The unattributed killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan last Wednesday, Jan. 11, was the subject of an angry phone call from US President Barack Obama to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the next day, debkafile reports.  Washington is concerned, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, that Israel may strike Iran's nuclear sites and has bolstered the defenses of US facilities in the region. In Jerusalem, Washington's strong and unusual slamming of the attack was deeply resented.

Iran exhibited the top-secret US stealth drone RQ-170 Sentinel captured on Sunday, Dec. 4. Its almost perfect condition confirmed Tehran's claim that the UAV was downed by a cyber attack, meaning it was brought in undamaged by an electronic warfare ambush. This is a major debacle for the stealth technology the US uses in its warplanes and the drone technology developed by the US and Israel.  It obliges both to revise their strike plans against Iran's nuclear program.

The hanging of Ali Akbar Siadati as a Mossad spy in Tehran Tuesday, Dec, 28 offered a glimpse of the brutal war waged between the CIA and Mossad, on the one hand, and Iran's clandestine agencies, on the other. It comes to the public attention only rarely, when exploits like the Stuxnet malworm invasion and violent deaths of top Iranian nuclear scientists indicate Western agencies have the upper hand.

But this murky contest has its ups and downs, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly's exclusive intelligence sources reveal in its latest issue out last Friday.

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