Israeli officials have held talks in Jordan with Syrian opposition officials “in advance of a possible Israeli-US operation in Syria to protect the Golan Heights,” Western intelligence sources reported Tuesday, Jan. 1. There was no further information about this operation. The goings-on on the Israeli and Jordanian borders with Syria are officially blacked out. But European intelligence sources reveal nightly border clashes between US, Jordanian, Israeli special forces and Syrian rebels, on the one hand, and Syrian special forces, on the other.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu agreed to a ceasefire for halting the eight-day Gaza operation Wednesday night, Nov. 21, after President Barack Obama personally pledged to start deploying US troops in Egyptian Sinai next week. He said President Morsi had consented to the incoming troops going into immediate action against the Iranian smuggling networks. This means that the Gaza blockade is extended and the focus of combat moves from Gaza to Sinai. 

Special operations units of the Iranian army and Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Tuesday, May 14, began a two-day practice of offensive tactics, for the first time dropping large-scale forces from the air deep behind enemy lines. The many war games Iran has conducted until now focused on defenses of strategic and nuclear locations and repelling invaders. It began on the same day as the US-led multination nation special forces exercise in Jordan and was staged deliberately near the Afghan border.

Beset on two fronts, Bashar Assad rushed his elite Presidential Guard to Damascus Thursday, May 10, as two massive car bombs demolished the command center of the Syrian military security service’s reconnaissance division in the al Qaza district killed 55 people and injured more than 300. Over to the southeast, debkafile reports 12,000 special operations troops from 17 nations, including the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are poised on the Jordanian side of the Syrian border.

Expanded Russian military support for the Assad regime was underscored by the deployment Friday, Dec. 16, of advanced Moscow-supplied Yakhont (SSN-26) shore-to-sea missiles along Syria's Mediterranean shore to fend off a potential invasion by sea. Last week, Russia airlifted to Syria 3 million face masks against chemical and biological weapons; and the Admiral Kutznetsov strike group headed out to Syria's Mediterranean port of Tartus. US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in Ankara; Syrian Vice President Farouk a-Shara in Moscow.

A suicide bomber blew up a truck packed with 9,000 kilograms of explosives at the entrance to a NATO Combat Outpost Sayed Abad base in central Afghanistan's Wardak province Saturday, Sept. 10. The attack took place as America marked the 10th anniversary of 9/11and New York and Washington DC were on terror alert for a vehicle-borne strike.

The base targeted serves US Special Forces in Afghanistan. The truck bomb injured at least 89 US servicemen.

The White House is fighting a losing battle for credibility: Its first statements on the special forces' raid which killed the al Qaeda leader in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2 are proving incorrect: Washington has been forced to admit that bin Laden was not armed when he was killed and his wife was not used as a human shield. This further fuels Arab-Muslim skepticism about the affair, especially with Pakistan actively challenging the US version with the help of the survivors in its custody.

And what's next for al Qaeda?  The latest  DEBKA-Net-Weekly out Friday dispels some of the fog around the killing of Osama bin Laden by a US special force - such as: Why now? Where were his bodyguards? What was he doing with five computers, 100 storage devices and no gun?
This issue also laid out information on al Qaeda's next steps and answers another question: Where to look for its dead leader's avengers?
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A wealth of revelations on the undercover wars waged by the US and Britain in their separate interests on both sides of the Libyan uprising. Muammar Qaddafi, too, has a state of the art system of espionage, eavesdropping and assassins in place. Al Qaeda, too, has looking for pickings ...