Midast Roundup
August 8, 2002
Secret Trysts
Secret diplomacy, veiled threats, and implied blackmail were the loaded subtext of the eve-of-war alarums and excursions uncovered this week by DEBKA-Net-Weekly.
1. Hush-Hush Saddam-Assad Talks on Syrian-Iraqi Frontier
Just 12 hours before Saddam Hussein marked the 14th anniversary of the Iraq-Iran War with a TV address to the nation on Thursday morning, August 8, the Iraqi leader held a secret conference with Syrian president Bashar Assad. Revealing this, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources place the meeting in the northeastern Syrian border town of al-Malikiyah near the city of al-Qamishli.
The venue was symbolic of the personal ties that have sprung up between the veteran Iraqi leader and the young Syrian president. Al-Malikiyah is a key station on the railway line traversed by the freight trains that ferry from Syria to Baghdad Iraq's arms purchases for the expected US offensive. The depot, warehouses and rail lines of al-Malikiyah are guarded day and night by elite Syrian units, Iraqi military intelligence troops and special units of the Republican Guards.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say US special forces are deployed close enough to the station to keep an electronic watch on Iraqi activity.
Saddam attached such high importance to his conference with Assad that, for the first time since the 1991 Gulf War ended, he was willing to step out of Iraqi territory - to the point even of braving the lurking presence of elements of the US armed forces.
Our sources report that the two leaders began talking at 10 p.m. on Wednesday and remained closeted for four-and-a-half hours. Saddam apparently returned to Baghdad next morning.
While information on their conversation is sketchy, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's experts believe it centered on the applications of the mutual defense pact the two Arab presidents concluded in secret in September 2000. If one of the signatories is attacked, the other is bound by the treaty to come to his aid. Each of the two governments may claim the use of the other's air bases and permission to send its ground and armored forces across their common frontier. Each country will be free to use the other's road and rail links, as well as refueling and stocking up on ammunition at its ally's military bases.
At the very least, Saddam would have sought to test the degree of Assad's commitment to their pact and find out what provisions Syria means to honor. But he may have also explored the willingness of Syria and the Lebanese Hizballah to open a second front against Israel ®¢ either concurrently with the US assault on Iraq, or in unison with an Iraqi missile onslaught on Israel and US targets.
2. Iran Gives Iraq Leg up to Thwart an American Victory
The most revealing passage in the Iraqi ruler's address to the nation on Thursday, August 8, was his veiled appeal to Iran to let bygones be bygones and help Iraq defeat their common enemy, the United States.
Speaking on the 14th anniversary of the bitter war the two Gulf nations fought for eight years, at a cost of one million dead, Saddam Hussein did not utter the name of Iran, any more than he cited America. What he said was this:
Allah has cleansed our hearts of hatred and prevents a grudge or rancor from entering our souls compared with the hatred and hard-headedness we encountered in eight years of fighting.
The Iraqi government also announced officially the arrival of the Iranian Federation of Chambers of Commerce head, Ali Naghi Khamoushi, for a five-day visit to Baghdad.
Saddam's message is not only clearly legible in Tehran; according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, his words and the Iranian visit are the first outward signs of the unfolding military collaboration already in progress between the two old foes.
According to our sources in Tehran, Iran's leaders have decided to boost Iraqi war preparations ®¢ not out of love for the Saddam regime, but because their interests coincide at one point: the aspiration to prevent America from winning the war to unseat him.
The overriding Iranian interest is to keep the United States from dominating Iraq's 16 million Shiites and the oil regions they inhabit in southern Iraq, which abut those of Iran. With America in control of those Shiite regions - in addition to its military presence in the Caspian, Central Asia and Afghanistan - Iran will find itself hemmed in on all hands. The pervasive US military presence entails also its dominion over vital oil regions. Tehran is determined not to let Iraq's oil fields fall to the Americans as well.
Even that prospect represents only one half of the ayatollahs' nightmare. A victory won by the Big Satan against the regime next door will dramatize the depth of the Khomeinist Islamic revolution's failure. In 23 years, Iran has not succeeded in exporting revolution to a single Muslim society ®¢ aside only from the southern region of Lebanon.
Tehran has therefore embarked on certain military steps to help its neighbor stand up to a US offensive, as revealed now by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence and military sources:
1.
Iranian armored divisions are being moved to the Iraqi frontier and deployed in battle array; Iranian trucks and trains are ferrying large quantities of ammunition and missiles to the Iraqi border region.
2.
This week, Iran moved 4 Shehab-3 ground-to-ground missile batteries to the Iraqi border region and placed them in position
3.
In the past week, Iran has been running into Iraq a supply line of 400 trucks loaded with large quantities of various types of ammunition, thousands of guns, mortars, machine guns and cannons, including anti-air guns, as well as military equipment, including communications systems and night vision gear. The Iranians have also sent Iraq two military field hospitals.
