Free Republic

Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s claim of Iranian success in low-level uranium enrichment was more bombastic than frank. Before springing his disclosure at a sacred mausoleum in the northern town of Mashhad on April 11, DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources disclose he paid a stealthy visit to Neyshabour in Khorassan, 38 kms to the southeast. There, he inspected a project he omitted to mention in his Mashhad speech about low-level enrichment, namely, a top-secret plant under construction that is designed to run 155,000 centrifuges, enough to enrich uranium for 3-5 nuclear bombs a year. This is Project B, or the hidden face of...

A second wave of arrests of Lebanese security officials was made overnight Tuesday August 30 on the orders of the UN team investigating the Hariri assassination headed by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis.

Debkafile, the private Israeli intelligence service, which is always entertaining but often in error, reports that al-Qaida is shifting more than 1,000 of its operatives from Iraq for terror offensives in Europe and elsewhere in the Middle East. "The countries targeted were named as Britain, Italy, France, Denmark, Russia -- with the U.K. and Italy at the top of the list; and in the Middle East, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel," Debka said on its Web site.

Israel’s prime minister Ariel Sharon was warned many a time to beware of placing all his major policy eggs in the George W. Bush basket. But from the time he first took office more than three years ago, he never wavered from his bond with the US president. Their friendship was often cited as one of Sharon’s prime assets. And until last week, the Bush administration stood behind the prime minister and heartily endorsed his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank in stages ending in September 2005. But then the wind blowing in from Washington...

Israeli Web site says euphemisms and vague generalities are not part of its news package 'We start where the media stop.' The slogan is more than just a promise emblazoned on top of the main page at Debkafile, the independent online publication in Israel that has been likened to the Drudge Report for information on Central Asia and the Middle East. In fact, it seems to have become the gospel for the trail-blazing news Web site, which has gained fame in recent months for its scoops on stories including the Bush-Putin pact to support the War on Terror and the...