Mideast Roundup
October, 4, 2002
US-Iraqi Battle for H-3 Air-Missile Base
While President George W. Bush was in mid-negotiation for congressional authorization to use force against Iraq, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report that fierce battles erupted early Monday (Sep. 30) between US commandos and Iraqi Republican Guards special forces units around the H-3 air-missile base complex in West Iraq.
On the diplomatic front, the UN strove to have arms inspectors sent to Baghdad as quickly as possible and France and China pushed hard to prevent America from striking the Saddam regime. Undeterred by these pressures, US and British warplanes continued to knock out Iraq's military radar stations, missile sites and mobile anti-air missile launchers, to soften up resistance to the coming full-scale offensive.
Monday, both sides rushed reinforcements to the battlefield - US Marines flew in by helicopter from Jordan's Ruwayshid base near the Iraqi border; fresh Iraqi troops were drawn off from the air-ground H-2 base NE of Ar Rutbah. However, early Wednesday, October 2, the clashes continued around the crucial H-3 base complex.
The fighting first erupted Monday over Iraqi attempts to install surface missile batteries with unconventional warheads in place of the hardware damaged in the heavy US-UK bombardment of the H-3 complex on September 5. Despite the siege American and Jordanian special forces laid to the strategic complex, Iraqi military engineers were able to repair some of the damaged H-3 installations and make some of the plowed-up runways operational.
In the last week of September, Iraqi air transports escorted by fighter planes, were able to fly in troops, communications equipment and commands to the beleaguered base.
General Tommy Franks's request for permission to use the air force to shoot the Iraqi transports down was denied. The request, brought before the president, was turned down at a White House conference attended also by vice president Cheney, for fear that the discovery that the war was already in force would embarrass the Bush team and upset its efforts to win a mandate from Congress and get a tough new resolution through the UN Security Council.
An air battle would be impossible to conceal.
However, the lack of an air option gave rise to two Iraqi military initiatives, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources:
First, deciding they had a good chance of breaking the American siege of H-3, the Iraqis sent ground convoys of reinforcements speeding under air cover to the blockaded base. The Americans countered by flying in fresh special forces and marines by helicopter.
Second, Sunday night, September 29, under cover of dark, the Iraqis began hauling replacement surface missile batteries from H-2 and hideouts in the Western Deserts - some with chemical and biological warheads - aiming to set them up in firing positions at H-3 and point them at Jordan and Israel.
Franks, when he heard new missile batteries were on the move, ordered the ground troops blockading H-3 to prevent them from reaching their emplacements by destroying them en route.
Early Monday, September 30, the US special force units pounding the moving missile convoys were attacked themselves by Republican Guard special units who appeared suddenly from their rear and flanks. The engagement went on Monday and Tuesday, when the Americans threw into the fray the Jordanian special forces manning the sector, as well as more US commandos from the Jordanian base.
The skies over the battle arena are meanwhile clear of warplanes.
According to the last reports reaching DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources, some of the Iraqi missile convoys have been destroyed, but at least one or two batteries may have slipped through to H-3 and been set up on launching pads.
This probability was enough to prompt a supreme missile alert for most of this week for US military forces in the Middle East, Jordan and Israel.
Iraq
First Executions of Iraqi Officers
Word has leaked out to DEBKA-Net-Weekly that two Iraqi army colonels have been executed on Saddam Hussein's orders, on suspicion of complicity in an alleged American-backed military coup plot to overturn the regime or assassinate the ruler.
The two men, Colonel Mohammad Yassin Khedr and Colonel Abbas Mojtaba Mohaddeth, served at the army's main headquarters in Baghdad.
The suspicions against Colonel Khedr arose, not from any of his actions, but from his wife's shopping expedition in London.
Khedr and family went on a trip to the UK five months ago. His superior officers gave him permission to travel with the knowledge of the Iraqi defense ministry and the general staff. Khedr's trip was cleared with unusual expeditiousness, despite the tough restrictions on overseas travel by Iraqi officers. They are normally kept cooling their heels while subjected to close Iraqi military intelligence surveillance over several months. At destination, Iraqi army officers are constantly watched.
In the case of Khedr, the watchers apparently failed to turn up any secret incriminating meetings with British or American agents. Wiretaps on his phone yielded no suspicious conversations. But his wife did go shopping.
Khedr later told interrogators his wife bought items for fellow officers with money they gave him in advance. The accused officer, who came from a fairly wealthy family, said his wife's shopping was paid for out of his own savings. But Iraqi intelligence agents insisted that the money for the merchandise came from bribes handed over by the CIA and Britain's MI6 to win Iraqi officers over to the US war effort.
