Mideast Roundup

February 21, 2003

War Diary

US-UK Special Forces Begin South Iraqi Oil Fields Takeover

American and British special forces are reliably reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's exclusive military and intelligence sources to have begun taking over Iraqi oil fields close to the Kuwait border and around the port town of Basra, in audacious commando operations. These fields account for three-quarters of Iraq's oil output. The fields occupied are North Rumeila, which abuts on the border with Kuwait, as well as West Qurna and parts of Majnoon, near Basra. Allied troops are now attacking the oil refineries of Basra and Al Nasiriyah, before moving on to Al-Samawah and smaller oil fields near the Iranian border.
Click http://debka.com/pictures/iraq_oil_map.gif HERE for map of oil fields.

First reports from the region indicate that the takeover met hardly any resistance, which accounts for the slight damage to the oil fields and their installations.

This key operation is the most important to be carried out by combined Western special forces since April last year, when small units of undercover and elite troops first entered Iraq. Since then, these units have established footholds in northern, western and eastern Iraq.

Washington decided to seize the southern oil fields early last week after receiving intelligence reports from Kirkuk that Saddam Hussein had posted armed Iranian opposition Mujaheddin al-Khalq fighters armed with explosives, some of them suicide units, with orders to set the oil fields of Kirkuk on fire the minute an American or Turkish invasion began.

(This report was first revealed in DEBKA-Net-Weekly last week)

The news spurred the decision by US war planners led by General Tommy Franks to keep the southern oil fields safe from this peril. The order to the commandos to go forward was most probably issued on Saturday night, February 16. It explains Kuwait's sudden announcement a few hours earlier closing its oil fields along the Iraqi border and evacuating non-essential personnel.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, a part of the force went in overland from northern Kuwait while a second contingent was parachuted from US transport planes, with US Marines Apache helicopters taking part in the action.

The Washington-Ankara crisis that erupted this week over the use of Turkish bases for the US invasion of northern Iraq served the US war command as a useful distraction for keeping the move on the southern oil fields under wraps.

The Bush administration needed to keep the operation secret for a number of reasons:

1.
Saddam Hussein had to be prevented from taking military action to foil the seizure of the oil fields. Since he had put his trust in the world leaders opposing US military action winning their standoff against the United States at the United Nations, he could not be seen engaging in hostilities. However, if the oil field takeover had been released, he could not have avoided it.

2.
Iraqi and al Qaeda terrorist cells planted around Persian Gulf shores with orders to strike when the Americans invaded Iraq must not be alerted. The objective here was to keep them from finding out they had missed the train until their main incentive - the onset of the American invasion - had slipped out of their grasp.

3.
America would have already seized Iraq's most prized strategic asset before tabling a second resolution at the UN Security Council and before the UN arms inspectors made their third report on February 28. Washington would thus have stolen the thunder of its opponents in the Security Council and rendered its proceedings irrelevant.

The US war command expects the capture of the southern Iraqi oil fields to be completed within a few days, attaining two of the war's primary goals:

First, vital oil fields, pipelines and storage facilities will have been taken.

Second, Baghdad will have lost those oil fields and their revenue from minus day one of the war, a loss that could hasten the instigation of regime change from within the ruling clique.

A third possible gain presented itself this week: A fait accompli on this scale could persuade the Turks to come aboard the American war wagon after all and overcome Kurdish resistance to the entry of Turkish forces into northern Iraq. As a result, the northern front which was close to collapse earlier this week may be reconstituted at the eleventh hour.

There are signs on the ground that the crisis between Washington and Ankara may be more verbal than real. Our sources report that US troop transports, including those of the 3rd Division, have begun landing in Turkish airfields. Between 2000 and 2500 American troops have reached Turkish bases with light vehicles and armored carriers - though no tanks or self-propelled heavy artillery are being discharged. They are still aboard freighters at sea.

Turkey's final reply to the US ultimatum is expected Friday, February 20.


Saddam's Revised Strategy

Pins Hopes on Popular Anti-War Demos

Iraq's military divisions continued during this week to pour into Saddam's Iron Triangle of Baghdad, Ar Ramadi and Tikrit (whose creation DEBKA-Net-Weekly 97 reported on February 14, 2003).

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report the deployment was so swift that by mid-week Iraqi forces had been drawn in from most outlaying parts of the country and were ready to make their stand in the defensive enclave. From February 18 on, a US or other foreign invasion from any of Iraq's frontiers would have encountered no Iraqi troops blocking their path. The only defenders forces deployed outside the Iron Triangle are the units commanding the main highways of southern and northern Iraq.

