Merkel's green light for $157m gas deal with Iran torpedoes sanctions.
German chancellor Angela Merkel blunted - in advance - the big-power drive for sanctions to punish Iran for its nuclear defiance. When Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili faced the US, European Union, the UK, France, Russia, Geneva and China in Geneva on July 19, he knew that their two-week ultimatum for Tehran’s answer to their incentives offer could be sidestepped with impunity.
The deal was approved a month before the German chancellor’s March stood up in the Knesset, promised to push for further sanctions against Iran and declared that Israel’s security was “nonnegotiable.” More...
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Tehran hosts Assad to celebrate winning nuclear dispute with West and cooling of US-Israel ties
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis
August 3, 2008, 5:30 PM (GMT+02:00)
Assad and Ahmadinejad congratulate each other
The Syrian president Bashar Assad was due to visit Tehran in a week’s time. The trip was brought forward to Saturday, Aug. 2 to coincide with the deadline the six powers gave Iran for an answer to its offer of benefits in return for its consent to suspend uranium enrichment – or face a fourth round of sanctions.
DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources report: Iranian and Syrian rulers are so pleased with their unforeseen success in outmaneuvering the West that they called an urgent summit for follow-up planning. More...
Tehran offers to share its "nuclear experience" with Syria
June 18, 2008, 7:03 PM (GMT+02:00) Iranian Ambassador Ahmed Moussavi
The offer came from Iran's ambassador to Syria, Sayyed Ahmed Moussavi. He cited July 7 as the date for their officials to meet.
DEBKAfile's military sources say Iran's willingness to defy its obligations under the non-proliferation treaty by offering a nuclear capability to Syria across the border from Israel brings Tehran's threat to wipe Israel off the map much closer to home. It is a mark of contempt for Washington and the US-led Western sanctions
A Venezuelan diplomat and a businessman use their positions to fund Hezbollah's operations, as well and help operatives travel across the Middle East and to South America.
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Saudi minister: Al-Qaeda changing style, we are expecting the worst
Jun 18, 2008, 8:22 GMT
Riyadh - Saudi Arabia is expecting the worst from the al- Qaeda terror network because the group is changing its style and techniques but the kingdom is uncovering more details about its sources of funding, the Saudi Minister of Interior said in remarks published Wednesday.
GAZA CITY, June 17, 2008 (MENASSAT) – The Palestinian Islamist movement, Islamic Jihad, has added a cyber-war division to its armed Al-Quds Brigades.
It was a response to years of attacks by Israeli hackers, and according to the Brigades spokesman, Abu Hamza, it equals the playing field in cyber-space.
"The Israeli's have worked very hard the past few years on monitoring all the Palestinian websites, especially those of Islamic Jihad and Al-Quds Brigades," Hamza told MENASSAT.
Analysis: Bush is reconciled to a nuclear-armed Iran ( IRAN WINS, G )
June 11, 2008, 10:12 PM (GMT+02:00)
In an interview with the London Times , June 11, US president George W. Bush said his aim now was to leave his successor a legacy of international diplomacy for tackling Iran.
DEBKAfile’s informed sources report that President Bush was also clearly bidding farewell to the option of an American strike against Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shot back by saying: “I tell him… your era has come to an end. With the grace of God, you won’t be able to harm even one centimeter of the sacred land of Iran.”
Our Iranian sources report that Tehran is driving hard to attain a weapons capability by September or October this year, before Bush leaves the White House. More...
Iran Achieves a Four-Front Missile Command, Breakthrough on Nuclear Missile Warheads
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
May 31, 2008
Gen. Mohammed Ali Jafari, chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps
DEBKAfile’s military sources disclose that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps have created a separate missile command, in which Syria’s missile force is to be integrated. The joint command was formalized in a new mutual defense treaty signed by the Syrian defense minister, Gen. Hassan Turkmani in Tehran last week.
Israeli military sources judge the operational merger of Iranian and Syrian missile corps to be a major strategic hazard to the Jewish state.
Western and Israeli military experts connect it with other indications that Iran’s program for developing missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads has gone into high gear and reached an advanced stage. They believe the Iranians have beaten most of the technical difficulties holding it up.
On May 26, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, which often goes easy on Iran, released a harsh report confirming Iran’s progress in “missile warhead design.”
The new missile command was cautiously announced last week by the IRGC commander, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari. He said: “An independent command might be created in Sepah (IRGC) in order to fortify the structure and activities of the missile section.”
DEBKAfile’s Iranians sources explain Jafar’s cautious language on three grounds:
1. He was preparing Iran’s population and the Arab world for a pretty portentous development.
2. He was at pains not to put off figures in the West who argue strongly in favor of unconditional talks with Tehran over its nuclear misdeeds. He counted on those advocates shouting down the Western strategists who would appreciate the startling significance of the separate command.