Mohaddeth's story is less clear. During a trip to Damascus two months ago, Syrian intelligence claims to have "caught" him meeting with "dubious characters", suspected of working for the CIA and under Syrian surveillance for some time.
The officers' trials were swift. They were convicted, sentenced and executed on the same day.
Saudi Arabia
An Anatomy of Crisis?
Call it the desert enigma: an oil-rich kingdom ruled by a royal family of many faces and intrigues and linked through 19 hard men to the worst terrorist attack ever to shake a superpower to its foundations.
A close look at Saudi Arabia raises more questions than answers.
Just what is the relationship between the House of Saud and the U.S. administration of President George W. Bush? Are large segments of the Saudi establishment linked to the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and to al Qaeda or other Islamic terrorist groups in the kingdom or overseas? Does Saudi Arabia oppose or support the coming US war against Iraq and will it be prepared for even limited cooperation with Washington to oust Saddam Hussein?
Will Saudi oil fields be hit in the military campaign against Iraq and will Saudi crude lose its importance after the United States or a pro-American government takes over in Baghdad and controls Iraqi oil taps?
Add to the brew such side dishes as Saudi Arabia's rivalry with Iran over top spot as regional power of the Persian Gulf, Saudi-Pakistani military and political relations and Riyadh's involvement in Syria and Lebanon.
The inherent secretiveness that keeps the information available down to a trickle makes it almost impossible for experts to piece together a total picture.
Just who are the people running the country? What are their policies and personal viewpoints? And who advises them?
And the biggest mystery: What is really going on in Saudi Arabia beyond and beneath the top layer of princes? Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy (bound only by religion) with no elections, no free speech, no legislature and no opposition. The only dissenting voices rise inside the thick walls of the palaces where court intrigue seethes well out of sight.
What influence is wielded by the army, the National Guard and the General Intelligence Service - the Saudi equivalent to the CIA that also has responsibility for preventing subversion and sabotage at Saudi oil fields?
Out there, in desert oases and tribal grounds, there are 22.5 million Saudis. Tribal units may have lost some of their economic power, but has this cut down their political clout in the capital? Will the House of Saud and the world be caught unawares again as they were 23 years ago when fanatical Othaiba tribesmen led a revolt that took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca and were on the verge of toppling the Saudi royal house?
A comprehensive look at Saudi Arabia would be incomplete without an examination of the stirrings in the ulema, the powerful Saudi religious hierarchy which makes its influence felt in the farthest corners of the Moslem world, including places like Chechnya.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's experts on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf have worked for months gathering exclusive information on the kingdom. Their findings appear in this issue and will continue to be presented in future editions of DEBKA-Net-Weekly.
Crown Prince Abdullah Vs Defense Chief Sultan
The three overriding concerns exercising the Saudi royal family this past year were the state of relations with the Bush administration - the president and vice president, in particular; the handling of its unacknowledged ties with al-Qaeda and other radical Moslem groups - the Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip and extremists in Pakistan, Bosnia and Chechnya; and the coming US war against Iraq.
The last is the most acute. Already grappling with economic strains at home, Saudi rulers are bracing for a vertiginous fall in oil prices which they expect after America wins its war over Baghdad, installs a new government and resumes full oil production in Iraq. In Riyadh, the campaign is expected to take no more than two or three weeks. This prospect worries the Saudi royals - even though they want to see Saddam Hussein disappear as much as the Americans do.
For a country totally dependent on oil for its revenues, a price collapse would spell disaster. In six months at most, the cash would run out for maintaining the bureaucracy and economy at their present rate of operation.
Overlaying all these concerns, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources say, is the looming crisis presented by the unresolved order of succession to the throne. When ailing King Fahd dies, his accepted heir is Crown Prince Abdullah. But who is next in line as crown prince?
The candidate accepted by princely consensus till now was the defense minister, Abdullah's half-brother Sultan, as the best man for the job. But advancing years make it his ascent to the throne biologically improbable. Sultan is either the same age as Abdullah, who is 77 or 78 (see Abdullah's profile <#3-31>below), or a year older and not in good health. The House of Saud must therefore look for its next second-in-line to the crown in the next generation. But before stepping aside, Sultan demands a say in his replacement, creating a fresh gridlock.
Who is competent to select the next crown prince and future king? Abdullah or Sultan?
The battle between their two camps has cast the royal family into crisis with the chances of a compromise receding all the time.
