Unconfirmed first reports from British, French and Turkish sources say British special forces crossed from Turkey into northern Syria Tuesday, May 26, advancing up to 10 kilometers inside the country. Those sources also report heavy fighting around the Republican Guards compound guarding Bashar Assad's palace on Mount Qaisoun overlooking Damascus. This two-pronged assault on the Assad regime, if confirmed, began at the end of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Israel. It challenges his repeated objections to foreign intervention.
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- Obama “reconsiders” military attack on Iran
- Putin: Iran won't get a nuclear bomb, so don’t attack
- Putin-Netanyahu talks to focus on rising Islamist power
- Mohammed Morsi is president of Egypt
- Al Qaeda opens new anti-Israel front. Egypt posts elite unit
- New Russian anti-air missile downed Turkish warplane
- Syria grounds air fleet after defection
- Syria balkanized among three powers
- Big powers move in on Syria
DEBKAfile DEBKA-Net-Weekly
In the wake of failed diplomacy, US President Barack Obama is in the process of “reconsidering” his decision to hold off on military action against Iran. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was in Riyadh to sound out Saudi rulers on a combined US-GCC operation. In its coming issue, out Friday, DEBKA-Net-Weekly explores the prospects of this operation, along with revelations about President Vladimir Putin’s talk with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. From Jerusalem, Putin issued his “most striking warning to Obama.”
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
The high point of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s noteworthy 90-minute talk with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem Monday, June 25, was Putin’s firm assurance that Iran would not get a nuclear bomb. He stressed it would be against Russian interests,DEBKAfile reports exclusively. “We [Russians] know more about what is going on with Iran’s (nuclear) capabilities than the Americans,” he said, indicating that Israel would be better served spending in Moscow some of the time taken up by endless palaver with the Americans.
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis
The Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt will have pushed aside Iran and energy as top issues when Monday, June 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin on a short visit to Israel meets Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. On this at least they have common ground: The Muslim Brotherhood governments rolling out along Middle East shores with US encouragement – Libya, last year; Egypt, yesterday; and Syria, tomorrow – are seen as a threat to regional stability rivaling even the menace of a nuclear-armed Iran.
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DEBKAfile Special Report
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has achieved the goal set at its foundation 84 years ago: Its candidate Muhammed Morsi was declared Sunday afternoon, June 24, president of Egypt, with a 51.73 percent win over Ahmed Shafiq, former prime minister under the ousted Hosni Mubarak. Jubilant Brotherhood supporters massed in Tahrir Square are preparing to fight the Supreme Military Council to transfer the sweeping powers assumed by the generals to the president and back him in Egypt’s transformation into an Islamic republic akin to Iran.
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
Al Qaeda infiltrators from Libya are spearheading much of this month’s anti-Israel violence from Sinai and the Gaza Strip - a dangerous development Israel, Hamas, Egypt and the US prefer to conceal. It appears to tie in with the arrival of al Qaeda’s ex-Iraq fighters in Syria as part of its leader's master plan. Deeply concerned to check the spillover from Libya into Egypt, Cairo has posted its elite counter-terrorist “999 unit” in El Arish, on Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip and along the northern sector of its frontier with Israel.
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
Syria Friday shot down the Turkish Super Phantom jet with the sophisticated self-propelled medium range anti-air Pantsur-1 missile recently supplied by Russia. Short of time to master the improved missile system, the Syrian crews would have called on their Russian instructors to help launch them. DEBKAfile: Moscow and Damascus may have decided to stop the almost daily Turkish air force flights over the Syrian coast for spying on Russian arms deliveries through the Russian bases of Tartus and Latakia.
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DEBKAfile Special Report
Syrian President Bashar Assad Thursday night, June 21, ordered his entire Air Force fleet of fighter bombers grounded to guard against more defections. Syrian officials are sure that the defection of Col. Hasan Merhi al-Hamadeh, who flew to Jordan aboard a MiG-21, was set up by the CIA - with more to come, to show the Syrian people and Arab world that even the Syrian air force, the part of the armed forces most loyal to Assad, was in fact slipping away from him.
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
DEBKAfile postulates Syria’s division into spheres of influence as the big powers move in.
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DEBKAfile Special Report
Amid the worsening violence in Syria, US official sources said Saturday, June 16, that US intervention was not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ and defined its format as “Libya lite.” Pentagon officials earlier reported a Russian contingent was on its way to Syria to guard the Russian base at Tartus. As the Syrian civil conflict mounted onto the plane of major power intervention, Maj. Gen. Robert Mood announced that the UN observer mission he heads had suspended activities and patrols.
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- Obama speeds up limited air strike preps for Syria
- Big powers move in on Syria
- Russia, China, Iran plan maneuver in Syria
- Turkey ditches Syrian rebels
- Obama’s blockade plan for Iran delays Israeli strike
- Putin turns arms ship back from Syrian port
- New Russian anti-air missile downed Turkish warplane
- Egyptian court dissolves parliament, approves Shafiq's run
DEBKA-Net-Weekly #539
Ayman al-Zawahiri is challenged by the Syrian jihadist ideologue Abu Musab al-Suri, who preaches the "multi-pede" concept which would end centralized control of the al Qaeda terrorism organiztion and distribute authority for independent decision-making among its franchises. Zawahiri is fighting back.
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DEBKA-Net-Weekly #538
Israel’s war preparations are based on the estimate that by the end of 2012, Iran will be able to produce a crude nuclear device as well as a dirty bomb. It calculates as high the risk that Tehran will decide to use those devices for war against Israel in the short term and not wait until it has complete nuclear warhead ready for a ballistic missile.
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DEBKA-Net-Weekly #537
President Barack Obama's proposals are primed to pre-empt war as his first priority before even pre-empting a nuclear Iran. The deal he is offering Tehran will be hard to refuse because it virtually relieves its nuclear program of effective international oversight. Tehran is nonetheless holding out for an end to sanctions.
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
US Navy, Air Force, ground, intelligence and special forces units based at home, in Europe and the Middle East, took part this week in a special exercise ordered by President Barack Obama to simulate reactions to a potential US/Israel strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, DEBKAfile reports. Advanced US stealth F-22 fighter bombers were also transferred to the Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE. Washington is thinking of attacking core elements of Iran’s nuclear program to weaken its hand in negotiations.
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu acted Thursday, April 26, to correct the damaging impression of divided and conflicting perceptions of the Iranian nuclear threat left by statements delivered in the last two days by himself and Defense Minster Ehud Barak. Israel’s chief of staff Gen. Benny Gantz rallied to the task. He commented Thursday that “other countries have readied their armed forces for a potential strike against Iran’s nuclear sites to keep Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
Bashar Assad has stepped in directly to halt the covert war his Western and Arab foes are waging against his regime through Lebanon. DEBKAfile’s military sources disclose he is now sending Lebanese army commanders direct orders for cutting arms, money, fighters and medical supplies to the rebels, especially in Homs. Last week, Lebanese Chief of Staff Gen. Jean Kahwagi was given a crude ultimatum: Take care of the Syrian rebels’ backers in Tripoli, or else the Syrian army will enter Lebanon and do the job.
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DEBKAfile Special Report
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov issued a strong warning against a military attack on Iran Monday, April 2, saying that a pre-emptive strike would violate international law. His comments, made during a visit to Armenia, stopped short of threatening (the US and/or Israel) of consequences. DEBKAfile: Moscow and Tehran suspect that the US- Israeli-Greek air-naval exercise codenamed Noble Dina which is in progress across an unusually broad stretch of E. Mediterranean is meant to rehearse war action in the Persian Gulf.
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