Mideast Roundup
January 24, 2003
Targets & Dates
1. Oil as Ultimate Strategic Tool
While tactical details may shift around in the run-up to the US offensive against Iraq - one month hence - the key to the strategic picture is emerging as regards the objectives of the conflict and its immediate post-war goals.
The Bush administration has determined finally that US forces will occupy Iraq's oil fields and oil cities, including the oil port of Basra, in the initial stage of the offensive - both as protection from torching or other sabotage, and to retain a hold on them for the foreseeable future - one to two years for starters or until orderly government is installed in Baghdad.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell cited no dateline when he spoke of the leadership of the coalition fighting in Iraq taking control of its oil as custodian for the Iraqi people. In any case, it is hard to see when the war is over who else can be trusted to protect and preserve this resource for the future. Restoration of order and the setting up of responsible government in Baghdad is likely to be a drawn-out process given the deep historic divisions among Iraq's communities.
Certainly, there is no intention to lay the fields open to such claims as those of Turkey, whose rights may be presumed to have expired with the passing of the Ottoman Empire two centuries ago. Having fought for regime-change in Baghdad, the US will not let the oil fields fall into the hands of Saddam's heirs and secret supporters or be at the mercy of extremists and terrorists.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington outline the immense implications of the decision to commandeer the third biggest (after Saudi Arabia and Canada) known oil reserves in the world - and not just with respect to the world's oil industry.
The United States will have armed itself with a whirling sword to brandish over the heads of the rulers of Iran, the Gulf Emirates and, most importantly, Saudi Arabia. This vital resource will be backed by the greatest accumulation of military might seen in decades, lodged in the throat of the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula and capable of striking at almost zero notice at any point in the region. Washington will have its hand on the oil lever and the ability to make Iraq's neighbors dance to its plan for reshaping the national borders and governments of the Middle East.
Moreover, if Europe lets America to go into battle unsupported by a coalition of allies, the international treaties Saddam Hussein signed, extending to foreign governments investment, exploration and other concessions, will be discarded as scraps of paper in the new post-Saddam era. The Bush administration will deem powers like France and Russia to have forfeited their claims by obstructing the war effort. Indeed, forced to fight and foot the war bill alone, President George W. Bush may well buy vice president Dick Cheney's argument that Iraq's oil revenues should be used as war reparations to defray part of the costs of war and lengthy occupation.
2. Critical Dates: February 23-28
The last week in February 2003 is the last time frame to be set by US President George W. Bush for launching the Iraq war, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence experts and our sources in Washington.
After months of false starts, a new spirit of determination pervades the Washington scene this week. All parts of the administration say the attack will get under way whether or not the UN weapons inspectors find a smoking gun and even if France, Germany and China veto a new resolution to strengthen the mandate inherent in 1441 for military action against the Saddam regime. Bush seems to have reconciled himself to sailing into the fray solo, should the few allies left, like Britain, let him down at the last minute.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington report exclusively that when Commander-in-Chief Bush handed the US high command his final launch dates - February 23-28 - he added three caveats:
1.
All the units designated for stage one of the war must have reached their battle stations by one of the following dates: February 23, 24 or, at latest, 25.
2.
By those dates, the Pentagon, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers, and the war commander, General Tommy Franks, must be able to inform the president that the armed forces are on-station and that everything is ready for the offensive to start - else the countdown will be wound back to the beginning.
3.
The American troika in charge of war planning and operations - Myers, Franks and defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld - must ascertain that everything has been done from a military, logistical and intelligence standpoint to keep the duration of the war down to 100 hours, meaning four to five days. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources say that Bush will insist on this promise from the three war leaders, or else hold back the military's marching orders until more reinforcements are consigned to the war zone.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, Rumsfeld, Myers and Franks have assured the president they have every intention of sticking to the last week in February deadline and abiding by the White House's provisos.
