Free Republic

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Yukiya Amano declared Friday, May 4, that “Parchin (the suspected site of nuclear-related explosion tests) is the priority and we start with that,” he may have missed the boat. As he spoke, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak said it was possible that Iran was already putting in place the infrastructure for building a nuclear bomb in 60 days. In this regard, debkafile’s military sources disclose that Iran had by the end of 2009 early 2012 completed the construction of a new chain of underground facilities deep inside the Dasht e-Kavir (Great Salt Desert) -...

When International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Yukiya Amano declared Friday, May 4, that “Parchin (the suspected site of nuclear-related explosion tests) is the priority and we start with that,” he may have missed the boat. As he spoke, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak said it was possible that Iran was already putting in place the infrastructure for building a nuclear bomb in 60 days. In this regard, debkafile’s military sources disclose that Iran had by the end of 2009 early 2012 completed the construction of a new chain of underground facilities deep inside the Dasht e-Kavir (Great Salt Desert)...

While President Obama's supporters hailed his withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq as the end of the war in the middle east, behind the scenes the Pentagon has been quietly massing troops and armaments on two islands located just south of the Strait of Hormuz, and within easy striking distance of Iran. In addition to some 50,000 U.S. troops currently in the region waiting for orders (apparently they won't be home by this past Christmas as was originally promised), Nobel Peace Prize winner President Barack Obama is deploying an additional 50,000 soldiers to be ready for 'any contingency' by March:...

Thousands of US troops began descending on Israel this week. Senior US military sources told debkafile Friday, Jan. 6 that many would be staying up to the end of the year as part of the US-IDF deployment in readiness for a military engagement with Iran and its possible escalation into a regional conflict. They will be joined by a US aircraft carrier. The warplanes on its decks will fly missions with Israeli Air Force jets. The 9,000 US servicemen gathering in Israel in the coming weeks are mostly airmen, missile interceptor teams, marines, seamen, technicians and intelligence officers. The incoming...

Germany has put its Air Force Tornado warplanes in intensive training for a possible attack on targets in Iran, after taking part last week in a joint drill with the Israeli Air Force and other NATO members at the Italian Decimomannu air base on Sardinia. Iran, for its part, is gearing up for a gloves-off reprisal against its attackers...

Our Washington sources report that Saturday night, May 7, President Barack Obama gave the Pakistani government, army and intelligence an ultimatum: Cooperate in the capture of the three wanted men or else we shall pump more American soldiers into Pakistan to take up the pursuit with or without your permission. US intelligence is convinced that Omer, Zawahiri and al-Adal have joined forces and are plotting a revenge attack on America dramatic enough to outdo the psychological impact of the bin Laden killing.

Senior Libyan rebel “officers” sold Hizballah and Hamas thousands of chemical shells from the stocks of mustard and nerve gas that fell into rebel hands when they overran Muammar Qaddafi’s military facilities in and around Benghazi, DEBKAfile’s exclusive military and intelligence sources report. Word of the capture touched off a scramble in Tehran and among the terrorist groups it sponsors to get hold of their first unconventional weapons. According to our sources, the rebels offloaded at least 2,000 artillery shells carrying mustard gas and 1,200 nerve gas shells for cash payment amounting to several million dollars. US and Israeli intelligence...

Senior Libyan rebel “officers” sold Hizballah and Hamas thousands of chemical shells from the stocks of mustard and nerve gas that fell into rebel hands when they overran Muammar Qaddafi’s military facilities in and around Benghazi, debkafile’s exclusive military and intelligence sources report. Tehran threw its support behind the anti-Qaddafi rebels because of this unique opportunity to get hold of the Libyan ruler’s stock of poison gas after it fell into opposition hands and arm Hizballah and Hamas with unconventional weapons without Iran being implicated in the transaction. The first authoritative American source to refer to a Hizballah presence in...