In the north, they were seen at road junctions near Sinjar, Dahok and Mosul; in the south, they guarded the road links between the Shiite cities of Karbala, Al Kufah and An Najaf. Rather than repelling invaders, these units were deployed to suppress open Shiite and Kurdish insurrections against Baghdad and their advance on Iraq's main Sunni cities.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, on Monday, February 17, Saddam told the Iraqi general staff in their daily briefing that the military's immediate task is to head off such uprisings lest they hurl hundreds of thousands of minority rebels in a surge against the Iron Triangle - even ahead of the US military onslaught.

Saddam was alerted to this threat, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence and military sources, by the news from Iraqi intelligence that heavy supplies of automatic weapons, machine guns, light mortars, hand grenades and ammunition were recently smuggled to various armed Shiite groups for the purpose of stirring up a Shiite insurrection. Some of the munitions came from Iranian sources; some were air-dropped by the Americans.

The Iraqi ruler named Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, to his military commanders as their biggest threat. He predicted that the 50,000 fighters the PUK fields in northern Iraq would be thrown into the war against Baghdad, while the 45,000 men commanded by Mustafa Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party, would not, concentrating instead on defending Barzani's fiefdom in the western half of Kurdistan.

US intelligence analysts are reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources as concurring in this reading of the Kurdish scene.

However, Saddam will not content himself with a purely defensive strategy.

Framing US with massacres

For the time being, he has set aside his plan to unleash chemical, biological or nuclear warfare against the US and British forces ranged against him, according to the latest intelligence reaching US General Tommy Franks's forward headquarters. Instead, he opportunistically seized on the anti-war demonstrations last Saturday, February 15, which brought an estimated 2.6 million protesters out in hundreds of the world's cities, to develop a new plan of campaign.

A.
Public sensibilities in the West to civilian casualties will be grist to his mill. The Iraqi ruler has devised a plan to augment the casualties incurred in a concentrated US air and ground offensive in Iraq's crowded cities by massacres in the poor slums of those cities to be carried out by his own troops. The frightening death toll will then be blamed on the American attackers.
Some Arab and European media teams are already in place in Baghdad and accessible to Iraqi official spokesmen. They will be invited to record horrific scenes of the "bloodbath" and broadcast them around the world, bringing many more millions out on the streets to demand that America stop the war. Saddam is building his strategy on this prediction.

B.
He found great encouragement for using the protest card in the large Muslim component of the anti-war demonstrations

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources cite the local police forces, homeland security authorities and counter-terrorism agencies in countries where the marches were staged as taking note of the high percentage of Muslim marchers. In Paris, they represented between 42 and 47 percent of the protesters, in Germany about 36 percent and in London some 22 percent of the rally estimated as 600,000 strong.

Not all of them turned out spontaneously.

Funds poured into many local Muslim organizations, some with links to intelligence agencies in Arab countries, including Iraq, to leaven the response. Contributions came from government and private sources in the Middle East and Gulf, some through certain Arab embassies, to defray the costs of transportation, food and drink for the Muslim protesters. Saddam believes a greater backroom effort can further swell this movement. In future, he plans to deploy Iraqi intelligence agents to mass more Muslim protesters on the streets of France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and other European cities first, convinced that the streets of the United States will catch the anti-war contagion.

C.
This rising groundswell will impel the governments opposed to US military action, such as France, Germany, Russia and China, to clamor for an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council to curtail the action before it is more than one or two days old. They will table a resolution obliging the United States and Britain to cease hostilities against Iraq immediately. If it is vetoed by Washington or London, the motion's sponsors will demand that the UN General Assembly be convened. It will continue to sit as long as the allied offensive continues, providing a constant stimulant to anti-war activism.

D.
Saddam has come to believe that with the help of this movement, he can not only survive, but actually triumph over American and British leaders. His latest scenario as put before his inner circle and military chiefs opens with a massacre of his own civilians, brought to a world audience in graphic, gory detail to incriminate America and allies. He will strengthen the shock-effect by inflicting massive US troop casualties in the first stage of the war. The two events combined he believes will overwhelm the US President George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair, forcing them to resign. Once they are out of office, the allied attack campaign will come to a halt and US-UK troops be forced to pull out of Iraq.

Missile estimate upped to 70-80

E.
Not content with a propaganda offensive and massacre of his own people, Saddam is planning in the early stage of the war to stage long-range Iraqi missile attacks against Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Israel. Saddam told his cronies that Riyadh has not pulled the wool over his eyes. Saudi leaders may have publicly refused America bases for its assault on Iraq but, privately, he knows the bases were made available, albeit only for the first leg of the offensive. Saddam wants the princes of Riyadh punished for their duplicity.

