Free Republic

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...