The repeated delays and contradictory statements about the two Iranian warships' transit of the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean is accounted for by a standoff between the Iranian flotilla and five US warships deployed in recent days at the waterway's southern entrance and along its course, debkafile's sources disclose. Thursday night, Feb. 17, the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, escorted by missile cruiser USS Leyte Gulf and the fast supply ship USNS Arctic, headed south through the canal. By Friday morning, they were through and taking up position opposite the Kharg cruiser and Alvand missile destroyer of the Iranian Navy's 12th...

Headline only.

Sarkozy: North Korea to supply Iran with nuclear bomb components DEBKAfile Exclusive Report December 2, 2010 In quiet contacts, French President Nicolas Sarkozy warns that North Korea is using its crisis with the South to cover up its planned transfer to Iran of nuclear weapons systems parts and extra-fast centrifuges for uranium enrichment that could help Tehran go into bomb production in the first half of 2011, debkafile's intelligence sources report. The French president has asked pro-Western Persian Gulf leaders to try and persuade President Barack Obama to take strong military action against North Korea – not just because of...

Tokyo presses for military response to North Korean attack DEBKAfile Exclusive Report Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan called President Barak Obama urgently in the wake of the North Korean artillery attack on South Korea's Yeonpyeong island near the Yellow Sea border early Tuesday, Nov. 23 and demanded a US-South Korean-Japanese military reprisal. Two South Korean marines were killed and 17 injured in the attack. He also demanded that the UN Security Council be convened immediately on the crisis. He put the same demands to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in another call. Naoto Kan then ordered his ministers to prepare...

debkafile's intelligence sources report from Iran that dozens of Russian nuclear engineers, technicians and contractors are hurriedly departing Iran for home since local intelligence authorities began rounding up their compatriots as suspects of planting the Stuxnet malworm into their nuclear program. Among them are the Russian personnel who built Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr which Tehran admits has been damaged by the virus. One of the Russian nuclear staffers, questioned in Moscow Sunday, Oct. 3 by Western sources, confirmed that many of his Russian colleagues had decided to leave with their families after team members were detained for questioning...

Intelligence sources report from Iran that dozens of Russian nuclear engineers, technicians and contractors are hurriedly departing Iran for home since local intelligence authorities began rounding up their compatriots as suspects of planting the Stuxnet malworm into their nuclear program. Among them are the Russian personnel who built Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr which Tehran admits has been damaged by the virus. One of the Russian nuclear staffers, questioned in Moscow Sunday, Oct. 3 by Western sources, confirmed that many of his Russian colleagues had decided to leave with their families after team members were detained for questioning at...

Tehran this week secretly appealed to a number of computer security experts in West and East Europe with offers of handsome fees for consultations on ways to exorcize the Stuxnet worm spreading havoc through the computer networks and administrative software of its most important industrial complexes and military command centers. debkafile's intelligence and Iranian sources report Iran turned for outside help after local computer experts failed to remove the destructive virus. None of the foreign experts has so far come forward because Tehran refuses to provide precise information on the sensitive centers and systems under attack and give the visiting...

On Aug. 6, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, DSCA, informed Congress of the sale to Israel of 60 million gallons of unleaded gasoline, 284 million gallons of JP-8 aviation jet fuel and 100 million gallons of diesel fuel at an estimated cost of two billion dollars. The date is significant, intelligence sources find. Ten days earlier, the Japanese tanker M.Star was attacked in Omani waters of the Strait of Hormuz with 200,000 tons of oil. Although American experts who examined the vessel, they never attributed the damage to sabotage by Iran or al Qaeda, despite the latter's claim of...

debkafile's military sources report that Washington has posted a third carrier opposite Iran's shores. It is supported by amphibious assault ships and up to 4,000 Navy and Marine Corps personnel, bringing the total US strength in these waters to three carriers and 10,000 combat personnel. The USS Nassau (LHA-4) Amphibious Ready Group 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, tasked with supporting the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet area of operations, is cruising around the Bab al-Mandeb Straits where the Gulf of Aden flows into the Red Sea. Its presence there accounts for Tehran announcing Sunday, June 27 that its "aid ship for Gaza" had...