3. Final Preparations
Intense diplomacy in the last ten days in Ankara and Amman has enabled US war planners to recover much of the ground lost when Turkey and Jordan started sliding out of their commitments to provide bases for American invasion units. The initial stage can partially revert to the original three-front assault format, but will rely more heavily than first planned on America's mighty fleet of floating bases - aircraft carriers and naval platforms for parachute jumps by air and amphibious landings by sea. But only one month remains for US and allied armies to collect assemble, prepare and interlock a fleet of aircraft carriers, four or more army divisions, much of the Air Force's might, and around 180,000 US and allied troops.
Aircraft carriers
Six or seven aircraft carriers along with their battle groups of attack submarines and destroyers are to be deployed by the president's deadline dates in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and eastern Mediterranean Sea. Their role in the strike against Iraq has been enhanced by the limitations placed on the basing of ground troops by Iraq's neighbors. The USS Truman, one of the newest US navy carriers which leads a 12-ship battle group that includes five destroyers, is in the eastern Mediterranean. It could be ordered to the Gulf, to join the USS Constellation. The USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Theodore Roosevelt will also be deployed within striking distance of Iraq. The USS Nimitz and USS George Washington are also being taken into account for the Gulf armada.
Each carrier carries 70-80 aircraft as well as surveillance, electronic warfare, search-and-rescue and command-and-control aircraft. Its escort includes ships capable of firing Tomahawk cruise missiles and at least one submarine.
Ground strength
America expects to field between 160,000 and 170,000 US soldiers, joined by 7,000 to 10,000 special forces commandos from other countries, mainly Britain, bringing the total number of allied troops in the campaign to 170,000 or 180,000 men.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, US armed forces will not be able to equip most of the 30,000-strong British force destined for the Gulf for lack of time and the stretching of logistical resources to their limit. The British contingent will therefore land in-theater without weapons, communications equipment, tank and helicopter engines as well as being short of desert clothing and combat gear. They will therefore stay in rear bases and undertake their defense against Iraqi air strikes or terrorist attacks. The only British troops to receive equipment from the US military command will be the 4,000 British special forces troops going into Iraq in the first invasion wave.
Amphibious Task Force Ironhorse
Far from the prying eyes of television cameras, Task Force Ironhouse, the largest group in the war buildup against Iraq - assigned to spearhead the first wave of the invasion - is training in closed areas in northern and western Kuwait. The backbone of the 37,000-strong force is formed by some 12,000 men of the US Army's 4th infantry division from Fort Hood Texas, equipped with tanks, attack helicopters and anti-tank artillery. The task force includes soldiers from 10 other installations. An amphibious force, the men of Ironhorse are practicing landings from the sea and going over large water obstacles.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report that the task force will make its first landings through the Shatt al-Arab tidal river area -- Iraq's only estuary to the Gulf. The mouth of the waterway is already commanded by US warships backed by British and Canadian naval units and Iranian Revolutionary Guards frogmen. The landings will take place at several points on the western bank of the Shatt al-Arab, west of the Iraqi port city of Basra, to capture the big Iraqi naval base of Umm al-Qasar with the help of airborne troops. Elements of Ironhorse will earlier converge on the giant hangars US army engineers and navy constructed on the Iranian side of the border near Abadan in the oil-rich Khozistan district last November. Their task is to pick up the amphibious tanks, armored vehicles, landing craft and state-of-the-art mobile bridges stored in those hangars, drive the loaded vehicles across the border into Iraq and join up with the US special forces deployed in the area these past two months. The commandos will guide the force to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for the advance northward to Baghdad.
The 82nd and 101st airborne divisions
American war planners realize there is no way of concealing the main Ironhorse task force landing in the south. Kuwaitis and Gulf coastal fishermen - some of them Iraqi or al Qaeda agents - are sure to spot the troops boarding ships or planes. Fears that Iraqi agents could sneak into Kuwait in the guise of fishermen returning from a night's work led to a recent ban on Kuwaiti fishing boats from taking to the open sea after dark. But even if an invasion force were spotted shipping out of Kuwait, the exact date and time of the start of the attack on Iraq would still be anyone's guess. However, should work leak out that troops of the 82nd Airborne Division were about to board transport planes, the Iraqis would know for sure the offensive was upon them. Therefore keeping their destinations secret was important and had a necessary side-benefit - protection from terrorist attack.