3. Tehran also views Syria’s co-option and the new mutual defense treaty as a sort of guarantee that Assad’s “peace talks” with Israel will in no way detract from his military and other commitments to Iran.
DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources disclose that the details of the combined command were worked out ahead of the Syrian defense minister’s talks in Tehran: It was agreed that Syria’s missile units would come under the new independent Iranian missile section and their operations would be fully coordinated with Tehran. Iranian officers are to be attached to Syrian units and Syrian officers posted to the Iranian command.
In the interim, Hizballah’s rise to power in Beirut has brought Lebanon into the shared Syrian-Iranian orbit. This development has enabled Tehran to line up a row of missiles deployments of varying strengths from Iran, Syria and Lebanon and up to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip – a missile array never before seen in the Middle East and a strategic menace most of Israel’s security leaders rate unacceptable.
Military experts comment that Tehran’s centralized control of four hostile missile fronts will virtually neutralize the American and Israeli anti-missile defense systems in the region; the Arrow and the Patriot missile interceptors could handle incoming missiles from one or maybe two directions – but not four.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Israel’s armed forces have been working overtime, against repeated holdups, to get the third Arrow battery installed. It is to be deployed in northern Israel as a shield against Syrian ballistic missiles and Iranian missiles stationed in Syria.
The formation of the joint Iranian-Syrian missile command has slowed the project down. It calls for modifications in the Arrow’s deployment to meet the fresh challenge and a time-consuming study by US and Israeli intelligence specialists of how the new command structure functions. Western military sources doubt the Arrow system will be up and running by this summer, a period considered critical by military observers.
They discount as over-optimistic recent claims by Israeli officials that the new Iron Dome will be ready for operational testing against short-range missiles in the next year or two.
In a related development, DEBKAfile’s Gulf sources report that next week, Iran’s supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Syrian president Bashar Assad launch a major campaign to further isolate American influence and bludgeon moderate Arab governments into alignment with their extreme anti-US, anti-Israel line.
Assad sets out Sunday, June 1, for the United Arab Emirates for talks with Sheikh KHalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan in Abu Dhabi. Tuesday, he spends two days in Kuwait. The visits were set up by the Qatar ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who spent Friday, May 30, in Assad’s palace, gathering compliments for the Doha accord he mediated which solved Lebanon’s political crisis by installing a national unity government in Beirut dominated by Hizballah.
The Qatari ruler, Assad and Khamenei have joined forces to use the Lebanon accord as an object lesson to teach Arab governments that they do not need the United States or Saudi Arabia to help them manage their problems.
This message was relayed in Iran foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki’s arrogant statement in Stockholm Friday. He said: “The United States of America needs a serious review of its foreign policy towards the Middle East. These policies in… Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and generally speaking in the Middle East are mistaken policies.”
DEBKAfile’s political sources point out that these reverses are piling up against the United States and Israel at the worst time possible: both governments are hobbled - Washington in the dying days of the Bush administration, and Israel, by the grave corruption allegations against prime minister Ehud Olmert which have placed him and the other two senior policy-makers, the defense and foreign ministers, at loggerheads.
Hmm Ok need to take out missile comand in Iran, Syria, Lebonan and Gaza all at once.
Nuke sites and command and control at each location, freeze computers, and cut phone and Internet connections, just makin a list. OK thats air power from two air craft carrier groups, and we still have the third carrier group in reserve.
I for got the new cruise missiles, and new warheads.
Warning IRAN, SYRIA LEBANON AND GAZA civilians put in three months supply of water, food and fuel. Its gona be a while before your governments are up and running again.
Image via WikipediaTEHRAN, Iran - A former Iranian president has said that exporting violence to other countries is "treason" against Islam and Iran's 1979 revolution, an apparent accusation that the country's hard-line rulers are engineering unrest abroad.
Mohammad Khatami, a reformist and popular intellectual, made no mention of U.S. and Iraqi accusations that Iran is arming and training Shiite extremists in neighboring Iraq. But he said Iran should avoid actions that give it a bad image.
"What did Imam (Khomeini) want and what did he mean by 'exporting the revolution'? Taking up arms and causing explosions in other countries and establishing groups to carry out sabotage in other countries? Imam was strongly opposed to these behaviors," Khatami told students in northern Iran on Friday.
"This is the biggest treason to Islam and the revolution."
Do satellite photos show Iran ballistic missile facility? New report says site is being used to develop missiles with 4,000 mile range. By Arthur Bright
posted April 11, 2008 at 10:00 am EDT
A new report by The Times of London says that satellite photographs of a site in Iran indicate the location is being used to develop a ballistic missile that could reach most of continental Europe.
The Times writes that the photographs show the launch site of a Kavoshgar 1 rocket that Iran tested on February 4. Tehran claimed that the rocket was intended to further a nascent Iranian space program, but The Times says that the photos suggest otherwise.
