Syrian President Bashar Assad is reported by Persian Gulf sources Tuesday, Jan. 31 to have confided to his advisers that he will start up a regional conflict if the UN Security Council calls on him to step down. The heads of the Syrian armed forces and intelligence have been given their orders. Other sources tell debkafile that the Russian flotilla in Tartus appears to be on alert and Sunday, a US nuclear submarine and destroyer sailed through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea.

The Obama administration saw in the unimpeded passage of the Abraham Lincoln carrier through the Strait of Hormuz a signal that Tehran may be amenable to nuclear talks. Preparatory feelers are going forward on three tracks via Baghdad, Ankara and Vienna between the emissaries of the US President and ...

China took advantage of the US oil embargo on Iran to bid for Saudi oil instead. Riyadh agreed to provide oil in return for Chinese assistance in building a Saudi nuclear weapon program. Beijing no longer calls Iran its only strategic partner in the Middle East; Riyadh shares that privileged status with Tehran.
Until this week, the ayatollahs were sure Iran would play solo as the Persian Gulf region's only Muslim nuclear power. Now Sunni Saudi Arabia is about to share the stage.  
Meanwhile neither the ...

A detailed report to Washington by Saudi and Kuwaiti intelligence details Iran's preparations for sabotaging oil production in the Gulf emirates, striking US targets and blocking the Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Turkey have alerted Washington to intelligence reports that Iranian Al Qods Brigades operatives are heading their way to blow up oil installations and American targets. They ask how the US intends to respond. For the second time in a week, a US spokesman Washington disclosed Jan 17 that Al Qods commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani secretly visited Damascus. debkafile reports: Part of his mission was to synchronize these Al Qods attacks with backing for Assad's crackdown on protest.

debkafile's sources disclose exclusively that, contrary to reports in Washington, Jerusalem - and this site too - it was Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, not the Obama administration, who called off the joint US-Israeli military exercise Austere Challenge 12, a step unprecedented in Israel-US relations. Netanyahu acted when he judged the Obama administration's resolve to preempt a nuclear Iran to be flagging. His action also aimed at freeing Israel's hands for a unilateral strike on Iran's nuclear sites - if necessary.

The US and Israel, while bound tightly by military bonds, are at loggerheads over Iran. The Obama administration wants to cut Israel out of military action against Iran's nuclear sites and prevent it hitting back for an Iranian reprisal. Israel is withholding a commitment to abstain from striking Iran ...

Washington and Jerusalem were dismayed to discover last week that Egypt's transitional military rulers (SCAF) were preparing to drop the reins of government and hand them over - lock, stock and barrel, including the armed forces - to civilian rule, i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood, at the earliest opportunity. By staying mute while this process ripened, Israel emboldened Muslim Brotherhood leaders to reiterate that they were not bound by any pledges to Washington to uphold the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

Against Tehran's bid to dictate the Persian Gulf's rules of navigation, the US and GCC are preparing to fight together or separately against any attempts to prevent free movement through the oil route. They would aim to recapture the three Persian Gulf islands held by Iran, which are the ...

Iranian Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi Monday, Dec. 26, replied to Sunday's debkafile report which revealed Tehran's plan to use its big 10-day naval drill east of the Strait of Hormuz to test its vaunted cyber intelligence prowess against US warships. He said Iran has great capabilities in "all fields of national defense, including the use of intelligence drones." The Islamic Republic, he said, could employ aerial drones to counter any potential US-led covert war. But he did not refer to a full-scale war offensive.

 

Cypriot President Demetris Christofias has warned Turkey to stop its warships shelling the strip of water dividing the Cypriot and Israeli gas exploration zones in the eastern Mediterranean.
debkafile's military forces report that Wednesday, Dec. 21, Turkish warships began turning their guns on the narrow strip dividing Israel's Leviathan gas field from Block 12 of Cyprus's Exclusive Economic Zone-EEZ. Estimates of the sizes of the two fields have been substantially upped of late. Both see prospects of becoming major gas suppliers to Europe.

As NATO cargo planes airlifted Libyan fighters to join the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army units in Turkey, Syrian forces armed with Russian spy satellite intelligence waylaid FSA rebels and deserters, killing them where they stood. A large-scale exercise prepares Syrian army to repel a combined offensive.

The sudden death of Kim Jong II of a heart attack aged 69, Monday, Dec. 19 confronts the world for the first time since the Cold War with a leaderless nuclear power about which it knows almost nothing. Though anointed heir, his youngest son Kim Jong-un is not expected to ride in without being challenged. The inevitable power struggle, which could be drawn out for years, may generate violence on and around the Peninsula and greater North Korean involvement in the Middle East nuclear race.

Syria has moved Scud missiles, some tipped with chemical warheads, to its border with Turkey, reinforced its tank units on the Jordanian border and airlifted from Russia three million face masks against chemical and biological weapons.

President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan have developed relations of mutual trust which allowed the US to set up its headquarters for the campaign to oust Bashar Assad in southwest Turkey. The next US-inspired step is to foment a campaign of civil obedience against the Assad regime, starting ...

Tehran was galvanized by the capture of the US drone into a spurt for spreading its diplomatic wings and showing the departing Americans who is the boss in Baghdad. An Iranian delegation sought to persuade Riyadh to help stabilize the regime in Damascus by forcing Bashar Assad to co-opt ...

The US will not review its reconnaissance drone flights over Iran for fear they will also be downed and captured like the RQ-170. Iran could not have accomplished this coup alone because it would have required the technology for filtering through billions of coded communications relayed from Langley to ...

Iranian Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi visited Riyadh Monday, Dec. 12 with a large delegation and a proposition for Crown Prince Nayef: For an anti-US and anti-Zionist pact on regional issues, Tehran would act to bring the Syrian opposition into government and open its nuclear program to Saudi participation. Moslehi boasted that after seizing top US secret drone technology by a successful cyber attack, Iran was unquestionably the top regional power. The Saudis moved fast to take the ayatollahs down a peg or two.

By deploying US troops on the Jordanian-Syrian border, the Obama administration played the last piece of its master game for Bashar Assad's ouster – in conjunction with Turkey, France, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Qatar. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's latest issue out Friday offers glimpses of covert US action in Syria alongside counter-steps pursued by Damascus, Tehran and Hizballah.
The next in our series of US RQ-170 exclusives reveals not just how Iran tampered with the stealth drone technology but also with the satellite controlling it.

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Units of US troops evacuated from Iraq have been diverted to positions in Jordan opposite a Syrian tank concentration building up across the kingdom's northern border, debkafile reports.The incoming US contingents are housed at the King Hussein Air Base of al-Mafraq, 10 kilometers from the Syrian border. They are the first US boots to hit the ground directly opposite Assad's army, brought there by Bashar Assad's threat to set the Middle East on fire if the pressure against him persists.