But punishment will not suffice; he seeks to undermine the stability of the Saudi throne. To this end, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism sources report, he will orchestrate his missile blitz to coincide with the solidarity terror campaign al Qaeda plans to launch against targets in Saudi Arabia in the first hours of the American push into Iraq.

(See <#Hot>HOT POINTS below for more on joint Iraq-al Qaeda operational plans for the Persian Gulf and Middle East)

Reliable intelligence estimates now put Iraq's long-range Scud B and Scud D missile stock as high as 70 to 80, up from previous estimates of 50 to 60.

This figure was adjusted, according to exclusive DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, after intelligence sources in Yemen revealed that North Korea had smuggled at least 45 long-range missiles into Iraq over the past two years.


Senior Iraqi Defector - Chapter 2

Adib Shaaban May Not Have Made It

All may not be well for Adib Shaaban, senior aide to Saddam's powerful son Uday and Iraq's highest-ranking would-be defector. It looks like his attempt to flee to the United States, first revealed exclusively in DEBKA-Net-Weekly 97 (February 14), never came off.

First a recap: DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources reported, in information later confirmed by DEBKAfile's insiders, that Shaaban -- charged with Uday's most sensitive missions -- traveled to Jeddah early last week, saying he needed to put through some gold transactions ahead of the war.

From Jeddah, he flew to Beirut and disappeared.

But he never really went to the Lebanese capital. Instead, he made his way undercover to Damascus Monday and was picked up by an unmarked plane that flew him out of the Middle East.

At least, that's how Shaaban scripted his plan. But like so many things in the murky world of intelligence, the plan went awry - as is strongly indicated by the fresh information reaching DEBKA-Net-Weekly.

Simply put, he never made it.

Our sources conclude that upon landing at Damascus on Saturday, February 8, he walked straight into the arms of waiting Syrian military intelligence officers who took him to their isolated headquarters in the capital. He is probably still there under heavy guard, as Syrian leader Bashar Assad fights off conflicting demands from the White House and Saddam Hussein's presidential office for his handover.

Further discoveries by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources of the defector's secret duties on behalf of the Iraqi regime only enhance is value for Washington and explain Saddam's anxiety to keep him and the secrets in his head out of his enemies' hands.

Shaaban was the senior go-between for Baghdad's business with Damascus.

He was also privy to the clandestine movements of al Qaeda operatives from Iraq to Lebanon via Syrian sea and air ports.

His hand was on the contraband route along which smuggled Iraqi oil reached world markets through Syria's Mediterranean terminals.

Saddam and Assad share a stake in keeping all this information under wraps. The last thing the Syrian president can afford is for the United States or any other Western country to uncover the full extent of Syria's operational support for al Qaeda or the degree to which Assad violated UN sanctions against Iraq.

Shaaban may be presumed to have been lost the moment his feet touched Syrian soil.

For the time being, Assad is holding this high card close - handing him over neither to America nor Iraq. He is biding his time until he sees how the first round of the US military offensive against Iraq turns out. If Saddam, his sons and army weather the American assault, Shaaban's value will rocket, an ace in the hands of the Syrian president for sale to the highest bidder, Washington or Baghdad.

His potential value as a rich asset may explain the defector's appearance, one last time, on Saturday, February 15, in Damascus, just 36 hours after his defection was revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly. Speaking to a small group of journalists, Shaaban said: "I am one of Saddam's soldiers and allegations about my defection are totally false and reflect the disillusionment of those who oppose Iraq's victorious march. I blame the Iraqi opposition for fabricating the tale of my disappearance and defection to a Western embassy in Beirut while I was still in Baghdad."

On the other hand, our sources do not dismiss the possibility that Shaaban met a crueler fate than that of a bargaining chip. His summary execution may have been ordered by Assad to make sure he never spills the beans on the Syrian president's dealings with the Saddam regime - or else he may have been shipped back to Baghdad to face a firing squad.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources interpret Shaaban's last words to reporters in Damascus - blaming "the Iraqi opposition for fabricating the story" of his disappearance and defection in Beirut "while I was still in Baghdad" - as betraying obliquely that someone in the Iraqi capital got wind of his plan to defect and sold him out to Uday while he was still making his way to Damascus.