This warning, along with an announcement that Iran would join the world's nuclear club within a month, raised the pitch of Iranian anti-US rhetoric to a new high Tuesday, April 13, as 47 world leaders gathered in Washington for President Barack Obama's Nuclear Security Summit. The statement published by Kayhan said: "If the US strikes Iran with nuclear weapons, there are elements which will respond with nuclear blasts in the centers of America's main cities." For the first time, DEBKAfile's military sources report, Tehran indicated the possibility of passing nuclear devices to terrorists capable of striking inside the United States.

"Israel is one of our closest allies and we and the Israeli people have a special bond that's not going to go away," said President Barack Obama to Fox News Wednesday, March 17, after denying any crisis in the relationship. debkafile's Washington sources note that denial makes a lot of sense for the president because it lets him off the hook for dealing with it. However, in Jerusalem, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu called his inner cabinet into its second session on the crisis that same night. The seven ministers were asked to review the situation after President Obama and secretary...

Evidence has reached debkafile's counter-terror sources that the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 which crashed after takeoff from Beirut on January 25, killing all 92 aboard, was blown up in mid-air. This was an al-Qaeda operation timed for one month to the day after its failed attempt to destroy an American Northwest airliner bound for Detroit. It is becoming clear that either a bomb was planted on the Ethiopian flight with a timer or a passenger acted as suicide bomber. Western security agencies in the Middle East involved in combating al Qaeda believe that its planners picked on the Ethiopian flight...

Arab voices were fanning Middle East war fever Wednesday night, Feb. 3. DEBKAfile's military sources report that not only are Syrian leaders beating war drums - Syrian foreign minister Walid Muallem said in Damascus: "Israelis, do not test the power of Syria since you know the war will move into your cities" - but Egyptian military sources have put out information purporting to outline Israel's preparations to strike Iran.

Like the Nigerian bomber Umar Abdulmutallab, the Saudi minister's would-be assassin, Abdullah Hassan Tali' al-Asiri (al Qaeda-styled Abu Khair), who did not survive the attack, used explosives hidden in his underwear to fool the prince's bodyguards. He won an audience with the prince by posing as an informant, the same trick used by the Taliban suicide bomber to penetrate a US base and kill 7 CIA agents and a US soldier last month. This emerging prototype was missed by US intelligence experts. Obama, who has called a meeting of US security agency chiefs for Tuesday, Jan. 5, cannot expect serious...

It is business as usual in relations between the West and the Islamic Republic of Iran. A US official explained this indifference to a US daily by saying that Obama was engaged in a difficult balancing act: "The aim of any sanctions is to force the Tehran government to the negotiating table, rather than to punish it for either its apparent push to develop a nuclear weapon or its treatment of its people." In Tehran, this attitude is taken as a free hand to carry on as before, our Iranian sources report.

The horrendous sight of another Western airline crashing over the US on Christmas Day 2009 was averted by a fluke and the resourcefulness of passengers and cabin crew - not by the anti-terror agencies' high-tech gadgets, vast budgets and airport security measures. Six months ago, Umar Faroul Abdulmuttallab's father warned the US Embassy in Lagos of his 23-year old son's alarming extremist Muslim activities. Yet he was granted a US visa. On Dec. 25, he sailed through Schiphol international airport with 80 grams of PETN (pentaervthritol) high explosive and liquid detonators in his underpants after landing from Lagos and caught...

Two Pakistani officers were taken hostage and a lieutenant general was among the eight soldiers killed in a gunfight with presumed Taliban gunmen following their audacious invasion of the Pakistan’s army headquarters in capital Saturday, Oct. 10. Pakistani paramilitary forces battled a second group of insurgents for control of a road tunnel which connects the towns of Darra Adam Khel and Kohat in the North West Frontier Province. On May 15, DEBKA-Net-Weekly exclusively named Kohat and Kamra as keys to Pakistan’s nuclear and missile arsenals and reported that Kohat’s fall to the Taliban would cut Islamabad and the Pakistani high...