Both are marshalling support from the ranks of the more influential princes out of an estimated 10,000.
Two Princes at Daggers Drawn
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, foreign minister Saud al-Faisal and the al-Faisal clan head Abdullah's camp which is disadvantaged by the crown prince having a small family.
Abdullah's second son, Mitab bin Abdullah, 40, is his father's point man in the power struggle. He keeps his finger on the right pulses in Abdullah's main power supports: The officers of the 50,000-man National Guard, of which the Crown Prince is commander in chief; the provincial governors and the tribal chiefs.
His foremost allies are Prince Abdul Majeed bin Abdul Aziz, 40 plus, Governor of the Holy City of Mecca, and Prince al-Walid bin Talal, who is rated one of the richest men in the world.
Al-Walid won notoriety by writing a check of $10 m for the victims of the 9/11 attacks on New York City, only to have it rejected by city officials when he demanded a re-assessment of American Middle East policies. Another Saudi mogul, Prince Mashal bin Abdul Aziz, is also a partisan of Abdullah's strong and well-financed camp.
Sultan's camp is if anything larger and more powerful. (See Sultan's profile below)
It is built around two of his distinguished sons, Prince Khaled bin Sultan, the deputy defense minister and one of the strongest men in the kingdom, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the popular Saudi ambassador to the United States, a prominent Washington figure for more than a quarter century.
Support for Sultan has divided the Faisal clan. Two leading princes, Turki bin Faisal, for many years head of the General Intelligence Service, GIS, that provides security for the Saudi princes and oil fields against terror attack; and Khaled bin Faisal, Governor of Assir, the sensitive southern province that abuts on Yemen.
Sultan's support group also includes Prince Nawaf bin Abdulaziz, incumbent GIS chief, and two more of the defense minister's seven full brothers - Interior Minister Prince Naif bin Abdul Aziz, who holds responsibility for internal security, and Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, Governor of the Riyadh Region. Sultan can also count on the national security services and the 70,000-80,000-strong armed forces, military intelligence and air force, most of whose commanders and officers are members of the Sultan family or kinsmen of his Sudayri clan.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, Sultan's following had a clear edge over the Abdullah camp up to the period just before the September 11 hijacking attacks in New York and Washington. Up until then, both camps fought within certain respected boundaries. But on August 30, 2001, Abdullah changed the rules, surprising not only his rival but his own followers. He fired Prince Turki bin Faisal as head of the GIS. This step raised the dust around the ruling political and security circles of the Arab world.
From that moment on, the contest shifted gear from a slow-burn power struggle to a full-blown, titanic showdown.
The Contest Heats up
Immediately after the 9/11 shock, a rumor was planted attributing Turki's dismissal to the discovery of clandestine ties he allegedly maintained with Osama bin Laden's family, who were said to be in touch with Osama and other al Qaeda elements. Our intelligence and counter-terror experts are convinced that this charge was baselessly trumped up to discredit Turki, who was in fact sacked for supporting Sultan's bid to name the next claimant to the throne.
Abdullah understood that the GIS was too strong a card to leave in the hands of the opposite camp if he wanted to be the one break out of the standoff. Abdullah's backers wanted to make sure that when he ascended the throne, he would determine the order of succession - not Sultan, even as crown prince.
After removing Turki from his path, Abdullah continued to strike swiftly before Sultan's following had time to recover. One hour later, he appointed Prince Nawaf bin Abdulaziz, half-brother of the Sudayris, to the vacant post, thereby assuming control of this powerful body. The new man had very few qualifications for the job. In his early 70s, he spent years as a low-key diplomatic go-between for the Saudi royal family and Arab power groups, with no experience in intelligence. His appointment was no more than a sinecure amounting to a coup by Abdullah to appropriate Saudi intelligence from Sultan's men.
Chance played into Abdullah's hands. The 9/11 calamities were a shock to the Sultan camp when it was still reeling from Turki's dismissal and in no state to counter Abdullah's master move.
Then, in March this year, Abdullah struck lucky again. After seven months as intelligence chief, Nawaf went to Beirut with the crown prince to attend an Arab summit. There, he suffered a stroke and underwent emergency brain surgery, from which he has never recovered his faculties.
Nonetheless, Abdullah retains him as formal chief of intelligence.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report that Abdullah's contest against Sultan is served well by a rudderless Saudi intelligence apparatus, adrift in the stormy waters of US-Saudi tensions, the Afghan War, the global campaign against terrorism, the approaching US military offensive in Iraq and the Palestinian-Israel conflict. The Crown Prince believes Saudi intelligence is his best stepping stone to winning out as long as the GIS lacks an active director.