Our military and intelligence sources report that some of the supply convoys are turning aside from their appointed route and heading into southern Iraqi to bring supplies to the Shiite guerrilla militias who take their orders from Tehran. Iraq is turning a blind eye to the diversion.
The Iranian official, Khamoushi, welcomed in Baghdad this week was there a number of times on the quiet to find out from Iraqi army chiefs what they needed in the short term to stand up to a US invasion and negotiate payment. Our sources report Iraq undertook to pay for the supplies either in cash dollars or refined oil. (Iran's refineries do not meet all local demands.)
They also reveal that the ground for his mission was prepared by an earlier secret visit to Baghdad two weeks ago by Hashemi Rafsanjani's daughter Faezeh. Saddam Hussein gave her and Tehran's offer of assistance a warm welcome.
Preparing for Bio-War
Iraq's Potential Targets Take Protective Steps
The most acute unvoiced threat hovering palpably over the Middle East and the Persian Gulf regions is that of weapons of unconventional warfare.
On the assumption that Israel tops Saddam Hussein's list of targets for his weapons of mass destruction, prime minister Ariel Sharon summoned intelligence and security chiefs on Wednesday, August 7, for a practical review of the country's preparations for a mega-attack.
For mega-attack, read nuclear-chemical-biological warfare.
This review was accompanied by the distribution of top-secret protective equipment to Israel's home front command and its rescue units which operate under the umbrella of the Magen David Adom ambulance service and local fire brigades. The gear is newly developed by Israel's Rafael armaments authority and Israel Military Industries and includes suits with self-contained de-contamination systems effective against radioactive, chemical and biological pollution.
According to the latest information reaching DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terrorism and intelligence sources, the Iraqi leader and his military chiefs are determined to turn biological warfare into Iraq's instrument of retaliation for a US attack. They have moreover singled Israel out for the world's first mass biological attack against an entire national population.
Most recently, the men in Baghdad turned the tables on their two primary targets for biological warfare: the US and Israel. Both governments kicked off their prevention campaigns earlier this summer with smallpox vaccinations, embarking on anti-anthrax campaigns only very recently. Now, US and Israeli intelligence experts have received updates revealing Baghdad's decision this week to reverse the order of its biological retaliation ®¢ anthrax would be released first, smallpox reserved for a second strike.
After Israel, the second target of Iraq's anthrax-laden weapons will be the US military invasion force and troops stationed around its borders in Kuwait, Qatar and Jordan. In the third and decisive stage, Iraq will launch a massive anthrax attack against civilian targets in the United States.
The smallpox virus will be released later.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources report that US intelligence has received its first data affirming that Iraqi military intelligence was responsible for last year's anthrax letter outbreak, which affected 22 Americans and killed five. The outbreak was manufactured as a tryout for a more sinister campaign to come. Weaponized anthrax spores, made more virulent in the laboratory than naturally occurring bacteria, were found in letters mailed to US congressional leaders.
This discovery bodes ill for Iraq's future bio-warfare plans.
US authorities have since laid in massive supplies of antibiotics for the prophylactic treatment of suspected anthrax cases, while rapidly issuing anti-anthrax shots to American troops in the Middle East and the further tens of thousands on their way to the war arena. Israel too is giving its troops anti-anthrax shots. After the armed forces, both governments will immunize their civilian populations against the deadly spores.
In the United States, anti-smallpox vaccinations began in early June for 15,000 public health workers. Most of the tens of thousands of US military personnel in the Middle East have since been vaccinated.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, US military units in Europe, primarily in Germany, began to receive smallpox vaccinations last week, prior to their consignment to the Middle East. Military medical units were the first to feel the needle, followed by mechanized infantry divisions and the 49th armored division now on the way to region.
Israel started vaccinating public service workers and military personnel only at the end of July.
Israeli military intelligence experts have outlined the following WMD scenarios for the benefit of DEBKA-Net-Weekly:
Iraqi missiles will deliver poisonous chemical and biological agents.
A bio-terror strike will be carried out in an Israeli town by an Iraqi military intelligence cell hiding up on the West Bank or infiltrating from Jordan. Israeli security agencies have learned that Iraqi agents have been filtering into Palestinian-controlled areas in the last two months. Yasser Arafat's senior terror operative, Col. Tawfiq Tirawi, who commands the Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, has organized well-protected hideouts for these agents in certain West Bank rural districts. Tirawi is also in regular touch with Iraqi military intelligence cells in Amman through couriers he secretes across the Jordan River border with the help of smugglers' gangs.
He decided that the Iraqi agents reaching the West Bank would be safer and more mobile if concealed in remote rural areas away from Palestinian towns, almost all of which are occupied or encircled by Israeli troops and tank forces.
According to the latest data in the hands of Israeli and US intelligence ®¢ data that was substantiated recently by their opposite numbers in Jordan and Turkey ®¢ some of the clandestine Iraqi agents are carrying sprays loaded with anthrax bacteria. Some of the gadgets are the size of transistor radios; others as large as fire extinguishers. Some sources suggest that one or two Iraqi operatives may be armed with radiological ®¢ or dirty ®¢ bombs primed for activation
Iraqi bio-terror agents are not the only threat on the loose.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources point to a possible attempt to replicate the September 11 attacks in the US by sending hijacked passenger planes as flying bombs against strategic targets.