For Shaaban's route is likewise still unclear. His last remarks suggest he did indeed travel from Baghdad to Jeddah, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported. However, the Saudis must have decided that this potato was too hot for them to hold and hustled him aboard the first flight out, which was bound for Damascus. Alternatively, the defector may have flown directly to Damascus - a kosher destination given his job as go-between - intending to continue from there in secret to Jeddah, where he would have knocked on the door of a US consulate or made his way to the West under his own steam.

Either way, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources say, the chances of Shaaban making it to the West have plummeted to zero. Saddam was too quick for him - and Assad faster than both.


Iran's Nuke

Washington - Hitherto a Willing Hide-and-Seek Partner·

The United States has been uncommonly deadpan on Iran's ambitious nuclear weapons program, for fear of upsetting the Washington-Tehran understandings reached secretly on Iraq.

Back in October and November 2002, DEBKA-Net-Weekly 82 and 85 exposed the lively Iranian-North Korean nuclear relationship that gave both members of the "axis of evil" atomic bomb-building capability. But while Washington is prepared to corroborate the estimates of DEBKA-Net-Weekly's experts - that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is in the process of building four to six new nuclear bombs, in addition to the two to four already in hand - weapons he is offering to the highest bidder on the international market - the Iranian bomb might as well not exist for all the acknowledgement coming out of Washington.

It is still not clear whether North Korea owns all the bombs in its possession. Some intelligence quarters hold that some of the devices are Iranian.

One intelligence source, speaking on condition of anonymity, remarked this week to DEBKA-Net-Weekly: "The old clich&Mac218; that truth is stranger than fiction is epitomized in the Iranian-North Korean nuclear story." This is how he it how he described it as evolving.

"In mid-August 2002, Ala Reza Jaafazadeh, a leader of the armed Iranian opposition group, Mujahideen a-Khalq, went to Washington. He made the rounds of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, laying before them the most exact particulars known to this day of Iran's nuclear facilities -- including the uranium enrichment and bomb-making processing taking place at the secret Natanz and Arak sites.

(These facilities were exhaustively detailed - with their locations and names of their directors - in: "Korean Nukes-Made in Iran", appearing in DEBKA-Net-Weekly 82 on November 15, 2002).

With hindsight, the source remarked: "Had the Americans been prepared to listen then to what Jaafazadeh had to say, there would still have been time to avert certain unfortunate developments."

Since then, much has changed: Mujahideen a-Khalq leaders are no longer persona grata in Washington. Indeed, its fighting strength based in Iraq is under instructions from Saddam Hussein to set the oil fields of Kirkuk on fire when the American assault begins.

Inspections too late to unearth evidence

Had Washington been more receptive at the time, the Iranian-North Korean nuclear connection would have come to light earlier. That information was essentially available to the Americans in July 2002 - when reports started filtering in on the visit Kim-Jung Nan, nicknamed Mr. NN, or North-Nuclear, paid that month to Libya, Syria and Iran (See DEBKA-Net-Weekly 75, September 6, 2002).

"The knowledge of Iran's nuclear weapons program then might have deterred Washington from entering into long-term strategic arrangements with the Islamic Republic. Today, these arrangements constrain US, depriving the Bush administration of the freedom to inhibit or destroy Iran's weapons program. Matters might not have reached the ironic juncture whereby Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), finally pays a visit Tehran at the head of a delegation of agency experts on February 21, a visit that takes place far too late in the day. In any case, ElBaradei, soft-nosed in his approach to nuclear inspections in Iraq, can be expected to be equally forgiving towards Iran. Given his inspection technique of focusing on the small picture, the Iranians will not find it too hard to slip their illegal manufacturing equipment past him, making sure the evidence of their violations never comes to light.

Jaafazadeh's presentation last August in Washington, though revealing, omitted two key factors: Iran's nuclear partnership with North Korea and the existence of an important nuclear site at Moallem-Kalayeh.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, this top- secret site is located about 100 km (60 miles) north of Teheran in one of the deepest tunnels of the Alborz Mountains. Dismantled nuclear weapons are stored there, with Iranian technicians toiling on each piece to improve its performance. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources report that although the United States and others have informed ElBaradei of the site's existence and its purpose several times, he has shown no interest or asked to be admitted to the site.

The conventional wisdom in Washington has long been that ElBaradei slanted his inspection reports in Teheran's favor. His sympathy may now be coming to an end. The first storm signals surfaced this week when the nuclear inspector and officials in Tehran were clearly at loggerheads.