Of late, however, our intelligence sources report that Abdullah has discovered he is not the only one making hay from the intelligence leadership vacuum. Defense Minister Sultan has regrouped his forces and is quietly but aggressively building up his standing among senior and mid-level Saudi intelligence officials. As a result, Abdullah sees his hold on national intelligence chiefs slipping, as key intelligence officers whose loyalty he counted as given cross into Sultan's fold.
Since last spring, Abdullah and his advisers have been exerting efforts to divide Sultan's camp and so bring the standoff between them to a head. The crown prince is now energetically promoting a plan to name Prince Abdul Aziz al-Fahd, 32, King Fahd's fourth and favorite son, crown prince after the monarch dies, rather than Sultan. (See profile of Abdul Aziz below)
Abdullah and his associates are working hard to cultivate the young prince, nurturing family ties and introducing him to Abdullah's own friends and allies, the grass roots tribes and the clergy.
This plan has the appeal of a recipe for regenerating the geriatric monarchy. It entails leapfrogging over the heads of an ageing generation of princes and jumping the founder's grandsons, still in their 30s and 40s, into the direct order of succession.
Abdullah Pulls Ahead
The crown prince has two things going for his vision:
First, King Fahd's poor health. Semi-conscious most of the time, his favorite son, Abdul Aziz, may be able to find the right moment to get him to sign a royal warrant formulated by Abdullah's advisers naming him next in line to the throne after Abdullah, and therefore his designated crown prince.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources hear that Sultan's camp has taken preventive steps in Fahd's palace to forestall this move.
Second, his plan's potential for dividing the Sudayris.
Third, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Saudi watchers have discovered that Prince Salman, the powerful governor of Riyadh, has developed personal ambitions that Abdullah is encouraging.
At 64, Salman enjoys great esteem as chairman of the select Royal Council that sets the order of business for the royal house and assigns the duties of state to the various princes.
To a large extent, this body, more than any other, determines how much power and influence will reside in the hands of each individual prince. This puts Salman in position for tipping the scales between the rival Abdullah and Sultan camps. Until recently, he enjoyed his high standing as a man of superior intelligence who gets things done and, although a Sudayri, is acceptable to all the squabbling factions of the royal household, including Abdullah's clan and the Faisal princes. He was looked to more as kingmaker than future king.
However, sources abreast with the latest developments in Riyadh, report that under the influence of the escalating contest between Abdullah and Sultan, he has become more receptive to the blandishments of Abdullah and his followers, and shows signs of wanting to jump into the fray and take the offer of candidate for crown prince.
The latest move in the hidden royal succession contest surfaced this Wednesday, October 2, when Abdullah struck again. He moved General Saleh bin Taha Khosaifan out of his post as the kingdom's top security chief, responsible for the interior ministry department investigating terrorist and subversive activities against the throne. The general was, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources, then kicked upstairs, appointed ministerial advisor to the king, to work under the supervision of Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz, one of the seven Sudayri brothers.
Khosaifan, a top figure in Saudi intelligence, was a bulwark of the Sudayri clan. Abdullah seized on the bomb blast that murdered a German businessman in Riyadh on September 29 to disarm one of Sultan's staunchest backers.
Since November 2000, American, British and German business executives have been the targets of five bombing attacks in Riyadh and al-Khobar. Two Britons were killed and several Britons and other foreigners wounded. The Saudis carry out their investigations under tight wraps. Some of the blasts may have stemmed from business disputes, as the Saudi authorities claim. But it is also possible that others, especially the one in al-Khobar, were the work of Islamic terrorists seeking to drive foreigners from the kingdom.
Abdullah accused General Khosaifan of falling down on the investigation into the bomb attacks, to the detriment of national security. But Sultan's supporters swiftly countered with a demand to promote the sacked general without delay else he would defy Abdullah's orders. Fearing further confrontation, Abdullah advanced the security chief he fired to a cabinet post
The incident shows that Sultan's camp is now on its guard for Abdullah's surprise moves, determined not to be caught napping again as they were last year when he fired Turki as GIS director.
It also shows that the discord between the two royal factions has become harsh enough to break out into the open.
More Saudi developments to come in future issues of DEBKA-Net-Weekly.