The troopers of the 82nd Airborne Division, who carry out regular practice parachute jumps at home base of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, have been shipped out to the war zone. Their division's specialty is capturing airfields and setting up their artillery unit to defend it, as well as airborne assaults and traditional ground assaults.
According to our latest information, the 82nd Airborne has been assigned the task of capturing Iraq's oilfields at the outset of the offensive.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report a large number of airborne troops will parachute into western and central Iraq, capture airfields and military bases and prepare them quickly for the arrival of reinforcements. Some units will capture the western oil fields; others take over the fields in the south. Elements of the division may be based in a country bordering on Iraq which for political reasons wants to keep its involvement in the war quiet.
It will be up to contingents of the 101st Airborne Division, flown in from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to seize control of Kirkuk, Mosul and the northern oil fields.
The 1st Cavalry Division, based at Ford Hood with the 4th Infantry was instructed this week to send over a battalion of Apache helicopter gun-ships and a chemical-detection company
Marines
The 4,000 men of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit based at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, have been conducting training exercises in the Gulf region for months. Another 10,000 Marines of Amphibious Task Force West, shipped out from San Diego a week ago, led by the US military's two biggest amphibious assault ships, the USS Boxer and the USS Bonhomme Richard. Amphibious Task Force East left from North Carolina with 10,000 Marines on January 14, led by three amphibious assault ships. The smaller 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based at Camp Pendleton, California, left from San Diego in the first week of January aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Tarawa.
In the month to come, there may be some shuffling round of the functions assigned the various units, not all of which have been finalized.
Staging Bases Recovered
1. Turkey Relents, Promises Blind Eye
While still holding out on permission for a full-scale, 80,000-strong US invasion force to be stationed in Turkey, the Gul government has agreed to meet American requirements a quarter of the way. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and Turkish sources say Ankara will allow 25-30,000 US troops to land in its bases for the first stage of the war, going up to 40,000 as long as this is not publicly acknowledged.
According to our sources, General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, obtained this concession during the few hours he spent in Incirlik and Ankara Sunday, January 19. The two sides agreed that US military headed for Iraq would be permitted limited use of Turkish air and naval bases as well as civilian airports, including Istanbul's international airport.
Following are the clauses of the agreement:
1.
As the war draws near, Turkey will grant passage for one light US division of no more than 15,000 troops to transit into northern Iraq - conditional on a US pledge to end the military campaign against Saddam Hussein within days.
2.
Shortly before the invasion (a period counted in days), Turkey will allow US troops to land at Turkish air and naval bases and go into action against Iraqi targets.
3.
In the first stage of the US offensive, the Turkish government and high command undertakes to return the Turkish forces already inside northern Iraq to their bases. DEBKA-Net-Weekly had earlier reported Turkish troops as having taken up strategic positions along main roads. Those troops would stay in their bases until a new US-Turkish agreement is negotiated on Turkey's status in Iraq. The Turkish government and high command promised not to exploit the US campaign to move Turkish forces back into northern Iraq.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources note that through this clause in the Turkish-US accord, General Myers lifted the Turkish military threat hanging over Kurdistan.
4.
Since the accord the US general negotiated is military in nature, Washington and Ankara agreed to review Turkish territorial demands regarding northern Iraqi oil fields and the future administration of the oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul when the war is over and regime-change is achieved in Baghdad.
The carrot Myers proffered the Gul government, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington, was an undertaking on behalf of President George W. Bush that the United States would be generous with the provision of post-war economic aid, in return for Turkey's responsiveness to US demands for bases. The American general also held out the possibility of US concessions to Turkey in the bargaining over the shape of the government administrations in northern Iraq and the Turkmen region.
5.