Such an attempt could be staged to relieve American military pressure on Iraq. A candidate for setting one up would be the arch-terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, whom US intelligence suspects of co-planning the 9/11 attacks, and who has set up his operational quarters in southern Lebanon near Israel's northern border.
Both the United States and Israel believe Mughniyeh, who straddles the al Qaeda and Iranian terror networks at the highest level and is close also to Baghdad, is deep into the short-term planning of mega-terror attacks in Israel, Turkey or Jordan.
Their twin objective would be to hold off the US offensive against Iraq and celebrate the first anniversary of the September 11 hijack-suicides.
Mughniyeh's terror legions include al Qaeda fighters who received Iraqi WMD training in northern Iraq.
This week, US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld revealed the presence of al Qaeda fighters in Iraq. Almost a year earlier, on September 28, 2001, DEBKA-Net-Weekly No. 31 reported the presence of Osama bin Laden's men in the northern Iraqi-Kurdish towns of Biyar and Tawil, near the Turkish border.
Their trip to northern Iraq was to take intensive training at the hands of Iraqi army experts and instructors in the operation, by three- or four-man squads, of bombs and explosives containing chemical and biological materials.
In previous issues, our sources confirmed that Bin Laden is in possession of radiological devices and the know-how for their delivery.
Most of these al Qaeda WMD trainees are now scattered through central Iraq, south Lebanon, western Europe and the Balkan states of Kosovo, Bosnia and Macedonia, operating under the orders of Mughniyeh's central command.
Available to some of those Middle East operatives for terror strikes are light planes, motorized hang gliders and ultra-light aircraft.
Israeli jitters were heightened by an incident on August 2: Two ultra-light private planes were blown off-course into the closed airspace over the Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev desert. Israeli air force jets scrambled to intercept them, forcing the civilian pilots to land in the middle of the desert and have their flying licenses suspended.
Both US and Israeli intelligence are cited by our sources as regarding Israel's nuclear reactor as high on Saddam's list of strategic targets in Israel. Its destruction would be sweet revenge for Israel's bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981.
Israel is also keeping a close watch on its coasts, to guard against landings by fast boats lowered from cargo ships in the Mediterranean for attacks against Israel's high-density central conurbation, the location of its main ports, power plants, refineries and fuel depots. A mere handful of terrorist squads landing by sea could paralyze key utilities and inflict heavy casualties.
Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait are similarly threatened, as are US armed forces units stationed there.
US, Turkey, Israel
On Missile Alert
From Saturday, August 3, all US military units in the Middle East, Gulf and West Europe went on full combat alert.
August 4 and 5, American mechanized infantry, armor, artillery and medical combat units were rushed to the region, first stopping over in Germany for short briefings and stocking up on equipment and supplies. The units were all outfitted with protective gear for nuclear, biological and chemical warfare.
Units of the US 49th armored division were given pride of place in the transfer, mainly to Kuwait.
Reporting these movements, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources also tracked two US forward command groups who landed separately in Israel and Turkey over that same hectic weekend. Their mission for the duration of the conflict is to keep Israeli and Turkish operations integrated with US military action against Iraq, including the defense of Israeli and Turkish skies.
Each group is headed by an American general and is made up of senior US officers specializing in intelligence, satellite and air reconnaissance, air, sea and armored operations and auxiliary services.
Immediately upon arrival in Tel Aviv late Sunday, August 4, the heads of the first US delegation went into session late into the small hours of Monday with top Israeli security and political officials led by Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, defense minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, IDF chief of staff lieutenant-general Moshe Yaalon and deputy chief of staff major-general Gaby Ashkenazy. The heads of Israeli military intelligence, the Mossad and Shin Bet internal security service, were also there.
Two day later, Tuesday morning, August 6, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain went on high alert against a possible Iraqi missile attack. It was called by US general Tommy Franks, commander of the war against Iraq, shortly before a joint US-British air raid against an Iraqi air command and control center at al-Nukhaib in the desert between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The center contained advanced fiber optic networks recently installed by Chinese companies. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say the raid made military history. For the first time, the US air force used new precision-guided bombs capable of locating and destroying fiber optic systems. The existence of such weaponry was hitherto unknown.
Following the destruction of the facility, about 260 miles (415 kilometers), southwest of Baghdad, waves of US warplanes swept in from the Prince Sultan air base in Saudi Arabia and US aircraft carriers in the Gulf and penetrated the Iraqi capital's airspace.
The Iraqi air force and anti-aircraft system held their fire on orders from above.
However, General Franks called the wide-ranging missile alert just in case Saddam viewed the leveling of the al Nukhaib facility, which effectively left Baghdad vulnerable to US missiles and fighter-bombers, as the start of the US military campaign and responded in kind.
