US diplomat Fred Hof is due in Beirut Thursday, Oct. 7, to try and get Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Lebanon cancelled. debkafile's sources say he is too late. With six days to go, Beirut and South Lebanon up to the Israeli border are Ahmadinejad-land, taken over by an estimated 2,500 airlifted Revolutionary Guardsmen and covered in Iranian flags.

At a secret meeting in Jeddah, top US and Saudi officials discussed a plan to airlift al Qaeda out of Afghanistan in order to free Taliban leader Mullah Omar to negotiate an end to the war and partial restoration of Taliban rule.

For now, there is no sign ...

Tony Blair has carved out for himself a role at Barack Obama's right hand and, uniquely for a non-American politician, climbed astonishingly to the top of the White House team of policy-makers, especially on the Middle East and Iran. His popularity in Washington is matched inversely by his falling ...

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was accused of breaking ranks with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's drive for a peace accord after he remarked Sunday, Sept. 5, that an Israeli-Palestinian peace would not come this year or even in the next generation. debkafile's sources disclose that Lieberman's words were adjusted to his discovery that Barack Obama expected no more of direct talks than an interim, long-term framework with vague, non-binding references to the core issues.

The Obama administration has sent Syrian president Bashar Assad a stern warning that he will be held personally accountable and face consequences if Israel and the Palestinian Authority are subjected to a terror campaign - whether by Hizballah or the Palestinian extremist groups based in Damascus, debkafile reports from Washington. The warning went out Thursday, Sept. 2, as Israelis and Palestinians sat down to talk in Washington after two attacks.

While most of the equipment goes through the US emergency depot in Kuwait and transferred to Afghanistan as needed, some key items went to the Israeli Defense Forces, including light armored combat vehicles, command vehicles, light and heavy trucks, fuel tankers, all-terrain vehicles, communications vehicles and ambulances .

Western intelligence sources report that on August 30, Hizballah put its forces on a state of war alert and issued a partial call-up of reservists, apparently in preparation for a major attack on Israel in response to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in Washington or during the Jewish New Year festival starting on Sept. 8. Iranian pressure for an attack has intensified in the wake of the Palestinian Hamas's drive-by murder of four Israeli civilians on a road near Hebron gave Tuesday night Aug. 31.

The phone call between Saudi King Abdullah and President Barack Obama ended in a falling-out on almost all US Middle East policies. Abudllah sees Obama as blinding hiself to an Iranian-Russian trap.

The extraordinary meekness with which the US and Israel greeted Russia's start-up of Iran's first nuclear reactor is accounted for, debkafile reports, by a secret Washington-Moscow deal whereby Russia voted with the US for UN sanctions against Iran in return for which Washington and Jerusalem tacitly assented to the activation of the Iranian reactor.  Will Israel's acquiescence extend to deals with the Palestinians?

All of Iraq's communities are getting set for civil war - Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, with Iranian preparing to take over the South.

Barack Obama performed a secret Afghanistan policy switch a month before the disclosure of confidential military documents. He has empowered the Saudi-Pakistani lineup to carry through peace talks with Taliban.

Behind the WikiLeaks disclosures is a US-British battle for control of money, oil and intelligence interests, peaking with the struggle to control the BP oil giant.

Before leaving for the G20 summit in Toronto, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan came in for an exceptionally acerbic US rebuke: Top Obama official Philip Gordon accused him of alienating the US and the West and told him he needed to demonstrate Ankara's commitment to their (NATO) partnership.
At home, his generals and the public accuse him of sacrificing national security to his anti-Israel campaign, so causing military setbacks against the Kurdish PKK.

At his meeting with President Barack Obama on July 6, Israeli prime minister will propose trading in the stalled Palestinian track for a new peace initiative with Syria based on withdrawal from the bulk of the Golan Heights.

America's show of military force in the Middle East was ignored not only by Turkey but by the moderate Arab rulers, led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Gulf leaders are weighing a merger of their armies for self-defense against a nuclear-armed Iran.

Turkey will lead a campaign for a worldwide boycott of Israel. Wednesday, Ankara cancelled 16 contracts covering military and intelligence cooperation.

Israel has countered by declaring the IHH a terrorist entity, exposing this bulwark of the Ankara government to Israeli covert operations. In Washington, Democratic and Republican members of Congress announced there would be a price to pay for Ankara's continuing hate campaign against Israel and tight ties with Tehran.

After four calls to change course from Gaza to Ashdod were ignored, Israeli troops boarded the Irish-flagged Rachel Corrie some 28 miles out to sea and sailed it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The ship's pro-Hamas activists were determined to break the Israeli blockade. No violence or injuries were reported.
The US said the siege was unsustainable but urged Rachel Corrie to put in at Ashdod.

Obama's dual track: He is preparing another round of talks with Iran, while massing US naval and air forces in the Persian Gulf. All Middle East parties maneuver around Assad's placement of places ballistic missiles on the ready.

North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il has ordered his military to prepare for all-out war after Barack Obama sent the US military to work with Seoul to prepare for future aggression.
Military observers in the Korean Peninsula and Japan were predicting limited skirmishes on land, sea and air. Some sources found North Korea capable of going all the way to test-firing a nuclear warhead for the first time. Iran is following the crisis closely - and learning.

Obama's officials remain upbeat over prospects of a nuclear deal with Iran. They prepare an agenda for further negotiations, tempting Tehran by legalizing its home production of enriched uranium.