The Iranian government claimed to have voluntarily invited ElBaradei for his visit this Friday. He reports that the Iranians were forced to receive him willy-nilly after two large installations came to light under construction at the secret sites of Natanz and Anan. The IAEA approached Iran and demanded immediate access to the sites, especially after US satellites photographed irregular and suspicious activities around the facilities. Iran refused the demand claiming the two sites were outside the international atomic agency's mandate.

A month ago, ElBaradei again demanded his inspectors be afforded access. The Iranians stalled, buying the weeks they needed to whisk away the incriminating equipment and evidence, on the pretext that president Mohammad Khatami was to visit India and the inspections would have to await his return.

Advance on N-bomb unstoppable

Iran's national security council has held several long meetings in recent weeks to weigh the pros and cons of the country's nuclear bomb development program. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Iran report the discussions touched on three main points:

1.
The acquisition of a nuclear bomb would help Iran realize the dream cherished by Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, and his successor Ali Khamenei of taking its place as leader of the Muslim world.

2.
Iran cannot afford to drop out of the nuclear race when Pakistan, India and Russia have the bomb, Iraq is on the way to building a nuclear device, Turkey shelters under NATO's nuclear umbrella and Israel possesses an alarming nuclear capability.

3.
Iran feels persecuted by the territorial claims of most of its neighbors and its unique quality as a Shiite Muslim theocracy whose population is a hodgepodge of non-Arab minorities - Persians, Kurds, Turkmenis, Baluchis and others.
The Russians covet access to the warm waters of the Gulf.
The Pakistanis entertain claims to Baluchistan.
Turkmenistan is eager to annex the Turkmeni enclave of northeastern Iran.
Azerbaijan has its eye on Iranian Azerbaijan.
Iran's Kurds seek independence.
The Arabic speakers of southern Iran do not hide their sympathy with the Arab-Iraqi cause - at Iran's expense.

4.
Iran can ward off all these claims by becoming a nuclear power. Acquiring the bomb might also gain for the regime some respect and an upsurge of patriotism from a population growing weary of mullah rule and economic hardship. Members of Iran's security council noticed that crowds of Pakistanis took to the streets to celebrate when their government announced it had built a nuclear bomb. Iran's right to atomic arms is supported by even the most antagonistic Iranian opposition factions.

CIA director George Tenet made this point in his recent Congressional testimony. He said any Iranian government, whatever its political leanings, would seek to develop a nuclear device.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Iran experts report that the security council in Tehran wound up its consideration of the nuclear issue with a decision to advance on this goal with all speed, regardless of the strain on the national budget and the diplomatic fallout.

When they realized the international inspectors were coming, the Iranians decided that their most urgent task was to organize a cover-up. North Korean scientists were urgently invited to Tehran to advise how best to camouflage nuclear weapons production plants. Iranian embassies in the Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan were instructed to recruit nuclear scientists and offer them attractive terms.

To face the immediate crisis, Iran's national security council decided to throw the inspectors a bone by admitting to the construction of two uranium enrichment centers at Esfahan and Kashan. Khamenei approved the decision, reasoning that, after absorbing the initial shock of this disclosure, the world would quickly turn to more pressing matters amid the gathering war clouds over Iraq.

More help from North Korea

IAEA guidelines do not expressly forbid the construction of uranium enrichment facilities and the agency is not licensed to close them down. What is closely controlled is the disposition of the nuclear waste generated in the process. Iran plans at least five more reactors capable of generating about 6,000 megawatts of electricity. The waste from those reactors would enable Iran to build several nuclear bombs a year.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's experts report that Iran, with the help of North Korean scientists, is also examining a plan to build portable "homemade bombs", small enough to fit into a suitcase. Iran has been discussing these devices with the Russian scientists it has recruited.

Also on the drawing board in Tehran are "dirty bombs". These radiological devices have a limited radius of effectiveness - an urban neighborhood or street. They are primarily weapons of deterrence, not likely cause mass casualties on a scale that would precipitate an annihilating retaliation.

Noting the worldwide panic against possible Iraqi mega-terror attacks - and taking a page out of North Korea's book of defiance - Teheran has of late adopted a threatening posture to meet any American steps to thwart its goals. Even without a nuclear capability, Iran commands a threat to the West in the shape of a dynamic ballistic missile development program. Although the Shehab-3 missile's electronic guidance and targeting problems have still be to sorted out, Iran recently went into the practical stage of developing the 5,000-km (3,000-mile)-range Shahab-4. At the same time, tests are going forward on the enlargement of Shahab-3 warheads for delivering a nuclear payload.