Saudi Arabia
War Drums Beat out a Threat
Last month, a Rand Corporation analyst, Laurent Murawiec, presented an influential Pentagon think tank with a briefing depicting Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States and recommending an ultimatum from Washington to Riyadh: Either stop backing terrorism ®¢ and "prosecute or isolate those involved in the terror chain, including in the Saudi intelligence services" - or face seizure of the Saudi oil fields and financial assets invested in the United States.
This week, on August 6, The Washington Post published excerpts of the briefing that was delivered to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy.
The newspaper commented that the view voiced in the Rand Corp. briefing is popular among some neo-conservative thinkers, among them officials close to vice president Dick Cheney.
The report's interest lies not so much in that it covered new ground. On April 26, 2002, after Cheney's 10-nation round of the Middle East and Gulf, DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue 58 reported:
US vice president Dick Cheney, on a visit to RiyadhÉ pulled no punches with the Saudi ruler. 'You, the Saudis,' he rebuked Abdullah, 'are jeopardizing the survival of the Saudi royal family and the security of the kingdom's oil fields. If you carry on with this policy, you will lose those fields and be left without oil.'
What is significant is the timing of its publication, the morning after a devastating US air raid on Tuesday, August 5, against Iraq's air control and command center at al-Nukhaib (see previous article). DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources reveal that some of the American bombers in that raid took off from the Prince Sultan air base in western Saudi Arabia, about 35 miles (55 miles) northeast of the capital Riyadh.
The air strike was a new stage in the preliminary US military activity leading up to its full-scale offensive against Iraq. But it also signposted a policy shift by governments that adamantly refused to stand up in public and be counted in favor America's global war on terror or allow US air strikes to be launched from their territory.
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt are four such nations.
But behind their public protestations, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported in edition 71 on August 2, each of those four governments is taking part quietly in America's military preparations to attack Iraq, and also turning a blind eye to the use of their bases.
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak is letting America use his country's biggest air base, Cairo West, and the Suez Canal to carry out military missions. Turkish prime minister Bulent Ecevit is permitting the US air force to turn the sprawling Incirlik air base in southern Turkey into a launching pad for strikes against Iraq. He is also in negotiation with the US Command running the war to place additional Turkish air and ground bases at the disposal of US special forces already on the ground in northern Iraq and future waves of US combat units.
Jordan's King Abdullah, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported last week, has likewise made available to the US war command a group of ground and air bases along its eastern border with Iraq.
But while Washington and its Iraq war commander, General Tommy Franks, appreciate the concessions tacitly granted by all four governments, notwithstanding their public refusals, they are far from confident that of the four, the Saudi crown prince Abdullah will stay the course until the end of the conflict.
This uncertainty produced the re-publication of an old Washington threat to Riyadh in the serpentine yet understandable form taken by Washington Post report.
The threat was two-edged. It warned Abdullah not to drop back from his practical support for the American war effort, advising him to caution the extremist factions making up his power base not to interfere with the de facto monarch's decision to allow America to launch its warplanes from the Prince Sultan air base. This was a veiled hint at the cadre of young, radical princes who are partisans of the ex-Saudi terrorist leader Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, the Islamic clergy and many ultra-conservative tribal chiefs.
These tribal chiefs were traditionally minor players on the Saudi political scene. Most were urbanized, having moved to the big towns of Riyadh and Jeddah to act as tribal lobbyists at the Saudi royal court and lesser bureaucrats. Their standing suddenly changed at the beginning of this year, when thousands of Saudis who fought with al Qaeda and the Taliban against the Americans returned home from Afghanistan. These fugitives felt safest taking refuge with their tribes and clans. The chiefs of those tribes overnight acquired an expanding constituency, one that was, moreover, a powerful fighting force. They were catapulted into the role of arbiter between the war veterans, the Saudi throne and the religious authorities, with leverage enough to determine whether the thousands of highly trained guerrilla fighters sank back into their places in the tribes or ganged up for an armed insurgency against the House of Saud and the central government in Riyadh.
The implicit threat to seize the Saudi oil fields and Riyadh's investments in the United States is aimed at all walks of Saudi society, high and low, who would all be hit.
Jordan
Palace Intrigue Besets King Abdullah
Saddam Hussein's TV address to the Iraqi nation on Thursday, August 9, was replete with seemingly abstruse Islamic references with ominous overtones.
'The forces of evil will carry their coffins on their backs, to die in disgraceful failure, taking their schemes back with them, or to dig their own graves, after they bring death to themselves on every Arab or Muslim soil against which they perpetrate aggression, including Iraq, the land of Jihad and the banner' ®¢ was one passage.
'Allah, the omni-powerful, is above all power and shall repel the schemes of the unjust' ®¢ was another.
The warning carried to Amman on Tuesday, August 6, by Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri was just as ominous though less abstruse. Jordanian palace sources described his talks with King Abdullah as dwelling on 'the mounting threat of military action against Iraq and ways to prevent it'. However, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Amman and the Gulf, this communiquÎ could not have been further from what actually transpired in the exchange.