Princely Profiles
Saudi monarchs enjoy absolute power - as long as they stay within the bounds of religion. The roughly 10,000 royal princes, begat by two generations of polygamous sires, are riven by conflicting ambitions, jealousy and conflicting loyalties. Although the House of Saud guards its secrets well, DEBKA-Net-Weekly has been able to piece together profiles of some of the leading dramatis personae in the unfolding confrontation over who will succeed Abdullah as next monarch of the oil kingdom.
Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz
Abdullah has reigned as effective ruler of Saudi Arabia since his half-brother, King Fahd, succumbed to ill health in 1996. Born in 1923/24 as one of the 35 sons of the monarchy's founder, Abd Al Aziz Al Saud, he stood out from his siblings as the only son of his mother Fahda bint al-ÎAasi ibn Shuraym. Unlike them, Abdullah had no full brothers, which in the Bedouin-tribal society into which he was born, was considered a mark of weakness. He had to battle his way up to the top of the ladder against his half-brothers, all princes supported by full brothers.
The present king Fahd, in particular, is one of the seven Sudayri brothers, the most formidable faction of the ruling house.
Abdullah's mother, Fahda, was a widow when she married King Al Saud. Her first husband, a scion of the Rashid family which at the time controlled the Najd region of central Saudi Arabia, was murdered in 1920 by his cousin. The Rashids' blood feuds cleared the way for her second husband, Al Saud, to advance his conquest of the strategic region.
Her son Abdullah's first steps in court politics were taken in the mid-1950s in support of his half-brother Prince Talal, who was the first royal scion to campaign for the democratization of the oil kingdom. Talal led a group of dissident princes against his brother, the hidebound King Saud, who as elder son had succeeded the founder on the throne in Riyadh. Talal was an ardent supporter of the crown prince and future king, Prince Faisal.
In 1959, Abdullah and Talal parted company: Talal turned back to the king, while Abdullah built up his ties with Faisal.
Abdullah's choice proved the wiser. In 1963, when Faisal assumed the de facto reins of government leaving Saud a figurehead (much like the relationship today between Abdullah and Fahd), he appointed the faithful Abdullah Commander of the National Guard.
This proved so effective a launching pad for his leap to the top of the heap, that Abdullah has never relinquished his command of this force, always respecting its tribal lineaments. In fact, before Faisal was assassinated in 1975, he had used it to bounce himself to be one of the top three claimants to the throne, along with two kings-to-be Khaled and Fahd.
Abdullah consistently made the right moves, both in his personal and public lives. To cement his connections with the tribal backbone of the country, he took as his first wife a daughter of a chief of the Shamar northern tribal federation, whose territories stretch across the frontier into Syria, Jordan and Iraq. His second wife is a sister of Rifat Assad's wife, brother of the late Syrian president Hafez Assad, who was his great friend.
All of his reputed eight sons have been given high posts in the National Guard. Son number two, Mitab, his favorite, has been in charge of the modernization program for the National Guard.
The crown prince also assiduously cultivated his image as a devout Muslim, respecter of religious traditions and well connected with tribal society, to fit himself for a monarchy limited only by the dictates of the state religion, the puritanical Wahabist brand of Sunni Islam.
In 1996, when Fahd was incapacitated by a brain hemorrhage, Crown Prince Abdullah naturally moved in to take his place, although under his deal with the senior princes, Fahd will remain formally king as long as he lives.
Prince Abdul Aziz Bin Fahd
The fourth and favorite son of King Fahd, Abdul Aziz bin Fahd was born in 1971 to Muna Ibrahim, a daughter of the Ibrahim clan, which has kinship ties with the Sudayris and strong business relations with the king, who awarded his newborn son the lifelong gift of the commissions handed him by his business associates. On the day he was born, it is said, Abdul Aziz became a millionaire. His mother's family became his trustees and as such acquired the first Arab satellite and the MBC television station.
Educated solely in Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz was not over-exposed to Western influences. As a young man, he was appointed royal adviser to the king, a sign that he was being groomed for high office. After his father fell ill in 1996, he was elevated to the Saudi cabinet as a minister without portfolio. That year, the 25-year old prince accompanied Abdullah on an Arab world tour, followed by trips to Europe and the United States. In Washington, his cousin, ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan, organized a red carpet welcome for him. But the Americans were not too impressed with the young prince.
At home, on the other hand, he has begun to exhibit political skills and a degree of pragmatism. This aptitude came to the fore in his decision to marry out of his own Sudayri clan. He skipped Uncle Sultan's daughter, the wife arranged for him, in favor of a daughter of Crown Prince Abdullah, Sultan's great rival, whom he married some time in the last two years.
Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, Defense Minister
Sultan, born in 1924, is one of the seven brothers who became known as the Seven Sudayris, sired by the founder of the House of Saud with Hassa bint Ahmad al-Sudayri.
In 1953, Sultan was appointed agriculture minister in the kingdom's first government; he was transport minister in the government formed by Faisal.
His first wife, Layla al-Thunayan, was the sister of Faisal's favorite wife, Iffat, who was born in Turkey and a liberal. She fought against impossible odds for the advancement of education for women and girls in the kingdom. In 1963, Sultan became minister of defense, a job he still holds. He also climbed up the list of pretenders to the throne after Abdullah.
The defense minister is thought to be the richest of the senior Saudi princes, whose hands also rest on key levers of power. He commands the armed forces, including the air force and military intelligence, a body of men reputed to be 70,000-80,000 strong, compared with the slightly smaller National Guard headed his foremost rival, Abdullah.
Sultan also wields almost limitless power in his position as master of the internal multibillion crown fund known as "Prince Oil" which creams off 10-12 percent of the kingdom's oil revenues for allocation to the princes according to rank: top dollar for the princes directly related to the king; next largest stipends for the princes performing jobs and the smallest allocations to all the rest.
The defense minister additionally controls the Supreme Petroleum and Mineral Affairs Council - SPMAC, which makes him the supremo of the kingdom's energy infrastructure. He is also believed to take his cut from middlemen in arms transactions for the armed forces, like Khashoggi, and to cash in on advantageous land deals in choice areas.
While Abdullah cannot match Sultan's wealth, Sultan does not aspire to his rival's tribal connections, his family ties to the northern Shamar confederation and his control of the Hijaz Tribal Council that rules the sites of the holy places of Islam in Mecca and Medina.
Sultan's has two internationally prominent sons: Khaled, who commanded the combined allied forces in Gulf War I, and Bandar, the popular Saudi Ambassador to Washington since 1982. Bandar was unacknowledged by his father for years, because his mother was a concubine and African. Then, Sultan's Sudayri mother, Hassa, stepped in and told her son to legitimize Bandar and raise him level with his brothers, because he was the brightest of them all. Sultan obeyed.
Sultan's political orientation is by and large is as pro-Western as that of is full brother King Fahd, although not quite so enthusiastic.
He is far too powerful for the Crown Prince to brush aside in his present policy-making and future plans. After Fahd's death, Abdullah will have to give the Sudayri princes and the pro-Western faction in their circle their due, if he wants to keep the royal house in some sort of equilibrium.
Iran
Maintaining the Contrarian Pose
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Teheran report that, despite the agreement Iran reached with the United States on military and political cooperation over Iraq (as reported in our last issue), the Iranian leadership finds it politic to feign opposition, or at least a neutral posture, to a US offensive against Saddam Hussein.
Iranian leaders hosted Iraqi foreign minister Naji al-Sabri in Teheran this week, as if nothing had changed. But intelligence reports on Sabri's visit and the military cooperation memorandum Iranian and Kuwait defense ministers signed in Tehran the next day, brought some cheer to the White House.
The Iraqi foreign minister demanded that Iran intensify covert and overt action to deter the United States from invading his country. Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi replied that Iran had tried to thwart the Americans by diplomatic pressure and the threat of retribution by Hizballah and Islamic Jihad terrorists. In one such warning, which Washington then passed on to Israel, Iran threatened that rockets would fly from southern Lebanon at Haifa's industrial and refinery installations.
Sabri also asked Iran to sell Iraq - as a first step -- 10 Shehab-3 surface-to-surface missiles. He sweetened the request with an offer of a 300 percent premium on the purchase price - in cash. Iran's Revolutionary Guard commanders were eager to snap up the money, but its top officials turned down the deal, fearing America would punish Tehran even before invading Iraq.
In a word, Iran's leaders decided to hold back from any subversive act that Washington could interpret as hostile.
Finally, the Iraqi foreign minister appealed to Iran's Shiite Moslem clergy for a religious edict, or fatwa, declaring a jihad on the United States if its troops marched into Iraq.
The Iranians prevaricated and made no promises. But they presented the Iraqi visitor with a list of their own, the first item of which was a demand to disband opposition Mojahedin e-Khalq bases in Iraq and extradite its leaders, Massou Rajavi and his wife Maryam, to Iran.
Iraq offered to consider the request as a quid pro quo for Iran meeting Baghdad's demands.