The approaching visit by ElBaradei has placed the IAEA and Tehran on a collision course. The IAEA intended demanding Iran's signature on a new annex to the inspections treaty allowing the agency's inspectors to descend on the country without prior notice and tour all nuclear-related sites. The European Union, which is dismayed by reports that Iran intends to give its Shahab-4 enough of a kick to target Western Europe, echoes this demand.

It looks as though the IAEA finally means business after years of burying its head in the sand and confining its inspections to Iran's declared nuclear sites -- the reactor under construction at Bushehr and the small, 40-year-old research reactor at Esfahan.


Tehran Conference

Dancing Attendance on Fragmented Iraqi Opposition

Now that it is finally convinced that an American campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein is inevitable, Tehran is racing America to determine the shape of the future regime.

As a step to this end, the ayatollahs are hosting a conference of all the Iraqi Shiite factions in Tehran next Monday, February 24, the driving force behind which was Harekat el-Amal el-Islami, a veteran secular Shiite party and rival to the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

However, Iran is wooing all Iraq's opposition groups regardless of faith or ethnic affiliation, so as to be able to prevent Washington from dominating the future administration in Baghdad. In this, Iran is not alone. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources report President George W. Bush's personal envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad is organizing a conference in April of all Iranian opposition groups - not just the Shiite factions. By pre-empting the US meeting and scheduling one of its own, Iran is also cautioning SCIRI leader Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Hakim to beware of coming to terms with the Americans without seeking sanction from Tehran.

A still more important Iraqi opposition conference, one that was scheduled to settle the future division of powers among Iraqi's Kurds, Shiites, Turkmenis and Sunnis, was to have taken place this coming Wednesday in the Kurdish city of Salah-ed-Din in northern Iraq. Already postponed several times, this event is unlikely to bridge the deepening differences among these ethnic groups, and is unlikely to come off at all.

But the Iranians have got in first anyway with their Iraqi opposition conference under the motto: Unity - "Iraq for all Iraqis".

Promoting that slogan, a top El-Amal leader, Sheikh Mohseen Hosseini, said in Teheran: "We are all Iraqis and Iraq is there for all its citizens without distinction. Iraq does not have separate Shiite, Kurdish or Sunni cultures - only one Iraq culture."

This mantra does not interfere with the Shiites' claim to primacy in any future Iraqi government because they make up 70 to 75 percent of the population.

Iran expects all the Shiite factions to be represented at the Tehran conference by about 150-200 delegates. They include Hezbad Daavah al-Islamiah, a veteran Shi'ite group with a strong power base in Iran. Several of its leaders are descendants of Iranians who migrated to Iraq as custodians of the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala.

Hakim's SCIRI is going into the conference weakened by its independent contacts with the United States. But Daavah and El Amal have also been in touch secretly with Washington, and there have even been reports that they have been promised seats in a future Iraqi government.

Iran deeply resents Washington's plans for the US military to rule Iraq for around two years before handing authority over in stages to a post-Saddam administration ruled by Iraqis. Iran fears that Khalilzad, who made sure to keep Iranian influence out of the Karzai government in Kabul, will try and do the same in Iraq.

To spread its net wider, Iran also invited to Monday's conference representatives of two radical Kurdish-Sunni religious groups, Al-Jemaat al-Islmya and Ettihad Islami, both of whom are strong in the Kirkuk area of northern Iraq. Iran recently supplied them with a large consignment of weaponry and military equipment to buy their support in the months to come.

Nothing that happens in Tehran next week can alter the fact that Iran must contend with a deeply fissured Shiite community in Iraq. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's reports that even single factions, like El-Amal, are divided down the middle. Opposition Sunni groups are in the same state.

Iran may try to play each group off the other, working to the principle of divide and rule. But this tactic could backfire badly when the time comes for marshalling a united front against the United States.

Iranian leaders recently sharpened the tone of their threats against the United States. Iran's hard-line supreme leader Ali Khamenei said this week: "If the United States attacks Iraq, it will face a rebellion by all the nations of the Middle East, and will be dealt a heavy blow that could destroy its superpower status." Another influential Iranian leader, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said the United States would sink into a swamp in Iraq deeper than the one it stumbled into in Vietnam.

On the domestic political front, Iranian parliamentarians are puzzled by the Iranian leadership's conflicting signals on Iraq. Fifteen deputies tabled a question in parliament for foreign minister Kamal Kharazi to clarify the issue, after discovering that, while adopting an apparently confrontational posture towards Washington, Iranian leaders secretly offered the Americans a limited measure of cooperation on Iraq.

