Tehran has developed four systems for beating sanctions, including hawala, smuggling, recruiting ex-pats and big power help – except for the hard-hitting fuel penalties which bite deep. Certain that the next round of nuclear talks with the world powers will fail, Iran imposed austerity measures to build itself a ...

While offering Washington its good services,Turkey is taking advantage of US trust to deepen its ties with Iran, its superpower status for the Muslim world and its plans for a new anti-American Muslim bloc.

Nuclear Energy Commission Director Ali Akhbar Salehi was appointed Iran's new foreign minister Monday, Dec. 13 – while renewed nuclear diplomacy was in midstream - to make sure the Six World Powers understood that Tehran was determined to go full speed ahead with its nuclear weapon program and would give no quarter in its drive to evict US influence from the Middle East and Arab world. Manoucher Mottaki learned he had been dropped while on an official tour of Africa.

The Palestinians believe they can use international misfortunes to fast-forward their national goals. They watch US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu grappling with political woes and the European Union in a life-and-death struggle to save the euro and at least five economies from falling off a cliff edge. Seeing a big chance for gain, Palestinian lead negotiator Saeb Erekat has produced the astonishing new figure of 7 million refugees whom Israel must accept.

Moscow has not only accepted the West's conviction that Iran is aiming for a nuclear bomb, but is ready for the ultimate penalty of an air and sea blockade against Tehran. Washington is looking behind Russia's change of face for ulterior motives.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has quietly warned that North Korea is using its crisis with the South to cover up its planned transfer to Iran of nuclear weapons systems parts and extra-fast centrifuges for uranium enrichment that could help Tehran go into bomb production in the first half of 2011, debkafile's sources report. He has asked pro-Western Persian Gulf leaders to try and persuade President Barack Obama to take strong military action against North Korea to abort delilvery.

Washington rebuffed Japanese pressure for joint military action in retaliation for the North Korea's Nov. 23 artillery attack on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong – or even build up its fighting forces on the peninsula – if only to deter more attacks. Two South Korean marines were killed and 17 soldiers and 3 civilians injured as the island's buildings went up in flames.  Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan's demand for an urgent UN Security Council session was also spurned.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev were persuaded by the betrayal of 10 Russian sleeper agents in America and the capture of the Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout that the time had come to reform Russia's spy agencies.

The package Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has accepted for US-sponsored talks with the Palestinians contains more substantial concessions than merely a freeze on settlement construction and goes far beyond the deal put before the security cabinet Saturday night, Nov. 13, debkafile reports from Jerusalem and Washington. The deal unveiled in Jerusalem early Sunday is only stage one of a larger secret package to which only Netanyahu and his close adviser Yithzak Molho are privy.

The Israeli prime minister is keeping under his hat a series of secret negotiations in Amman, Jordan, at which dramatic progress has been made in five key areas of contention with the Palestinians. The key to one problem would be the deployment of Jordanian troops on the Jordan River's ...

Direct Israeli-Palestinian talks, interrupted in September after less than a week, will resume in January, 2011 following a quiet deal between the US, Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, debkafile's sources disclose. Obama administration officials are upbeat after four new developments unsnarled the gridlock. Most significantly, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu agreed to a second, partial settlement building freeze and Mahmoud Abbas to drop a bid for UN recognition of unilateral statehood.

Yemeni president Abdullah Ali Saleh refused Saturday night, Oct. 30, to allow Washington to land US special forces in Al Gouf, 140 kilometers south of Sanaa the capital, DEBKA counter-terror sources reveal. Based there, according to US and Saudi intelligence, is Ibrahim Hassan Al Asiri, the Saudi who masterminded the al Qaeda (AQAP) plot to plant explosive packages aboard cargo flights bound for the United States. There too is Al Qaeda's main fighting base in Yemen with a network of terror planners and bomb makers.

A broadening multinational investigation seeks to probe the scale of the al Qaeda air freight plot causing mayhem in the international cargo freight system on the assumption that the threat is still viable. Yemen, to which two explosive parcels bound for Chicago synagogues were traced, itself seized more than 30 suspect parcels. Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh claims to have arrested a woman in Sanaa suspected of sending the explosive packages. debkafile's sources question his ability to challenge al Qaeda's infrastructure.