As Moscow prepares to block strong UN Security Council condemnation of Syrian violence against protest, Russian diplomats Monday, Aug. 1, launched a quiet effort to start freezing sanctions imposed on Iran over its military nuclear program in return for Tehran satisfactorily answering the International nuclear watchdog's "questions and concerns," debkafile's Moscow and Washington sources report.
Iranian Foreign Minister Saeed Jalili visits Moscow Aug. 17. Washington is standing by for results.

Early Monday Aug. 1, undeterred by international condemnation, President Bashar Assad broadened his bloody tank assault to all of northern Syria – a 20,000 square kilometer area almost the size of Israel. He is now waging war on the 3.5 million inhabitants of Hama, Deir al-Zour, Homs, Idlib, Ar-Raqqah and Abu Kemal, after inflicting a one-day death toll Sunday of 150 – 120 in Hama, 30 in Deir el-Zur and more than 1,000 injured.
Syrian armored forces are running into heavy resistance, increasing desertions.

President Bashar Assad and his brother Maher, who leads the crackdown on protest, are not talking. Their Alawite sect is withdrawing its support and the clergy spurn the regime's demand to keep the crowds off the streets during Ramadan, during which the opposition plans nightly anti-Assad rallies.

The Iraqi Prime Minister's delay in confirm his deal with US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta for an American military nucleus to remain in Iraq after the pullout persuaded the US official to cut a back-up deal with semi-autonomous Kurdistan to provide the US army and air force with ...

The motley group which two weeks ago set up a "tent city"to protest the unavailability of affordable housing has assumed attributes of the Arab uprisings: It enjoys backstage foreign political support - some from certain circles in Washington; it exploits genuine popular grievances for political capital; it wants regime change, namely, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's head - and is building up to achieve this as the UN votes on Palestinian statehood. A new government will then recognize Palestine within 1967 borders.

Iranian intelligence experts in Damascus have been disrupting the Syrian opposition movement's telephone and Internet links with the outside world and among fellow-protesters in the country. In the last two weeks, the US and Saudi Arabia have smuggled thousands of satellite phones into Syria for opposition activists. This also allows them to continue to transit images of Syrian brutality, debkafile reports.
A new Saudi-funded TV station representing the Syrian opposition began broadcasting on July 19.

Jordan's King Abdullah II was warned in Washington this week to hurry up and introduce political reforms because a revolt against the throne was knocking at his door from neighboring Syria, debkafile's Washington sources report.  US intelligence updates informed him the threat came from the potential spillover of the tumult rocking Syria. If that happened, Israel would have to decide whether to step in to save the Hashemite throne as well as preventing the unrest infecting West Bank Palestinians and Israeli Arabs communities.

The theory is gaining ground on both sides of the Atlantic that the phone hacking scandal besetting Rupert Murdoch's London media is really aimed at infecting his mass media in the US and toning down their anti-Obama slant in the coming presidential election. British premier David Cameron takes serious ...

The Obama administration is willingly handing the diplomatic lead for ending the Libyan crisis to Moscow having concluded that America no longer commands the resources for carrying global burdens on its own. Muammar Qaddafi, supported by Russia and Africa, will insist on staying in power until the agreed transition ...

Syrian President Bashar Assad sees his military crackdown of dissent beating hopelessly against a brick wall, and increasing American covert intervention against him, army desertions and signs of civil war. Yet he continues to send his tanks and guns against a rising tide of protest.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan wants to visit Gaza next Sunday or Monday (24-25 July), debkafile reports. But both Turkish and Egyptian security services fear the visit would give the al Qaeda cells based in the Gaza Strip and Sinai a chance to assassinate him. Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas maintains it would amount to de facto Turkish and Egyptian recognition of the Hamas government. And in Jerusalem, Erdogan would appear to be deliberately hampering efforts to heal its rift with Ankara.

In its coming issue out Friday, DEBKA-Net-Weekly analyzes expectations from the negotiations already afoot (amid violence and setbacks) between Muammar Qaddafi, on one side, and the US, Russia, NATO and the rebels, on the other. Still in control of Libya's army, biggest tribes, cities and oil, Qaddafi will loom large over Libya's future - even after he steps down.
The stalling of the Arab Revolt's spread obliges the US, Britain and France to reassess their Middle East positions.

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New US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki quietly agree to at least 15,000 US troops remaining in Iraq after 2011in the guise of diplomats and other civilian personnel with America keeping control of four big air bases – two of them facing Iran. The Iraqi ...

The Pakistani and US intelligence chiefs met in Washington to ease the strains between their governments. Their effort faced a mission impossible in view of the Saudi effort to distance Islamabad from its ties with Washington and strengthen the Taliban as the backbone of a future international Sunni militia.

Tuesday July 12, the day French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Afghanistan and stated that a quarter of France's 4,000-strong contingent would be pulled out by the end of 2012,  Afghan President Hamid Karzai's half-brother, Kandahar strongman Ahmad Wali,was shot dead by a bodyguard. This was no coincidence, debkafile's sources note: Taliban was again refuting the accounts of the situation in Afghanistan presented by US, British and French leaders as having little resemblance to reality.

Monday, July 11, after a pro-Assad mob invaded the US embassy in Damascus, a personal attack on Syrian President Bashar Assad was heard in Washington for the first time. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Assad "is not indispensible and we have absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power," after US embassy staff were forced to shelter in a fortified wing of the mission as Assad's militiamen rampaged through the building and raised the Syrian flag.

Western and Israeli intelligence missed Iran's spectacular nuclear fast-forward by miscalculating its timelines. It now appears that by 2012, Tehran will have around four-to-six bombs or warheads in stock and have tested ICBMs for their delivery. Uranium enrichment will be raised to 60 percent by relocating the plants from Natanz ...

American Jewish leaders visiting Jerusalem this summer are giving the Israeli prime minister all kinds of advice – some say quietly back Republican hopeful Jon Huntsman but both advise him to stay clear of the presidential race because the odds still back Barack Obama.

Al Qaeda is carving out a roomy operations base in South Yemen, while Iranian Al Qods officers are helping Houthi rebels take over the north. Talks with the opposition are at an impasse as President Ali Abdullah Saleh, still recuperating in Riyadh from an attempt on his life, insists ...

The latest DEBKA-Net-Weekly out Friday uncovered Iran's surreptitious leaps and bounds toward a home-made nuclear weapon. Tehran has not only executed four nuclear-capable missile tests, but actually constructed a nuclear warhead prototype.
This issue showed how Tehran has crossed every red line set by the West against Iran acquiring nuclear arms by furtively exploiting the months of furious Arab unrest for high speed, undisturbed progress. Western and Israeli intelligence are now waking up to some unpleasant surprises.

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