If the war were to be brief, the Turks would view with favor the granting of passage for additional US divisions.
Turkish officials brushed off questions on the conference they had initiated of Iraq's six neighbors that took place in Istanbul Thursday, January 23. They advised Washington that the event was of no importance and would not lead to any interference with the five-point accord they had concluded with General Myers.
Myers' mission effectively ended the US-Turkish crisis that threatened US war plans in northern Iraq and Washington's political blueprint for a post-war Iraq. It permitted US war planners to come close to reverting to their original three-way split of 40,000 combat troops each for the northern, western and southern sectors of the warfront against Iraq. (See also next article on Jordan)
According to the latest information, units of the 4th US Infantry Division, the whole of which was first tasked for the southern front, are now being shipped to Turkish bases to the jump into the northern oilfields together with 101st Airborne Division detachments.
2. Jordan Re-Opens Air Space
King Abdullah's abrupt resistance to Jordan's engagement in the US offensive against Iraq melted away this week under the influence of American guarantees topped up by Israeli assurances. This is reported from DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington and Amman.
Amid sighs of relief in Washington and Jerusalem, the king this week lifted the restrictions he had clamped down on the movements of American troops in the kingdom, their use of Jordanian bases as launching pads to invade Iraq and attack the western bases from which Scud missiles were fired against Israeli in 1991 and, best of all, renewed permission for US warplanes to reach Iraq via Jordanian airspace.
The Jordanian king also gave the nod for Israeli air force planes to fly across the kingdom if their flights were first coordinated with the US and Jordanian authorities.
US plans to occupy western Iraq in the first stage of the anti-Saddam offensive depend heavily on American troops having the use of bases in Jordan. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources note that while the capture of Baghdad and Saddam's power base of Tikrit would be feasible without bases in Turkey, it would be seriously jeopardized if Iraqi forces were not first flushed out of western Iraq. Those troops, especially the ones stationed at the H2 and H3 base complexes, are armed with a large quantity of long-range surface-to-surface missiles, some with chemical or biological warheads. They could inflict grave damage to the American advance on Baghdad and Tirkit if they remained to the rear of that advance.
Abdullah's change of heart was effected by a promise of American guarantees for the protection of the kingdom. On Thursday, January 23, those guarantees were formalized by a request lodged by Jordan in Washington for the sale of an air defense system "to tighten control over Jordanian airspace" and "protection against foreign intervention".
Jordan's towns teem with Iraqi intelligence agents. They often work hand in glove with subversive Palestinian and Islamic extremist elements to stir up unrest against the throne. At the outset of the war against Iraq, they would most certainly redouble their efforts to undermine Abdullah's rule.
The monarch was also influenced by certain assurances delivered by special envoys from his close neighbor Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, no doubt with Washington's intercession. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington and Jerusalem report that Israel reiterated its guarantee to defend Hashemite rule in Jordan, as mandated in the peace treaty both countries signed in 1994 and reinforced in secret bilateral military and intelligence pacts.
Abdullah made a new and surprising request.
He informed Israel and the United States that, as soon as the threat from Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction has passed, he would like permission to deliver a personal message of peace and conciliation between the Arab nation and the Jewish State over Israeli Television. The responses in Jerusalem and Washington are not known, but are unlikely to be forthcoming ahead of Israel's general election next Tuesday, January 28.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's political sources interpret the Jordanian monarch request's as an attempt to position himself as the senior Arab arbiter of the destiny of the Palestinians when Saddam goes, his passing further weakening his long-time ally, Yasser Arafat.
Abdullah cherishes hopes of reclaiming Jordan's past authority over the West Bank and Arab Jerusalem which his father, Hussein, forfeited by losing the 1967 war.
Iraq
Saddam to Arab Leaders: Stay away from Baghdad
As America gears up for war against him, Saddam Hassan is fuming over the self-exile schemes hatched against him by his Arab peers and widely reported as fact in the US, European and Arab media. The Saudi princes were even described as plotting to turn his own generals against him.