Sabri handed King Abdullah a letter from Saddam warning him against pursuing his military cooperation with the Americans. The Iraqi minister cautioned the king: 'If you let the Americans attack us from Jordanian soil, don't expect to sleep safely in your bed.'
Sabri issued a similar threat to the Turkish foreign minister Sukru Sina Gurel who was in Amman at the same time. Turkey must withdraw its special forces from northern Iraq and the Turkmen regions without delay, said the Iraqi minister; Ankara must stop the United States from using Turkish bases for attacks on Iraq. Failure to do so would leave Baghdad no option but to 'send its own special forces already present in Turkey against strategic Turkish targets, bringing chaos to the cities and inflicting heavy civilian casualties'.
Those same Iraqi special forces units, the Iraqi thundered, would also go after US troops stationed in Turkish bases. Talking to reporters later, the Iraqi foreign minister continued in the same vein, declaring Baghdad will 'chop off the head of any aggressor'.
The US offensive against Iraq ®¢ and Jordan's heavy involvement (as revealed in last week's DEBKA-Net-Weekly) - confronts the Jordanian monarch with a threat not only from Baghdad but also from within. Washington's plan to replace the Saddam regime with a fresh administration has stirred up enthusiasm among influential Jordanian monarchists for the restoration of the historic House of Hashem in Baghdad, as well as in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the Saudi region of Hijaz.
The Hashemite dynasty was founded early last century by Al-Hussein bin Ali, the deposed Sharif of Mecca and King of the Hijaz. His two sons, Feisal and Abdullah, established monarchies in Iraq and Jordan. Feisal was deposed and executed by the Iraqi Baath, while the Hashemites retain the Jordanian throne to this day.
Some members of Jordan's most wealthy and prominent families ®¢ many kinsmen of the Hashemite king - believe that restoring the Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad, even symbolically, would bring back the dynasty's glory days and instate it as a leading Middle East power. They take encouragement from the return of the Afghan king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, from exile to Kabul.
King Abdullah is extremely worried by this movement. He fears that placing Ali Bin Hussein, the London-based heir to the Iraqi branch of the Hashemites, on the throne in Baghdad would undercut his own position as head of the House of Hashem. The center of gravity of the royal house would shift to Baghdad and expose him to rivalries and intrigue. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington report that Abdullah explained this to US President George W. Bush, vice president Dick Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, when he visited Washington in late July. He also argued that his quiet military collaboration with the United States against Iraq was for him a perilous venture, exposing him to dangers from unexpected quarters, as well as from Baghdad. He was nonetheless throwing in his lot with Washington ®¢ not to give the Jordanian monarchy a new headache, but to rid his country once and for all of the scourge of Saddam Hussein and expunge the historic Palestinian threat to its stability.
Ali Bin Hussein's presence at the convention of exiled Iraqi army leaders in London last month was taken by Iraqi military chiefs in Baghdad as signifying America's intention of assigning the Iraqi heir a central position in the post-Saddam administration. Abdullah remarked that the exile had begun using the title 'Sharif', or nobleman, in his public appearances and demanding to be addressed as head of the Hashemite royal house, implying also a territorial claim on Saudi Arabia.
What vexed King Abdullah most of all were the photographs of his uncle, Prince Hassan, in the company of the Iraqi royal claimant at the London convention of Iraqi exiles. Hassan was in line for the Jordanian throne until King Hussein, shortly before his death three years ago, suddenly displaced him with his son Abdullah, leaving Hassan much disgruntled. Abdullah told his American hosts that Hassan had blatantly defied his orders not to attend the convention and consort with Ali Bin Hussein. Hassan had gone even further and invited a group of high-placed Jordanians over to London to meet the Iraqi heir.
Abdullah was so upset that American officials went to considerable trouble to calm one of their key strategic partners in the US campaign against Baghdad. Cheney and Rice explained to the king that the exiled officers' convention in London was in fact a flop and Washington made no move to meet their demands, one of which was for a Pentagon and State Department commitment to reinstate the exiled officers in their old command positions after Saddam was gone. They also wanted Ali Bin Hussein appointed supreme commander of the Iraqi armed forces.
This did not wash in Washington; US leaders want to sweep away the incumbent military hierarchy and construct a new military whose chain of command would be unassociated with the ousted administration.
The disappointed exiled officers disputed the American plan, arguing that for Saddam to be removed, the Iraqi military establishment must remain the dominant force in the country.
The London convention broke up in discord.
Cheney and Rice assured King Abdullah he had nothing to fear and Ali Bin Hussein would be summoned to Washington to be told not to expect any central role in the post-Saddam government. They also assured Abdullah, as they did the Turkish government, that the future Baghdad regime would be the center of a loose Iraqi federation with little real power.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Washington sources. Ali Bin Hussein is due in the US capital this week, as promised.
Peres Vs Arafat Vs Who?