Iran also asked to receive the bodies of Iranian soldiers who fell in combat in Iraq, especially those killed in the Faw peninsula and the Majnoun islands during the first Gulf War. Iraq was asked to halt its repressive measures against its Shiite community and release jailed Shiite clerics. Sabri denied there was any repression in Iraq. All Baghdad wanted was for Ayatollah Mohammad Bagher Sadr to stop cooperating with the United States and conducting subversive activities against Saddam Hussein.
Kuwait's defense chief Sheikh Jaber al-Mobarak al-Hamad al-Sabah came away from Tehran a lot happier than the Iraqi foreign minister. The Kuwaiti and Iranian defense ministers signed a memorandum of understanding on security issues, which did not really commit Kuwait to act in Iran's defense, but which Teheran saw as a crowning achievement of its foreign policy. For years, Teheran has tried unsuccessfully to draw the Gulf emirates away from the United States and Britain and attract them into Iran's sphere of protection.
Iranian leaders trust that the memo signed by Kuwait will lead to more such accords with additional Gulf States, made possible by the dramatic easing of its old frictions with Saudi Arabia.
Iraq's Shiites
Lack Leaders, Cohesion
Iraq's Shiites are a no minority. They make up some 60 percent of the country's population of 22.5 million. Their eyes are anxiously following US preparations for war against Saddam Hussein. But, less cohesive than the restless Kurdish tribes of northern Iraq, DEKBA-Net-Weekly's experts do not expect them to play much of a role in the coming US invasion.
They bear the mark of year upon year of repression by the Saddam regime, which destroying their traditional religious leadership, kept close tabs on the Shiites living in Baghdad and denied freedoms to the communities of the rural south.
Senior Shiite religious figures suspected of cooperating with Iran or liable to issue fatwas (religious edicts) denouncing the Baghdad regime on religious grounds, were systematically liquidated. The two leading Shiite religious dynasties, the Hakim and Sadr, were broken up, leaving the relatively docile Ayatollah Mohammed Sistani in charge as the most senior living Shiite clergyman. He understandably watches his step, not daring to come out against the Iraqi leader. Most recently he was constrained - most likely under threat from Saddam - to issue a fatwa condemning a possible US invasion and calling on Shiites to stand up and fight enemy forces.
Years of repression have therefore placed the Shiites firmly under Saddam's jackboot, unlike the largely autonomous Kurds of the north. The two million Shiites living in Baghdad are too scared to raise their heads in opposition to Saddam, when they know that the city's streets teem with government agents and every Shiite gathering is infiltrated. But under this frightened exterior, the Shiites of Baghdad are more susceptible to Iran's influence than they are anywhere else. Iranian agents occasionally sneak into the Iraqi capital to knock off members of the main Iranian opposition guerrilla group, the Mojahedin e-Khalq. In other parts of the country, Iranian government operatives sometimes launch missile attacks at the Mojahedin's bases allowed by Saddam to operate against the Tehran government. The missiles are smuggled in by Iranian penetration cells.
Small Shiite underground cells have formed in the Shiite-dominated towns of southern Iraq - most made up of students of religious seminaries where revolution is preached. Several are run by Iranian agents or take their orders from Teheran. They trade message and instructions by email. These undercover units take good care to keep their heads down against the pervasive presence of Saddam's spies.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence experts, judging the southern Iraqi Shiites' reaction to American ground invasion from the south, believe they will not offer armed resistance. On the other hand, they are unlikely to cooperate with their Western "liberators".
The United States has in recent months clinched a secret agreement with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (al-Majlis al-Aal el-Thouvrat al-Islalmiat al-Irafieh), a group Iran established more than 20 years ago, for its followers in Iraq to assist the American invasion force.
This may not be much use. Over the years, the Supreme Council's influence with these Shiites has faded and few are likely to heed this request once the US campaign gets underway.
HOT POINTS
(that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock)
A Digest of the Week's Exclusives
28 September: Ehud Barak, who led the Israeli government when Arafat launched his al Aqsa confrontation two years ago, initiated the doctrine of keeping the score even - and not only against the Palestinians.
By forcing the Israeli army's withdrawal from Lebanon some months earlier, he led Israel into a prolonged standoff with the Lebanese Shiite Hizballah extremists. Most recently, they exploited the absence of Israeli resistance to post 8,000 missiles opposite Israeli cities and to draw off 15 percent of Israel's water supply, by diverting the Wazzani River.
