Israel’s extinction, which is achievable only by nuclear aggression, and the hostile Muslim Brotherhood.

A plague on all your houses, says Vladimir Putin as he pulls Russia and its army away from escalating Middle East violence in consequence of the foreign intervention he anticipates in Syria and an attack on Iran. Russian arms deliveries are cut off to Iran and Syria.

Russian President Vladimir Putin started putting his plans for Russia to displace the US at key Middle East points at the Moscow nuclear talks and the G20 summit in Mexico where he enlisted China and Iran to defeat Washington’s plans. Starting out with a scheme of revenge for Libya, his ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin is in over-drive to recover Moscow’s overriding influence in the Arab world, which it lost to the United States in 1973. To roll the march of history back 39 years, Putin is enlisting China and Iran.  The latest DEBKA-Net-Weekly issue out last Friday focuses on Russia’s comeback and Barack Obama’s prospects of pushing it back, given his reliance on the sympathy of the Muslim Brotherhood and the backing of an unpopular Turkey and a systematically disempowered Israel.
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A new US intelligence position paper addressed to the Oval Office makes Tayyip Erdogan the linchpin of Obama’s Middle East and Iran policies after he showed the flag by accepting a US radar station, part of NATO’s anti-Iran missile shield. This won him a harsh dressing-down by ...

Extreme concern was quietly voiced Sunday, Dec. 18, by American and European official circles over the state of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's health – and especially its impact on present and impending events in Syria and other parts of the Middle East, including Iran, debkafile's Western intelligence sources report. Those sources say Erdogan is suffering from Rectosigmoid cancer. The prolonged treatment he needs is already affecting policy-making and has sparked the first signs of a power struggle within his ruling AKP party.
 

After failing in Libya, Russia's Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev are determined not to let Syria, Moscow's only strategic partner in the Middle East, slip out of their hands. If Bashar Assad can't be saved, Moscow wants to be sure Damascus does not fall completely under Western sway.

Regional leaders hope the US is ready for a fresh start to reestablish its influence after exiting Iraq. They count on an attack on Iran overturning the regimes in Tehran and Damascus although their rulers will fight to the death. NATO and Israel have embarked on joint maneuvers to ...

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned Israel of increasing isolation in the Middle East and said "Israeli leaders must restart negotiations with the Palestinians and work to restore relations with Egypt and Turkey." Before landing in Israel Monday, Oct. 3, he also said:“Real security can only be achieved by both a strong diplomatic effort as well as a strong effort to project your military strength.”
debkafile: Israel is paying the price for not striking Iran and for Washington's evolving ties with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Russia has threatened to freeze the "reset" ties with the United States, which recently produced valuable cooperation and friendly understandings between the two powers in vital global arenas. debkafile's Moscow sources report the areas most affected are likely to be the Israel-Palestinian dispute, Moscow's effort to broker an end to the Libyan war and the Russian supply route for US forces fighting in Afghanistan.
Moscow's ire was sparked by a US travel ban on officials implicated in the Magnitsky affair.

The rise of a new international Saudi Sunni Muslim army for combating Iranian expansion and the spread of the Arab Revolt is revealed in the latest issue of  DEBKA-Net-Weekly, out Friday. Saudi scouts are seriously hunting for volunteers.
Where will the new legionnaires train? And where will their bases be located?
This issue answers those questions and examines the Saudi initiative's impact on the Obama administration's Muslim and Arab policies and America's Middle East standing.
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By rejecting US President Barack Obama's proposal for Israel and its troops to pull back from the West Bank to behind the indefensible 1967 lines, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lands in the company of eleven Middle East and North African rulers who spurned Washington's Middle East policy in the six months of the unfolding Arab uprising.
In his speech Thursday, May 19, Obama strengthened those Arab rulers' determination to oppose his policy and increased the prospects of an Israel-Arab war.

In its latest issue out Friday, DEBKA-Net-Weekly outlines Muammar Qaddafi's war plans for his opponents – at home and abroad. With a war chest stuffed with petrodollars, the Libyan ruler is capable of venting his fury by making a bonfire of oil and gas pipelines and facilities across the Middle East.
This special issue also contained a behind-the-scenes survey of the crises bedeviling Middle East regimes or looming over them – with a close-up of Saudi Arabia.

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Moscow wants to get rid of the ME roadmap, Tony Blair and outdated peace tracks. Most of all, Russia seeks to unseat America as exclusive top dog in the region. A multilateral Middle East conference taking place in Moscow in February is designed to do just that.

The hand Putin is reaching out to Lebanon for a stake in potential Mediterranean gas and oil reserves may put Lebanon in hock to Moscow for decades to come finds his partner, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri on the edge of an abyss.