King Abdullah regards Barack Obama's Middle East policy as "inept, ignorant and arrogant." He sent Prince Turki Al-Faisal to lay his views out on the table in detail, in the crudest terms.

The failed attempt to blow up a car bomb in Times Square at the heart of Manhattan, New York, was the fourth time in seven months that America's intelligence and security agencies had missed thwarting a terrorist attack.

Obama's Afghanistan strategy is thrown in disarray by the failed New York car bombing. As US forces prepare their offensive in Kandahar, S. Afghanistan, the Taliban strikes in New York. Both his war planners and intelligence chiefs need a fresh approach.

Was Faisal Shahzad a CIA mole against Taliban or a two-timing double agent? This would explain some of the peculiarities his case has thrown up.

Even after signing the secret Presidential Policy Directive to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon, it is still not clear what option Barack Obama has chosen to achieve this, whether military or other means.

The British embassy in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa shut down Monday, April 26, after an al Qaeda suicide attack on the ambassador's convoy and a clash with gunmen outside the embassy. According to first reports, one person was killed, but Ambassador Tim Torlot is safe. 
debkafile's counter-terror sources report that al Qaeda recently received an extra boost from secretly diverted US funds which Yemen president Abdullah Ali Salah used  to try and bribe the Islamists to relocate in Somalia - without success.

Washington this week produced an epic flow of contradictions and confusion over its policy on Iran: By week's end, every visible option had been knocked over and the talk was of some kind of cold war against Tehran.

Iran's intelligence services - MOIS, and its Revolutionary Guards Corps' clandestine arm, North Korean intelligence and Syrian military intelligence are active dealers and brokers in bootlegged uranium, other nuclear materials, equipment and nuclear technology.

Israel's comeback for Obama's attempt to impose his Palestinian will was delivered on the Iranian issue. Washington hit back by bundling the Palestinian and Iranian issues together.

The US president advocates a Middle East peace plan whereby Palestinian state borders would enclose 96 percent of the West Bank and 133,000 Israelis evacuated. The 4 percent left with Israel would include Jerusalem.

Chinese president Hu Jintao indicated a willingness to consider abstaining on a UN Security Council vote imposing sanctions against Iran - if the United States reciprocated by withholding its veto on sanctions against Israel over construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  debkafile's sources report US president Barack Obama did not reject the idea.

 

While not admitting to "profiling," Washington has introduced new measures for screening US-bound air travelers based on how closely their personal characteristics match intelligence on potential terrorists, such as nationality, age, certain physical characteristics, recently visited countries and partial (Muslim-sounding) names - as revealed Friday, April 2, by the Homeland Security Secretary.
  

Russia will pool its military and intelligence resources with the US to fight the war on terror together - only if its own battle against Islamist extremism is recognized as part of the global war on terror.

Scenarios of a potential Israeli attack on Iran - usually without US assent - abound in Washington in the last 24 hours. They contrast sharply with the impression Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is conveying that he and President Barack Obama were of one mind on Iran when they met last week.  Two CSIS researchers cite the belief in some US military circles that Israel, lacking a one-off capability for striking Iran, will resort to tactical nuclear weapons.  
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