BEIRUT: Western intelligence sources in the Middle East have disclosed to DEBKAfile that a special unit of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), commissioned by Hizbullah's special security apparatus earlier this year, was responsible for the massive discovery of alleged Israel spy rings in Lebanon in recent months with the help of "super-efficient" detection systems. The sources told DEBKAfile last week that the FSB and Hizbullah have "amassed quantities of undisclosed data" on Israel's clandestine operations in Lebanon and "are holding it in reserve in order to leak spectacular discoveries as and when it suits their purpose." "This disclosure, if...

DEBKAfile's military sources reveal that Iran is in the last stages of construction of a nuclear test site in the Kavir Lut desert between Tehran and its eastern border with Afghanistan. The work is managed by the Iranian experts invited to attend North Korea's nuclear test this year. (DEBKAfile reported June 27 that Iran has opened the way for a nuclear test.) Two of the diplomats attached to the UN nuclear watchdog agency in Vienna confirmed to the Associated Press Saturday July 18 that Iran now has the means to test a weapon within six months. One said more specifically:...

DEBKAfile's military sources confirm that the Army of Islam, the Palestinian al Qaeda cell in Gaza tried to assassinate former US president Jimmy Carter by planting a 200-kilo bomb in the path of his exit through the Erez crossing after he held sympathetic talks with its Hamas rulers. The Israeli military watched the huge device from across the border. Carter had a lucky escape; the bomb would have been lethal had it exploded. The UN security guards escorting Carter must have been forewarned and his life saved. Hamas sappers defused the device but later denied it was there. Nevertheless, some...

DEBKAfile's military sources disclose that Sunday night, May 31, Hamas commanders in Damascus and Gaza ordered all West Bank cells to unleash a terrorist assault on the West Bank with bomb cars, roadside bombs, snipers and missiles. They were told to set their sights on all Palestinian Authority officials including Mahmoud Abbas as well as taking aim at Israeli cities north of Tel Aviv. Our sources quote the Hamas directive as saying: "From tonight, you must go into action without delay against every Palestinian/Israel target within reach, using all the resources prepared in recent months." The directive continues: "There are...

Moscow sources disclose that the Russian, Iranian and Damascus governments have cooked up a scheme to get around Vladimir Putin's undertaking as president to refrain from selling Iran and Syria advanced Iskander-M cruise missiles: The transaction will go through Belarus. Sources in Moscow and Minsk confirmed Sunday, May 3, that the Iskander-M sale to Tehran has gone through and negotiations are ongoing for Iran and Syria for another transaction: the sale of Russia's advanced S-300 anti-air anti-missile multi-targeting shield systems as well. Western military sources have reported in the past that Israel cannot afford to allow this high-performance hardware enter...

DEBKAfile's Iranian and intelligence sources disclose that Moscow warned Tehran Friday April 17 that Israel was planning to destroy all 140 fighter-bombers concentrated at the Mehr-Abad Air Force base for an air show over Tehran on Iran's Army Day the following day. The entire fleet was accordingly removed to remote bases and the display cancelled. In the first week of April, Tehran announced it would stage its biggest air show ever to dramatize a ceremonial military parade in the capital on April 18. Iran would show the world that it is capable of fighting off an Israeli attack on its...

Nope - you're not going to find this story on MSNBC tonight kids..nor will you find it at Reuters or CBSnews.com. But you will find it here at DEBKA and it describes how Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah apparently read the riot act to President Barack Obama concerning Iran....mind you, this was AFTER Obama bowed and submitted his country to the slimey islamist leader. Here's some of the details from the meeting: On the sidelines of the G20 summit in London, Saudi King Abdullah made his views known in a face-to-face interview with the US president on April 2. The White...