On Wednesday, February 19, parliament met in secret session in Tehran to weigh the pros and cons of Iran's contradictory Iraq policy. There was no immediate information on its outcome, but the deputies later withdrew their question.

None of this interferes with Iran's other transactions. Tehran has turned away feelers regarding a bolt hole for Saddam or a way station to another place of exile. But in the past the Iranians denied asylum to al Qaeda fighters in flight from Afghanistan. All the same, Iran now admits it took in at least 500 al Qaeda members on the run although it claims they were arrested and sent on to the Gulf emirates or Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, senior al Qaeda officers still enjoy the sanctuary of Iran's Revolutionary Guards propaganda and intelligence wing that operates out of the spiritual leader, Ali Khamanei's bureau. Their needs are taken care of and they are housed in villas in Teheran and Mashhad, a city in northeastern Iran near the border with Afghanistan.


HOT POINTS
(that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock)
A Digest of the Week's Exclusives

16 February: Our exclusive intelligence and military sources disclose the latest key moves on both sides:

1.
While polarized Security Council members continue to argue the pros and cons of America's demand to disarm Saddam Hussein by force, US Marines and special forces, supported by British and Jordanian commandos, have moved into western Iraq.

2.
Iraq neatly pre-empted Messrs Blix and ElBaradei's teams' hunt for weapons of mass production. Fearing those armaments would fall into American hands, Saddam shipped them out last month via Syria to Lebanon.

Syrian foreign minister Farouk a-Sharah naturally omitted mention of this small service his country performed for Iraq when he launched his broadside against the Americans and Israel at the Security Council on Friday, February 14.

Syria is not concerned by the fact that a major portion of Saddam's prohibited substances, with their doomsday potential for hundreds of thousands of human beings, repose in a country in which central government control is at best feeble and in which at least three major terrorist groups, the Hizballah, radical Palestinian organizations and clusters of al Qaeda fighters, run loose. This dangerous nexus no doubt partially influenced the decision last week to place Washington, London, Jerusalem and Riyadh on high terror alert, since the possibility of these dangerous materials reaching al Qaeda cells outside Lebanon is not ruled out by counter-terror experts.

Abu Musaab Al Zarqawi, identified in US secretary of state Colin Powell's February 5 demonstration to the Security Council of al Qaeda's links with Baghdad, is not only the commander of the 170 al Qaeda fighters based mainly in the south Lebanese port of Sidon and formed into a brigade of the Iraqi Kurdish radical Ansar al Islam. He also officiates as supreme al Qaeda supervisor of the network's stocks of unconventional weapons and their distribution world wide. Zarqawi uses Baghdad and Damascus as his transport hub to orchestrate the operations of cells around the Middle East, Western Europe and the Persian Gulf, with active assistance from Iraqi and Syrian military intelligence. The Syrian service is also a joint custodian of Iraq's forbidden weapons caches in Lebanon.

The potential hazards inherent in this concatenation, pointing up the link between al Qaeda and Iraq, were not addressed by the Syrian foreign minister or the UN inspectors; nor was the combined Iraqi-al Qaeda sabotage plan to synchronize the torching of Iraq-Saudi-Gulf oil resources with the onset of American military action against Iraq.

This threat, to which Mr. Blix and Dr. ElBaradei are oblivious, has brought forth direct action from the Bush administration in Washington, the US war command and its intelligence arms at home and abroad. When millions marched against war in hundreds of world cities Saturday, February 15, US military convoys were carrying American commando units into northern Iraq through the Turkish-Iraqi border crossing at Habur. They were on their way to deal with the threat to the oil fields.

A second clandestine crossing into northern Iraq was detected at the same time by DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources: Some 750 al Qaeda fighters, who landed in Syria in the last few weeks, were ordered to turn around and enter Iraqi Kurdistan, pick up weapons, ammo and medical kits, break up into knots of two or three and go to ground in scattered locations, using the radical Ansar al Islam enclave as a refuge. The men, composed of Iraqi and Saudi Afghan War veterans, Pakistani Taliban members and Sepah Sahabah Sunni extremists armed and backed from Tehran, were first interrogated by Syrian military intelligence in the presence of Hizballah security men. Their mission from al Qaeda command is to target American troops in Iraq.

