Qatar and Egypt are playing a double game with Washington, easing Iran’s path to reconnect with Hamas in Gaza after the connection was snapped by the Israeli operation in November.

If the US and Israeli are counting on swarms of drones to carry out an attack on Iranian nuclear sites, they had better think again.

President Obama took some tough steps to weaken the Iranian front ahead of the direct US-Iranian nuclear talks beginning December 1. The latest is a March deadline for results. But US military strength is also lined up just in case  face-to-face with Iran leads nowhere. Most significantly, in September, the Pentagon and the US Army completed the deployment of US military strength in strike position and intensified military pressure on the Assad regime.
 

Thursday night, Nov. 29, the UN General Assembly grants Palestine non-member observer status within the 1967 borders by majority vote. But to which Palestinian rule does it apply?  Abbas’s Fatah is fading, whereas the extremist Hamas in the Gaza Strip is a rising force. If it qualifies for a place in the Sunni Middle East grouping Egypt, Turkey and Qatar are building with US backing and Israeli approval, Hamas may become the beneficiary of the upgraded Palestinian status won by Abbas.

Tuesday, Nov. 27, the Middle East military spotlight swung around from Gaza to Syria with the start of US and NATO intervention. A game changer began unfolding with the site survey begun by a joint Turkish-NATO team for the deployment of Patriot Air and Missile Defense Systems manned by American military teams. debkafile: Although billed for “defensive purposes,” the Patriots will in fact impede Syrian air bombardments over all of northern Syria, including the embattled towns of Aleppo and Homs.

Even before the Gaza conflict was over, the next major steps were in motion: US-manned Patriots and Awacs are in the pipeline for deployment on the Turkish Syrian border; Moscow moved its Black Sea Fleet’s naval task force opposite Gaza/Israeli shores, joining Tehran’s concern that the US-led coalition which wrecked Iran’s “southern front” in Gaza would turn against Syria and Hizballah. The US and Israel are braced for violent Iranian retribution; while Egyptian President Morsi’s troubles could undo the fragile Gaza ceasefire.

Iran suffered a serious setback in the Gaza Strip as a result of the Israeli operation to get rid of Hamas’s pro-Iranian leaders. Tehran had conceived of the Gaza Strip as its gateway to the Muslim Brothers of Egypt and Jordan. Though small in time and scale - and relatively inconsequential in the large Middle East picture - the eight-day Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip helped elevate the US to the Middle East major league at Iran's expense.

Knowing that the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt had egged Hamas on to launch a major missile offensive against Israel, the Netanyahu government took the precaution of getting US backing before launching Israel’s counter-offensive to degrade the terrorist group’s rocket capabilities.

Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu kicks off his campaign for reelection in the January election on the wrong foot having played the losing horse in the US presidential election.

Iran has located its global cyber war-room at Hizballah’s secret internal security apparatus headquarters in South Beirut, under the direction of Hassan Nasrallah’s brother-in-law Wafiq Safa ,debkafile’s exclusive intelligence and counterterrorism sources reveal. The hackers and cyber experts who recently attacked American banks and guided an Iranian stealth drone into Israeli airspace on Oct. 6, operated from this facility and its secret bunkers. No US or Israel action has been taken as yet against this threat to their national security.

War tensions over Syria shot up again early Thursday, Oct. 11, when the Turkish army was placed on high readiness and its chiefs pledge stronger responses to Syria. An authoritative US source told debkafile that Turkey had - by forcing a Syrian civilian flight en route from Moscow land in Ankara and banning flights over Syria - begun creating a no-fly zone over Syria. US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta again cited the threat of chemical warfare. US sources don’t expect Assad or Iran to take Turkish actions lying down.

The special report commissioned by the Congressional research center on a possibly Israel strike against Iran has some spectacular new findings which debunk the Obama administration’s conventional wisdom on Israel’s capacity. For instance, Israel would only need one-third of its air force to strike Iran.

Mistrust between Washington and Jerusalem is gaining. Israel suspects that the big US-led Hormuz multinational exercise aimed more at stopping it attacking Iran than defending the Strait of Hormuz.

All three terrorist attacks last week in Libya, Afghanistan and Sinai followed the same new al Qaeda modus operandi which uses small, highly-trained special ops units striking their targets in two or three waves with heavy weapons.

Iran was stunned to discover this week how easy it was to disrupt its nuclear program, even its underground facilities. The Fordo enrichment plant was disabled and damaged by the simple device of cutting its power lines by a series of blasts. No major military, air or missile operations ...

Al Qaeda-led Salafi Bedouin bands Sunday, Sept. 16, expanded their Sinai offensive to three Egyptian bases along a 70-kilometer front three days after they overran the US-led Multinational Force base in northern Sinai. Heavily-armed Islamist gunmen struck Egyptian bases at El Arish, Rafah opposite the Israeli border and Sheikh Zuweid, where they used local schoolchildren as human shields and shot down an Egyptian helicopter. Egypt has imposed a blackout on all three episodes. Hundreds of US MFO officers remain trapped in their Sinai base.

The first US-Turkish backed steps for creating safe havens in Syria and possible Western bombardment of the Syrian army have brought the Middle East close to two dangerous junctures: The Syrian army’s use of chemical and biological weapons, and an outbreak of hostilities between Hizballah and Israel – which nearly happened in mid-week, debkafile reports.
Washington disclosed Friday that Syria’s chemical arsenal was bigger and more widely scattered than suspected hitherto and, therefore, the US may have lost count.

US, Iranian and Israel planners have moved past discussion on whether Israel can be prevented from attacking Iran before the November election and are now talking about their various versions of a second strike option, which all agree will be more devastating than the first.

Cutting through the US-Israeli debate over where to put “red lines” for Iran, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Monday night, Sept. 3 that Iran would hit US bases in the Middle East in response to any Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities, even if the Americans were not involved in the attack. debkafile: Iran should have enough 20-percent enriched uranium for a bomb by next month. So Tehran expects an Israeli attack before the Nov. 6 US presidential election and has laid down its own red line for war.

Sunni and Shiite Soldiers of Allah are on the march against each other. They are preparing for a clash of arms in the embattled Syrian arena. A mobilization campaign is drawing foreign jihadists to fight Assad out of many corners of the Sunni world, including lands now ruled by ...