The Misunderstood Foreign Minister
In an explosive article headlined 'Shimon Peres's death sentence', the French weekly L'Express quoted Israel's foreign minister as remarking recently in a private conversation in Paris, 'To end this (conflict) Yasser Arafat must die by the bullet. But it should not, of course, be ours" (meaning Israeli bullets).
The Israeli embassy in Paris promptly denied that Israel's leading dove had said any such thing. The editor of L'Express said the newsmagazine stood behind its report. It refused to say to whom Peres had made the purported remarks. In an Israel Radio interview, Peres persisted in his denial. He explained the whole affair arose from a misunderstanding. The L'Express reporter mistook Peres's English phrase. 'I told him that Arafat was setting the entire Middle East on fire and the L'Express man simply did not understand the word Ôfire'. He thought it meant gunfire,' said the foreign minister.
The report coincided with a visit Peres paid on French president Jacques Chirac in Paris before setting off for a White House meeting with US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. President George W. Bush, in an unusual gesture, given his frosty relations with Peres, 'dropped in' on the meeting and they chatted for 20 minutes.
Returning to Israel, Peres was invited out of the blue to Cairo by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak has refused to receive the Israeli foreign minister for nearly a year since Peres last visited the Egyptian capital in June 2001. Mubarak never stopped fuming over a remark Peres made at their joint news conference in Cairo then, that the Egyptian leader had been mistaken in asserting that Israel had come to an agreement with the Palestinians. After that gaffe, Peres added insult to injury by saying in subsequent press interviews that Mubarak had misunderstood what was said. After that, Mubarak refused to see Peres or even accept his phone calls until this week, when the ice suddenly broke and he graciously received the Israeli foreign minister.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Paris, the leak of Peres's hostile remark about Arafat to L'Express was no coincidence. Very senior political officials in the French capital made sure the newsmagazine carried it without any later retraction. The Peres-Chirac conversation, they said, had focused on threats scattered by Arafat in the first half of July. Arafat had been telling European officials calling on him that he would spill dark, embarrassing secrets against Middle East and European leaders unless they rescued him from the isolation to which Israel and the United States had condemned him.
When this discreet threat was unavailing, Arafat appeared at a Palestinian cabinet meeting in Ramallah on Friday, July 12, and declared: 'If they try to attack me, I will reveal secrets that will shake the entire Middle East.' Arafat made deliberate use of a large audience and Israeli listening devices to ensure his threat was made public and achieved the desired effect.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Middle East and West European sources disclose that certain intelligence services advised their political masters to treat Arafat's remarks seriously, and take steps to restrain him from acting recklessly.
One such step was the leak to L'Express of Peres's apparent slip of the tongue. It was meant as a signal to Arafat on behalf of certain European and Middle Eastern quarters of what might be in store for him if he goes through with his threats.
Senior political sources in France declined to say who was responsible for the leak. But it led to Peres being invited at last to the presidential palace in Cairo. Mubarak was curious enough to want to hear the story first hand and not merely from dry intelligence reports.
A Digest of the Week's Exclusives
3 August: Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has quietly assembled a new, trusted team to assist in the charting of Israel's Middle East role in the post-Saddam, post-Arafat era. Sharon's planning, a closely guarded secret not shared with his own ministers, is tightly woven into the design for the defeat of global terror which President George W. Bush began plotting after America's September 11 shock.
Our most credible sources confirm that the campaign is secretly marching forward - precisely according to the game plan Bush conceived and promised the American people in the speeches he delivered in September, October and November 2001. He said then that parts of the war on global terror would go forward in secret and never be known.
Since Sharon has wholly embraced the Bush approach to the war on terror, DEBKAfile can disclose no more than that proactive military initiatives are in progress around Israel's frontiers ®¢ some of them dangerous, as in every war.
The reconstruction of Palestinian instruments of governance and security is a key factor in this project, going far beyond the Palestinian arena; it is America's first experiment in building a modern democracy for a Middle East Muslim society. If the experiment works, it may prove applicable for the autonomous Kurdish, Shi'ite and Turkoman regions America hopes to set up in Iraq ®¢ or even, in the best case, radiate farther afield to transform the lives of additional ethnic majorities in the region and affect even the most hidebound Arab regimes.
Washington's new approach has elicited a new stage in the Palestinian campaign of terror. The remote-controlled bombing by cell phone on Mount Scopus hit a building at the heart of an American enclave on the Hebrew University campus; the Frank Sinatra Student Center abuts on the Barbra Streisand Garden, the Harry S. Truman Institute of Peace and the Nancy Reagan Plaza. The blast was meant to blow up a symbol of the deep strategic collaboration and ideological affinity binding the United States and Israel.
The fine points of such targeting are beyond the capacity of a local Hamas terrorist operative. DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources rather detect the mark of the intelligence and military cooperation already reported in the past between Yasser Arafat, Iraqi military intelligence agents operating in the West Bank and the Hizballah's terror-cum-intelligence apparatus. The senior coordinator of this coalition for terror is Gen. Tawfiq Tirawi, founder and commander of the Fatah's al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
3 August: Israeli's deep budget cutbacks, the spreading poverty and agonies of unemployment are profoundly demoralizing ®¢ and there is more to come. Critics of the Sharon government, like former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, have been encouraged to look forward to is imminent demise.