17 February: The Israeli army has stepped up its drive against the Hamas and Jihad Islami in the Gaza Strip and Mt. Hebron in the southern West Bank. Less visibly, in the same arena, defense minister Shaul Mofaz and chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon are locked in a grim showdown with Syrian president Bashar Assad and Hizballah chairman Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, who have embarked on a devious plan to transform transform the Gaza Strip and southern West Bank into the southern offshoots of the Syrian-Lebanese northern front against Israel, before the Iraq war fully erupts. They would thus exploit the Palestinian terror campaign to drag Israel into a full-blown regional conflict, without exposing their own territory and power centers to reprisal - or even laying themselves open to be charged as aggressors.

According to DEBKAfile's military sources, Assad and Nasrallah are jerking the wires of Hamas and Jihad Islami groups in the Gaza Strip and Hebron, through those groups' Damascus headquarters.

This contest lies behind the spiraling Israeli-Palestinian violence of recent weeks in these two regions as the US offensive against Iraq nears. To pre-empt the Syrian-Hizballah plan, the IDF can be expected to seize strategic parts of the Gaza Strip and its towns, in the same way as it has established a presence in most West Bank Palestinian towns, most recently Hebron.

Taking advantage of the diluted Iraqi military intelligence operation in the Palestinian arena - as a result of the rising pressure on Saddam Hussein and early stages of his regime's disintegration - the Syrian-Hizballah duo has moved in to keep Palestinian terrorism rocketing. The momentum has swept up elements of the Fatah's security organs, who interpret Yasser Arafat's non-reaction as his blessing for their participation. Arafat's operatives are attracted not only by the action, but by the influx of Syrian, Hizballah and Saudi funding into the Gaza Strip and Hebron region at a time when the Fatah war chest is empty.

In early January, Syria sent the Hamas by Jibril's agents a consignment of large remote-controlled drones capable of flying over such barriers as the fence surrounding the Gaza Strip to deliver explosives and deadly chemical substances to Israeli locations. With Arafat's approval, hundreds of toy remote-controlled planes and gliders were ordered from Europe. Under the guidance of Jibril's experts, they were converted into instruments of terror and Hamas teams taught to load them with explosives or chemicals. On January 14, DEBKAfile reported this dangerous upgrade of the Palestinian armory.

The modus operandi is typical of the Syrian president. Behind a moderate, reasonable fa&Mac217;ade, he heaps military hardware and money on an incendiary situation, without getting caught or losing control of the consequences. Israel stamped hard on the Hamas Monday, February 17. Sunday, the Islamic group lost six top men when the drone they were assembling and loading with explosives blew up.

The Israeli showdown with Hamas and its patrons in Damascus and Lebanon is far from over and the Gaza-Hebron terror arc is still full of menace.

18 February: The muddle and uncertainty that have in the last three days confused perceptions surrounding the Iraq War in European and Middle East capitals are making way for some clarity. The pendulum can now be clearly seen to be veering towards "on" rather than "off". It is also possible to discern which reports swirling around the airwaves were designed to mislead.

DEBKAfile's military sources in Washington now maintain that, despite reports to the contrary, President George W. Bush has finally resolved to launch military action against Iraq on schedule. Here are some examples of reports that sowed uncertainty:

1.
Because of logistical difficulties, the Americans have not yet attained the optimum level of troop strength for going to war at their jumping off bases. Our sources maintain that the strength present equals the allotted figure.

2.
Turkey's refusal to allow US troops bound for northern Iraq to cross its territory will delay the offensive. DEBKAfile's Washington sources reveal that Washington presented Ankara with a 48-hour ultimatum to agree to terms for its participation in the conflict or count itself out, in which case the Americans will send their army into northern Iraq by another route. The US Treasury will also save itself a large sum in aid.
In any case, since the leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan are part of the US-led coalition, the US war command will only need enough troops to capture the northern Iraqi oil cities of Mosul and Kirkuk and surrounding oil fields - not the entire region. Those American columns can enter Iraq by way of Jordan.

3.
As for the urgency of the US-UK second Security Council resolution, its only importance for the US president is as a means of drawing some of the sting from the anti-war backlash preying on such war allies as Tony Blair. Privately, Bush has washed his hands of the world body. When the time comes, he intends to settle scores with the UN as well as with Germany, France and Russia for behavior which he sees as leaving America in the lurch.

4.
The negotiations for the formation of Israel's next government led by Ariel Sharon are now mostly a charade. The Bush administration has taken a hand in the process to make sure Sharon ends up with a broad and stable coalition. That Labor leader Amram Mitzna, notwithstanding his vow not to serve in any government led by Sharon, has entered into negotiations to join the government the prime minister is forming is the result of having his arm twisted from Washington through Labor's friends and supporters in the United States.

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