DEBKAfile’s Washington sources report that the Obama administration is on the threshold of a major rapprochement with Tehran, a reversal of US policy dramatic enough to block out international sanctions. Iran will be allowed to keep its nuclear program, including military elements and enriched uranium stocks, up to the point of actually assembling a weapon. [..] The US president is willing to ditch Israel as a friend. This will be brought home to Jerusalem when he makes his big speech on April 7 appealing for a grand US-Muslim global reconciliation. The US president is preparing to tie a Palestinian-Israeli settlement...

Obama is weighing military, diplomatic cooperation with Tehran The additional "gestures" Barack Obama's spokesmen promised Iran would follow on the presidential new year message may presage a dramatic U-turn on Iran, including even an astonishing offer of US-Iranian military and diplomatic cooperation - that is if the Islamic Republic decides to play ball.Israel's AMAN military intelligence director, Maj. Amos Yadlin updated the Knesset foreign affairs and security committee on the state of Iran's nuclear progress Wednesday, March 25. He reported that although Iran is only months away from a capacity to make a nuclear bomb and has attained a warhead...

The soon-to-be prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes that "a national emergency" such as Israel's involvement in a major war would help him in his frantic attempts to form a new ruling coalition. Netanyahu, who is known as "Mr. Iran" in Israeli circles, has so far failed to gain the trust and support of opposition parties of Kadima and Labor. According to a report carried by Debka, which is believed to have close links to the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, Netanyahu is planning to settle for a provisional administration before calling for another early election in six months. "His main consideration...

DEBKAfile's military sources report that Hamas does not propose to put its entire 15,000-strong army in harm's way against the expected Israeli military invasion. It will confine its resistance to small pockets and sabotage and let Israel troops occupy most of Gaza Strip territory. Assuming the incoming force will stop short of conquering Gaza City and put it to siege, Hamas planners believe this siege force will be Israel's Achilles heel. They propose to wear it down over weeks by nocturnal guerilla forays from within Gaza City and force an inconclusive end to the conflict.

The United States and Russia are bidding hard against each other to give the Lebanese army heavy weapons, a contest which Israeli diplomacy has failed to deter, DEBKAfile's military sources report. Defense ministry official Amos Gilead arrived in Moscow Friday, Dec. 19 only to watch his train leaving the station: Sophisticated Russian S-300 air defense systems were already speeding toward Tehran to guard its nuclear sites and MiG-29 fighter jets had been pledged to Lebanon. In Washington, too, Israeli diplomats pleaded in vain with Bush administration leaders to refrain from giving Lebanon tanks and a fleet of combat helicopters. Ten...

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in an interview to AP that the exit routes practiced through Turkey and Jordan would determine “what the challenges might be.” Both governments support the effort. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the US army chief’s statement marks the beginning of the American withdrawal from Iraq. While he is still following the orders of President Bush, Mullen said he was clearly aware of president-elect Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw the US army from Iraq in 16 months. This development is a negative augur for Israel’s strategic situation; after Lebanon and...

US intelligence’s amended estimate, that Iran will be ready to build its first bomb just one month after the next US president is sworn in, is disclosed by DEBKAfile’s Washington sources as having been relayed as a guideline to the Middle East teams of both presidential candidates, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama. The information prompted the assertion by Democratic vice presidential nominee Joseph Biden in Seattle Sunday, Oct. 19: “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.” Israel has (nearly) run out of time.