That is because only half the truth has been told.
America did not finance the 1991 Gulf War alone; it had help from an international coalition, with Saudi Arabia, the Gulf emirates, Germany and Japan investing heavily in the war effort. But this campaign against Saddam Hussein is financed out of America's pocket. The $20 b war-against- terror budget allocated by the US congress last week earmarked no more than $200 m for Israel's needs in that war. Washington expects Israel to find its own war funding. This has forced the government into spending cuts that go ever deeper. One of the most respected of Sharon's ministers, David Levy, resigned last week in protest against the dangerous widening of an already unhealthy earnings gap in Israeli society.
What Sharon has not confided to that suffering society is that America's scenario for the region holds the prospect further down the road for Israel's economic renewal and growth.
Assuming that the US military operation against Iraq goes forward according to plan, winding down at the end of 2002 or early 2003, by spring 2003, the Middle East will be in the throes of a geo-strategic metamorphosis. During the hostilities, Jordan and Israel will provide the United States forces with rear bases, with economic benefits to both. After the conflict dies down, more than 70,000 troops, most American, are scheduled to remain in Iraq to pacify and reconstruct the war-torn country. The new entities will need to be built up from scratch at top speed ®¢ requiring such modern utilities as regular water and food supplies, health, medicine, communications and road networks.
American think tanks estimate that post-Saddam Iraq will eat up an annual investment of between $15-20 billion for up to a decade.
Israel is the only country in the region with the technological and manpower resources to undertake the rapid execution of these projects. These are not pipedreams but real plans drafted for American planners in Washington by a task force headed by retired Col. Scott R. Feil, co-director of developing plans for post-conflict Iraq. These plans were submitted to the Senate defense and intelligence committees Thursday, August 1. Their post-war activation would inject new life into the Israeli economy, generating growth after the present tough deprivations and stagnation induced by the 22-month confrontation with the Palestinians.
4 August: The Palestinian terrorist machine molded by Yasser Arafat executed seven terror attacks against Israelis in a single day, no doubt achieving a gruesome world record. Eleven people died ®¢ soldiers and civilians, Jews, Arabs, Druzes and two Filipina women. Close to 100 were injured; many will remain invalids. The question on every lip at the end of this black day is this: What is Sharon waiting for? All the Palestinian groups, buoyed up by what is seen as Ariel Sharon's slack responses, have joined forces for yet another a mighty effort to beat the Israelis ®¢ and most of all their armed forces - into the ground.
The current IDF operation in Nablus to flush out terrorists - embarked on after the Hebrew University bombing last Wednesday, which destroyed seven lives ®¢ was dubbed 'Maybe this time?' Whether a wag in Israel's high command or an army computer chose the name, it perfectly expresses the spreading frustration in Israel's defense forces at the nature of the directives coming down from the Sharon government, which are defensive, reactive and unavailing in the face of the constantly escalating Palestinian menace.
Now, Israeli commanders express the hope once again: Maybe this time they will be allowed to reach the hands orchestrating the terror offensive.
Sunday's seven attacks demonstrated that Israel's latest deterrent measures are too feeble and too late ®¢ by six months, if not a year. The disease is too far advanced to be affected by half-measures.
Sharon ought to have been ready and forestalled this offensive, which has claimed 26 lives since it began 11 days ago. DEBKAfile's sources warned repeatedly that the Passover cycle which Arafat, his al Aqsa Martys' Brigades, the Hamas, Jihad Islami, Hisballah, Iran and Iraq, launched at the end of March, was but the prologue for the current onslaught, while this one is the lead-in to the third wave whose eruption is planned for the moment that the Americans begin marching on Iraq. But the Israeli prime minister was not ready and did not prepare the people.
Sharon has run out of time for dilatory and defensive tactics. They only encourage Palestinian aggression, promote desperation and extremism and will at some point bring about his downfall.
6 August: Last May, the US authorities picked up a suspected al Qaeda terrorist feared to be plotting to build and set off a "dirty" or radiological bomb.. Abu Zabaydah, the only senior al Qaeda operative in US hands, revealed that his organization is capable of assembling one. This week, a Stanford International Studies Institute research database recorded 700 cases of smuggled radioactive materials worldwide.
The 'dirty bomb' threat must therefore be taken as a tangible one - for Israel like other places.
A special investigation carried out by DEBKAfile staff found that no emergency teams had been set up in Israel to handle this menace. The directors of two leading hospitals in Jerusalem, Prof. Zvi Stern, of Hadassah medical center on Mount Scopus and Professor Yonathan Halevi of Shaarei Tzedek informed us that the Health Ministry had issued no directives or made preparations for a nuclear episode. Dr. Stern: 'It takes time to prepare protocols, about six months.'