Those reports, which DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources affirm are made of whole cloth, led US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld to quip that banishing Saddam would not be a bad idea and could save Washington a fortune.
The Iraqi ruler was angry enough to dispatch his cousin, member of the Iraqi revolutionary command council, General Ali Hassan Ali Majid to Damascus, Beirut, Amman and Cairo. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, Majid delivered a stiff dressing-down to his hosts, telling them:
A.
To immediately shut off the talk that Saddam or any member of his family is going into exile, because it would never happen.
B.
To silence suggestions that have been circulating that the Iraqi ruler is willing to make way for a ruling council acceptable to the Americans with a seat for one Saddam loyalist whose hands are untainted by violence and association with unconventional weapons programs. That solution is just as unacceptable to the Iraqi ruler as the first.
C.
To scotch the campaign of rumor and innuendo aimed at weakening his hold on power, Saddam tells Arab leaders to stay away from Baghdad. He does not want to see them or their messengers. Even when they come with messages of support, they start spreading inaccurate tales of their conversations with him as soon as they leave.
The Iraqi ruler warns any would-be Arab visitors that they will be detained at the Iraqi border and thrown into jail until the war is over.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence experts, commenting on Saddam's furious ban on Arab visits, that it has had an effect on America's advance preparations for war. US and Western intelligence services had counted on the Iraqi ruler and his top officials being available to Arab delegations to monitor current information and impressions of the situation behind the walls of the Iraqi presidential palaces - or even to send discreet messages to Saddam himself. Their conduits were the spies that friendly Arab intelligence and security services planted in the visiting delegations to Baghdad. That channel has now dried up.
Iran
New Terror Group for Old Target: America
While Iran's leaders continue to pursue their dual-track policy review regarding the American war on Iraq, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources report that radical factions of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have established Iranian-Iraqi commando squads of suicides for striking at· American forces building up in the region for the Iraq offensive.
In an abrupt switch, Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Hakim, head of the opposition Iraqi Supreme Revolutionary Council, who has been promised a large role in post-war Baghdad, is deeply involved in the creation of the anti-American suicide terror units.
The Supreme Revolutionary Council is one of the three Iraqi opposition groups promoted actively by Washington as a bulwark for a stable post-war government in Baghdad. Its representative took his seat alongside Sunni and Kurdish opposition leaders at US- and British-sponsored conferences in Washington and London. US officials consult with its members frequently.
Nonetheless, the Supreme Revolutionary Council's leaders have turned against the Americans and joined forces with the hard-line Revolutionary Guards.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Iranian experts explain why.
Hakim received information that Washington had secretly promised a rival Iraqi Shiite opposition group, Hizb Ad-Dawah, a prominent role in a future Iraqi government, despite the expectation of Hakim and members of his family to be awarded half of the cabinet portfolios.
Hizb Ad-Dawah is a veteran party in Iraq with influence among secular Shiites. Hakim, a fundamentalist who enjoys Iranian patronage, fears that Washington will favor the secular Shiite group over his Council.
Furthermore, influential officials in Tehran continue to raise the specter of America not only downgrading its interests in Baghdad, but turning on the Islamic Revolutionary Republic of Iran after Saddam Hussein is disposed of. They also fret about the influence of an American victory in Iraq on ordinary Iranians, who they fear will be moved to rise up and overthrow the regime of ayatollahs.
Iran's leaders have therefore decided to garner all the available benefits from helping the Americans vanquish Saddam, while at the same time preparing to clip American wings and undermine its entrenchment in Iraq after Saddam has been overthrown. Their plan is for Iraqi fundamentalist Shiites to wage an armed struggle against US forces and install a government that will meet with their approval in Baghdad. Iran's theocrats and their prot&Mac218;g&Mac218;, Hakim, are alarmed by America's planned interim military government to rule the country for a year at least, under either an American officer, a non-Iraqi Arab or a secular Iraqi, and are preparing an anti-American terror campaign to combat that eventuality.
