Al Qaeda - Intent on a Nuclear Strike

January 24, 2003


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.