The Haifa area's fire brigade chief, Moshe Ribek, admits that his organizations knows 'very little' about radioactive threats, while the Ministry of Environment spokesman, Sharon Achdut, said he too had little knowledge of the subject.
Israeli authorities are more familiar with the chemical warfare hazard. Traces of rat poison were discovered after the Jerusalem pedestrian mall bombing on December 1, 2001, in which 11 people died and 173 were injured. However, the substance was distributed too thinly by the extra-powerful blast to cause harm; or may have been incinerated.
Poisonous chemical fertilizers for making chemical bombs have turned up in Palestinian bomb-making factories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Furthermore, the Israeli charge sheet presented in Tel Aviv district court last week against Karam Abas Said, the Hamas operative - who masterminded the devastating Seder night bombing at the Netanya Park Hotel in which 29 Israelis died - contains an admission that the original planning was for a cyanide attack, using two suicide bombers instead of one.
This week, since DEBKAfile embarked on its investigation, Magen David Adom, whose teams were inadequately protected, have received from the Home Front Command 500 'Gold Watch' Level A suits developed in Israel for protection against chemical and biological weapons.
The Israeli police assure us they are properly equipped and briefed to deal with unconventional weapons hazards, but refuse to give out details.
On the threat of bio-terror, our military sources report no evidence that such weapons have reached the Palestinians from Iraqi undercover agents, some of whom may carry them. Such a handover would have to be decided by Saddam in person out of strategic considerations of his own ®¢ not merely to help Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians out of a tight corner.
WMD are the Iragi ruler's option for fighting off an American offensive or punishing US allies. DEBKAfile tried to find out whether Israel has laid in enough smallpox vaccine for the whole population. Health Ministry director general, Dr. Boaz Lev, believes stocks are sufficient for every Israeli to receive one-fifth of the regular dose, which he says would be effective enough. But some of the ministry staff disagrees; they fear that stocks are short and would take months to bring up to the necessary level.
7 August: Israel's defense minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer may have started out with a small plan to do down Haim Ramon, his rival for the Labor party leadership, and perhaps steal the Likud prime minister Ariel Sharon's limelight. He has ended up writing a powerful recipe for Yasser Arafat's re-accreditation at a time of surging Palestinian terrorism.
The plan offers the discredited Palestinian Authority yet another chance to prove itself capable of cutting down terrorism and violence, starting with the Gaza Strip and perhaps one West Bank town, Bethlehem or Hebron, after Israeli military encirclements are lifted. Tests of this kind Arafat has made a mockery of time and again - as General Anthony Zinni, George Tenet and Colin Powell can attest to in person. This time, Arafat lost no time in grabbing the lifeline the Israeli defense minister handed him, and hauling himself out of the trough in his fortunes to center stage. The Palestinian cabinet was hastily convened Wednesday, August 7 and took up the offer. A few hours later, the Israel-Palestinian security committee - that proved so useless in the past ®¢ reconvened to discuss the details.
The timing for Arafat could not have been more fortuitous.
One day earlier, Tuesday, August 6, US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld virtually stamped on the Ben Eliezer plan and the possibility of Arafat ever being an Israeli interlocutor, in the frankest terms. He doubted whether Israel should hand over control of territory to the Palestinian Authority, 'which is involved in terrorism', and went on to say: 'My feelings about the so-called occupied territories are that there was a war. Israel urged neighboring states not to get involved once it started. They all jumped in and they lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in the conflict.'
The US secretary agreed that at some point a Palestinian entity would be established that Israel could accept on grounds of security, but he did not include the Arafat regime in that future. 'Maybe it will take some Palestinian expatriates coming back to the region and providingÉ responsible government,' he remarked.
What the Ben Eliezer Gaza plan has achieved is to turn the clock back to the old days of Ehud Barak's government dominated by the pro-Oslo camp of Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin and Shlomo Ben Ami who, under Bill Clinton's baton, acclaimed Yasser Arafat as the one and only peace interlocutor and showered rewards on him of concessions, land, cash and other gifts, each time his terrorists murdered Israelis. That policy gave life to Arafat's 'Al Aqsa Intifada' which no one ventured to stop ®¢ until George W. Bush entered the White House and said openly that Arafat is a terrorist.
Arafat and his followers quite openly pledge their support for Saddam Hussein and his 'just cause', exactly as they did in 1991.
But no part of the American and Israeli war against terror seems to have relevance for the Israeli defense minister, who has other fish to fry. His fellow cook is fellow Laborite, foreign minister Shimon Peres, who applauds any step to restore his old Oslo peace partner, Arafat, and revive his regime. Whereas the Rumsfeld statements cast doubt on the legitimacy of a delegation representing that regime being received in Washington, Ben Eliezer has made it kosher.
Sharon remains mum on his defense minister's machinations. He is evidently counting on the upcoming Iraq campaign to eclipse them - and Arafat too - once and for all, without him having to lift a finger. Arafat is unlikely to give him that much space before his terrorists strike again.
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