The terror-masters of Tehran are recruiting for their terror squads from the following forces and groups:
1.
Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen experienced in battling Israeli troops in Lebanon, who trained Hizballah fighters in such guerrilla arts as planting roadside bombs and laying ambushes.
2.
The Hizballah's most seasoned operatives in Lebanon, the hard men who in the 1980s engineered the campaign of hostage-taking against Western foreigners in Beirut and the deadly bombing attacks against US, French and Israeli forces in Beirut and southern Lebanon.
3.
Elite units of Sepah Badr, a contingent the Revolutionary Guards established during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and trained for guerrilla attacks behind Iraqi lines. Its members are experts in infiltration techniques, ambushes and the use of anti-tank and shoulder-held anti-aircraft missiles as well as Katyusha rockets. Since then, Sepah Badr has been employed in dozens of missions against Iran's most dangerous opposition group, the Mujahedin al-Khalq guerrillas.
4.
Iranian naval commandos who belong to a branch of the armed forces that is completely under Revolutionary Guards control.
The new teams of terrorists are in special training programs tailored for specific guerrilla operations:
Suicide bomb-attacks against US warships in the Gulf. The commandos are taught to zoom up to their target-vessels on jet skis or aboard small speedboats packed with explosives.
Blowing up US or British embassies and facilities in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman and other Gulf emirates. After receiving intelligence information about Iran's new terror campaign, the Kuwait foreign minister hastened to Tehran last week, to find out if terrorist activities were to be resumed in the emirates on the pattern of the bombing of the US embassy in Kuwait by Iranian agents in the 1980s.
Assassinations of senior US officials in the region. The Kuwaitis suspect that the latest spate of shooting attacks against US military personnel based in Kuwait were carried out with Iranian cooperation, possibly as training exercises to get recruits into harness.
Blasts at US military barracks and operational centers in the emirates and inside Iraq.
Hostage-taking is projected despite the difficulty in finding hiding places for the captives. Iran is reluctant to let the abductees be kept on its soil and are trying to establish hideouts in Qatar or Bahrain.
Al Qaeda operatives present in Iran. Until now, they have refrained from joint operations with Iran. Now they will operate together with the Iranians to strike at US forces in Iraq.
Al Qaeda
Intent on a Nuclear Strike
The doctrinal message circulating round al Qaeda circles and publications in recent days has undergone a tidal change under the influence of the approaching American offensive against Iraq. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terror experts report that the new message is bringing hundreds if not thousands of new recruits flocking to the Islamist fundamentalist group's flag in the Gulf region. Alarming changes in terror tactics are also discerned.
Whereas Western leaders are at pains to stress that the global war on terror is not a war against Islam and the coming conflict with Iraq is not an assault on the Arab world, radical Arab Muslims are explaining that America's objectives in Iraq are to seize Arab land and its natural resources, oil. Young Gulf Muslims are being told that, whereas in Afghanistan, Bin Laden led a global jihad, in Iraq and Arabia, his followers are fighting for their sacred homelands and their violation by infidels. Today the Americans will conquer Iraq's cities and oil fields; tomorrow they will use Iraq as a jumping-off base to capture Saudi Arabia and its oil riches.
Al Qaeda's spokesmen are now going beyond general calls for action against the enemy and announcing a serious escalation of tactics. They are telling partisans explicitly that American troops and civilians must be fought with nuclear weapons. In some Internet sites associated with the group, such phrases as "the way to kill Americans is by nuclear attack," appear of late. Another favorite is: "There are no Western civilians. Every Westerner is a combatant whom we are enjoined to kill."
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terror experts estimate that Al Qaeda is striving to prepare the ground for the mass murder of American and Western civilians by unconventional means of warfare.
Its sites abound with detailed instructions on how to prepare chemical agents and dangerous toxins for harming American troops. They also offer detailed information on security procedures at American Gulf military installations and ways to overcome them so as to kidnap US troops as hostages. Our experts suggest that their harping on the nuclear option is a strong indication that the fundamentalists possess some sort of nuclear weapon.