Analysis of the photographs taken by the Digital Globe QuickBird satellite four days after the launch has revealed a number of intriguing features that indicate to experts that it is the same site where Iran is focusing its efforts on developing a ballistic missile with a range of about 6,000km (4,000 miles).
A previously unknown missile location, the site, about 230km southeast of Tehran, and the link with Iran's long-range programme, was revealed by Jane's Intelligence Review after a study of the imagery by a former Iraq weapons inspector. A close examination of the photographs has indicated that the Iranians are following the same path as North Korea, pursuing a space programme that enables Tehran to acquire expertise in long-range missile technology.
Geoffrey Forden, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that there was a recently constructed building on the site, about 40 metres in length, which was similar in form and size to the Taepodong long-range missile assembly facility in North Korea.
The Times adds that the rocket launched from the facility in February was based on Iran's Shahab 3B missile, which is in turn based on North Korea's Nodong missile. Geoffrey Forden, a member of the UN team monitoring Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in 2002 and 2003, noted that while the test rocket did not indicate any significant advances in Iran's missile technology, the launch site had "very high levels of security and recent construction activity" and appeared to be "an important strategic facility."
If the Iranian facility is indeed developing a long-range ballistic missile, it would explain NATO's decision last week to move ahead with the missile shield program supported by the US. The Christian Science Monitor reported last week that the Bush administration scored a key success by persuading NATO to approve the missile shield, which is meant to protect against missiles like those that Iran is linked to.
NATO members all supported the US position on missile-shield defense, which is to be deployed in the Czech Republic and Poland. "There is a threat ... and allied security must be indivisible in the face of it," read the statement on missile defense.
But Iran has denied any hostile intent behind its rocket program. While Tehran has not yet commented on the Times report, after the February test of the Kavoshgar 1 rocket it stated its intent to use the technology for launching satellites, reported The New York Times.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad... said on state-run television: "We need to have an active presence in space. We witness today that Iran has taken its first step in space very firmly, precisely and with awareness."
Iran has said that it wants to put satellites into orbit to monitor natural disasters and to improve telecommunications, as well as for security reasons.
Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najar said Iran would launch its domestically made satellite, called Omid, meaning Hope, in June, Fars News reported.
But US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called the launch "troubling," noting that "the kinds of technologies and capabilities that are needed in order to launch a space vehicle for orbit are the same kinds of capabilities and technologies that one would employ for long-range ballistic missiles."
Much of the concern of both the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, stems from evidence found on a laptop stolen by an Iranian in 2004 and turned over to US intelligence services. Among other documents on the laptop, investigators found "drawings on modifying Iran's ballistic missiles in ways that might accommodate a nuclear warhead," reported The Washington Post in February. But the problem is proving that the documents are legitimate.
U.S. intelligence considers the laptop documents authentic but cannot prove it. Analysts cannot completely rule out the possibility that internal opponents of the Iranian leadership could have forged them to implicate the government, or that the documents were planted by Tehran itself to convince the West that its program remains at an immature stage....
British intelligence, asked for a second opinion, concurred last year that the documents appear authentic. German and French officials consider the information troubling, sources said, but Russian experts have dismissed it as inconclusive. IAEA inspectors, who were highly skeptical of U.S. intelligence on Iraq, have begun to pursue aspects of the laptop information that appear to bolster previous leads.
"There is always a chance this could be the biggest scam perpetrated on U.S. intelligence," one U.S. source acknowledged. "But it's such a large body of documents and such strong indications of nuclear weapons intent, and nothing seems so inconsistent."
Despite the possibility of Iran developing a long-range ballistic missile in time, Mr. Forden says that they likely still have a long way to go. ArmsControlWonk.com, a blog on WMDs and national security, cites Forden's observations about the flaws revealed by the February launch .
Iran's February 4th launch of a Shahab-3 just keeps on getting more and more interesting; that is if you are interested in just how good of a missile the Shahab/No'dong is. Video from Iran's television show that there is a failure of the missile's thrust vector control system nineteen seconds into its powered flight. At that point, there is a brief flaring at the very end of the missile and an object is seen flying off for several seconds, until it leaves the video's frame as the camera continues to follow the missile. Tellingly, it doesn't just drop off the missile but is given quite a transverse boost.
Forden says that the debris indicates that the missile's graphite jet vanes, used to steer the rocket in flight, are being "eaten away" by the rocket exhaust. Such a problem can knock a missile severely off course, he adds.
So what does this mean for missile proliferators in general and Syria and Iran (and North Korea since they are all involved in the development of these missiles) in particular? It means that they are still having a hard time producing graphite tough and pure enough to be used in large missiles. It also indicates that a top priority for their missile engineers will be to develop other thrust vector control mechanisms.
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A Venezuelan diplomat and a businessman use their positions to fund Hezbollah's operations, as well and help operatives travel across the Middle East and to South America.