Ten Russian warships are docked in the Syrian port city of Tartus to the apparent surprise of the Israeli military, military sources say. The unidentified sources said Israeli military leaders were unaware that Russian had already moved so many vessels into Syrian territory following a Sept. 12 agreement between the two countries, DEBKAfile, a Israeli news Web site, reported Friday. The military intelligence W

Exclusive: Limited US attack on Iranian Revolutionary Guards bases in sight

Israeli history has ruled that none lasted long when they came close to giving up vital security assets. Shimon Peres survived for a year in 1996 after his move to continue the concessions made under the Oslo Framework Accords; Ehud Barak was toppled in 2000 as head of government and defense minister when he shrank from fighting the Palestinian uprising and sought an accommodation with Yasser Arafat instead. Olmert is said to be on the point of giving up parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinians and, according to a message carried by Turkish go-betweens to the Syrian ruler, offering to...

Addressing a news conference in Washington, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday, April 25, the Pentagon is planning for “potential military courses of action” against Iran. He spoke of the Tehran government’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq. A conflict with Iran would be “extremely stressing” he said, but not impossible and “it would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability.” The admiral stressed the reserve capabilities of the Navy and Air Force. Adm. Mullen’s statement came four days after US defense secretary Robert Gates said he favored...

The Le Ponant pleasure yacht was seized Friday in international waters opposite Somalia without passengers on route from the Seychelles to Aden Port and the Mediterranean after its first pleasure trip of the summer season in the Indian Ocean. The 32-man crew was taken hostage. Our shipping correspondent reports that the French Le Commandant Rouen warship was diverted from NATO’s Afghanistan operation to join the Yemeni coast guard in the hunt for and rescue of the captured craft. The Le Ponant caters to 64 high-profile luxury tourists, one of three owned by Le Compagnie Des Iles du Ponant, a...

DEBKAfile Reports: Russia launches first naval power build-up in the Mediterranean in response to the US about-face on Iran December 5, 2007, 9:19 PM (GMT+02:00) Admiral Kuznetsov - first Russian carrier posted to Mediterranean President Vladimir Putin and defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov decided to send a sortie of six Russian warships, led by the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier and the Moskva guided missile cruiser, to the Mediterranean. This will be the first prolonged stay of a Russian carrier to the eastern Mediterranean vicinity of Israel’s shores and waters patrolled by the US Sixth Fleet. On its decks are 47 warplanes...

In a radical about-face, White House officials suddenly “discovered” Monday, Dec. 3, that Iran had halted it nuclear weapons program four years ago, but has continued to enrich uranium and could have enough material to build a bomb between 2010 and 2015. This “discovery” appeared in the latest National Intelligence Estimate, together with the comment that Iran seems less determined to develop nuclear arms than previously believed and is more vulnerable to international pressure

President George W. Bush is developing a new strategy for tackling Iran’s determined pursuit of a nuclear weapons program. He sounded out French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on his new ideas when they came over separately for talks in the last few days. He is also in rapport with Russian president Vladimir Putin through confidential channels.

Al Qaeda's online community is threatening all out cyber war against counter jihadis. Bring. It. On. B- - - - - -. DEBKA: In a special Internet announcement in Arabic, picked up DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources, Osama bin Laden’s followers announced Monday, Oct. 29, the launching of Electronic Jihad. On Sunday, Nov. 11, al Qaeda’s electronic experts will start attacking Western, Jewish, Israeli, Muslim apostate and Shiite Web sites. On Day One, they will test their skills against 15 targeted sites expand the operation from day to day thereafter until hundreds of thousands of Islamist hackers are in action against untold...

The Khorramshar News Agency, which is published by the ethnic Arab underground of Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan, reported early Oct. 1 that the entire staff of Russian nuclear engineers and experts employed in building the nuclear reactor at Bushehr had abruptly packed their bags Friday, Sept. 28, and flew back to Russia. The agency’s one-liner offers no source or explanation. DEBKAfile have obtained no corroboration of its report from any other source. The story appears to have originated with the ethnic Arabs who live near the reactor or who come in contact with its Russian staff. If true, DEBKAfile can offer...

Saw this headline on another forum: DEBKAfile reports: Russians employed at Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor suddenly depart in a body, according to local Arab sources Was wondering if Debka is ever right about things? What is their accuracy rate?