Our monitors have picked up another alarming development on the al Qaeda Internet scene. While the chatter continues unabated, operational signals among activist cells in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon have dried up, implying an organized blackout of electronic communications on open channels, portending some operation may be afoot.
There are a number of possibilities:
1.
A nuclear/mega attack on an American Gulf installation, such as bases in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, or even Saudi Arabia.
2.
A multi-location mega/nuclear strike against a number of bases, oil fields, terminals or tankers.
3.
A mega/nuclear attack against an Arab capital taking part in American war preparations, such as Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar or Oman, where heightened al Qaeda activity has been registered in the last weeks.
4.
A mega/nuclear attack against one of Israel's main cities. Israel is deep in preparations to meet such an attack, often disguised as measures to confront an Iraqi assault. This week, Israel's government hospitals signed contracts with a number of big hotel chains, especially along the Mediterranean coastline, for the lease of whole wings for conversion into hospital facilities in case of a terrorist attack of disastrous proportions. Large firms who rely on exports, like Intel, have been shipping their inventories out of the country. Essential government offices, banks and large commercial firms have moved their staffs and equipment to nuclear bomb shelters and especially built bomb-proof building complexes outside Tel Aviv and Haifa.
5.
A mega/nuclear attack in London, which the British premier Tony Blair declared as a definite possibility in Parliament this week.
6.
A mega/nuclear strike in a major American city.
Alternatively, all six might take the form of biological or chemical attack.
HOT POINTS
(that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock)
A Digest of the Week's Exclusives
18 January: DEBKAfile's Middle East sources offer two primary explanations for the temporary repudiations of Turkey and Jordan of their commitments to the US war on Iraq:
1.
Since 1914, when British and French armies overran the Arab world and seized it from the Ottoman Turks, no non-Muslim conqueror has ever captured an Arab capital. When Israeli troops entered Beirut in 1982, the Reagan administration made them about-turn without delay so as not to inflame the entire Arab Muslim world. Now that the war on Iraq is around the corner, Arab and Muslim rulers are again up in arms, fearful of going down in history as having lent a hand in 2003 to the unthinkable conquest of a Muslim capital by a non-Muslim army.
President George W. Bush and his team understand what they are taking on and are not afraid to go forward.
2.
Reports, messages, hints and electronic chatter attributed to al Qaeda are rife in the last few days, threatening nuclear retribution for an American attack on Iraq. There is no information on the type, scale or sophistication of the threat in question, or whether the nuclear weapon will be wielded by Iraq or come in the form of a terrorist strike, either in the hands of Iraqi agents or al Qaeda terrorists.
The threat, however, is being taken seriously enough for would-be US war allies in the region to stand aside and let the American war wagon roll on without them - for the time being. Most do not admit to desertion, only waiting to see what happens next. Some may climb back on at some point.
The coming week will see a hectic round of continuing Arab-Muslim capital-hopping and conference activity. Ankara and Damascus are staging regional meetings this week and next with the participation of Turkish, Syrian, Saudi, Egyptian, Iranian and Jordanian leaders, for the avowed purpose of averting the US war on Iraq. The Saudis are trying to get another summit together in March.
They have two immediate goals. According to DEBKAfile's sources, all these rulers are bent on demonstrating clean hands in the event of Saddam Hussein's overthrow, while at the same time preserving their interests in Iraq and the region after the American victory.
18 January: Last week's "discovery" by UN arms inspectors of a dozen empty chemical 122 mm missile warheads at an Iraqi ammunition dump in Ukhaider, 70 miles south of Baghdad, was not the outcome of intelligence but subtle Iraqi manipulation. The UN inspectors were led by the nose to their discovery. DEBKAfile's military and intelligence sources report this after tracking it down to source.
Wednesday, January 15, US president George W. Bush declared he was sick and tired of Saddam Hussein's games and deceit - with effect on the US timetable. Hearing this, the Iraqi ruler understood the American president was near his limit and must be calmed down to give Iraq more time to manufacture fresh delays. Iraqi intelligence was instructed to organize 12 empty chemical shells in sealed crates and place them in a military ammunition depot. Double agents planted among the UN arms inspectors' technical aides, most of them from Middle Eastern countries, were told to pass the "tip" on to the Blix team.
The effect of the find was electric.
The US president was forced to curb his impatience and grant the inspectors more time for their search. After all, America could hardly go to war on the strength of 12 empty chemical shells.
Their discovery brought home to the American people the possibility of a brutal war with a high casualty count. One publication estimated that US troops would suffer as many as 3,000 dead and 10,000 injured. The tide of domestic opinion was turning against the war. In the absence of proven Iraqi possession of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, only 29 percent of Americans canvassed last week favored going to war, while 63 percent were against.
Shortly after the empty shells discovery, Wall Street stocks dipped and the US dollar fell against the euro. The international trading community was clearly unimpressed by the find and far from convinced that the UN team would come up with the solid proof needed to justify an American offensive against Saddam Hussein.
This uncertainty and lack of confidence were reflected in international trading. Saddam had manipulated the markets and rewarded the Europeans for their help in postponing the US attack by boosting their currency, however briefly.
Time was also bought to rally sympathizers in the region and divide the pro-American front.
20 January: Two senior UN officials, chief arms inspector Hans Blix and nuclear controller Mohamed ElBaradei, handed Saddam Hussein an epic diplomatic victory Monday, January 20 - no doubt acting on a nod from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. They gained the Iraqi ruler yet a further stay of military action until March 27 before he risks facing war for failing to give up his weapons of mass destruction.
At the United Nations, US Secretary of State, smarting at the blind man's bluff played out at Washington's expense in Baghdad, appealed to members "not to be shocked into impotence" by difficult choices. The inspectors wound up their two days of talks with Iraqi officials in Baghdad - cynically billed as tough demands for more cooperation - by signing onto a feeble 10-point accord that, point by point, blunted the teeth US and British diplomacy had inserted in UN Security Council resolution 1441.
Iraq undertakes to provide the inspectors with more documents: This is an admission that Iraq has to this day held back documents.
Iraqi officers will join inspection flights on Iraqi helicopters. Iraqi officers will be given the chance to keep an eye and report on the inspectors' actions and conversations to their superiors. DEBKAfile's intelligence experts add that the Iraqi officers will no doubt be equipped with miniature bugs for jamming the inspectors' electronic surveillance systems.
Iraq refuses to allow UN U-2 surveillance craft to carry out inspections. Unlike the helicopter flights, the Iraqis have no access to the U-2s.
Iraq will provide supplementary data to the 12,000-page arms declaration presented to the UN Security Council on Dec. 7. Baghdad candidly admits by this point that it flouted Resolution 1441demanding a full and truthful account of its forbidden weapons. That declaration was termed at the time Saddam's last chance to comply with the resolution and avoid military action. On Monday, the UN inspectors rewarded Saddam with one more last chance in the lengthening series of last chances.
Iraq will enact laws prohibiting proscribed weaponry. Blix and ElBaradei must be congratulating themselves. Obviously, the Saddam regime was able to develop - and deploy - weapons of mass destruction for 22 years, only because it had no time to enact appropriate legislation! Fortunately, the UN inspectors have arranged for this lacuna to be corrected.
All these points cover a variety of commitments by Baghdad, barring one: to disclose and hand over its arsenal of unconventional weapons.
The document produced in Baghdad Monday enables the UN to inform the Bush administration that everything possible has been done to make Iraq provide information on its weapons of mass destruction by March 27. Therefore, even if US intelligence were to produce conclusive proof prior to that date that Iraq is concealing proscribed weapons and their precise whereabouts, Annan, Blix and ElBaradei, have made Saddam Hussein safe from US attack for another two months. During that period, the Iraqi dictator has been assured of immunity by the UN weapons inspectors.
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