In the first year of the Palestinian campaign of terror, Barak reduced Israel's armed forces to defensive tactics, forbidding them to destroy terrorist strongholds, so that he and his ministers could plunge undisturbed into Arafat's drawn-out, circular, phony negotiations tactics at Camp David, Paris, Cairo, Taba and Sharm al-Sheik, while Arafat's terrorists continued to notch up their terror campaign against Israeli civilians.
The format of the perpetual tie was then established.
While the Barak team was bent on its quest for "political horizons", the Hizballah, al Qaeda, and Iraq's military intelligence thrust clandestine shoots deep into the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Israeli's Arab community.
The damage to Israel's strategic wellbeing is surfacing only now.
DEBKAfile offers here an interim summing up of Sharon's gains and losses in his 19 months in office:
Strategic gains:
He turned the 1993 Oslo Peace Framework accords into a dead letter.
He shook Yasser Arafat's infallibility as sole Palestinian leader and undermined his international standing.
He snapped the conduit Arafat and the Palestinian Authority had maintained with Washington.
He undid the Palestinian Authority as the sole central government for the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
He seriously reduced the Fatah and its Tanzim militia.
He broke up the Palestinian security and intelligence arms, including Jibril Rajoub's preventive security service and Muhammed al-Hindi's general security service.
He wiped out the West Bank terrorist strongholds of the Tanzim, Force 17, the Hamas and the Jihad Islami.
It is a little known fact that the IDF smashed al Qaeda bases and an important Hizballah center on the West Bank in the course of the decisive battle it fought in the Jenin refugee camp on April 13, 2002.
Diplomatic gains:
He forged an exceptionally harmonious political and military partnership between Jerusalem and Washington and a high degree of understanding with the Oval Office.
He deactivated Arafat's deep and massive support in the European community and extinguished the EU's tireless attempts to force on Israel arrangements contrary to its interests, like imported international peacekeepers.
He stripped Arafat of unquestioning support from Cairo.
He removed the Saudi peace plan from the international agenda, exposing it as a PR exercise that did not spring from the brain of the peace campaigner Crown Prince Abdullah but from the offices of two Washington DC public relations firms.
Shortcomings:
The Palestinian front: Yasser Arafat still calls the shots in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Palestinian communities elsewhere. Sharon missed four opportunities for bringing about his final exit, the first, when he took office in March 2001; second, after the Tel Aviv disco teenage massacre in June 2001; third, after the Passover murders at the Park Hotel, Netanya, in March 2002; fourth, after the Hebrew University, Mount Scopus attack in August 2002, when five Americans lost their lives.
Until now, Sharon consistently drew back from inflicting the death blow on the Palestinian terrorist high command and the Fatah suicide arm, the al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. One consequence of leaving them at liberty until now was to effectively grant the Iraqi military intelligence cells operating under the al Aqsa Brigades umbrella full license.
It is no wonder that Palestinian terrorism continues unabated however much steel Sharon piles on the lower ranks.
Finally, Sharon has never come to grips with the Hizballah's cross-border threat from Lebanon, nor taken action against the Palestinian Fronts and Islamic groups based in Damascus.
With the United States preparing to launch itself against Baghdad, Sharon finds he is prevented from bringing the operation he began against Ramallah to its logical conclusion - the breakup at last of Arafat's high terror command and his possible removal. He is immobilized quite simply by the tab handed him by the Bush administration for long months of support and succor.
The first part of the tab constrains Israel from going after Arafat so as not to upset the fragile Middle East coalition Washington has assembled for the war on Baghdad.
After the full-scale assault on Iraq begins, Israel may pay dearly in the coin of eroded deterrent for the undecided state of play of its conflict with the Palestinians; Iraq may not be put off from launching missiles tipped with unconventional warheads against Israeli cities, knowing that Washington will tender the second half of its tab to Sharon, by making sure Israel does not fight back.
2 October: The British prime minister Tony Blair's simplistic Middle East message on October 1, drew derision in Jerusalem with a tinge of remembered bitterness over Britain's record in this region. Leaving aside the artificiality of the comparison between Iraq and Israel, DEBKAfile's political analysts suggest that this analogy may prove to be a major gaffe in view of the widening rift on Iraq between the US-UK and the majority of UN members.
What analogy will Blair choose for the Bush administration if it goes ahead with Britain and fights Iraq in defiance of the world body? Will he then declare that UN resolutions should apply to America and Britain as much as to Iraq?
Blair is not solely to blame for trying to lay down the law for Israel and its adversaries; he sees a chink in Israel's deterrent armor that is opening up at the unfortunate moment when the country is confronted with three present and potential warfronts: the Palestinian, the Lebanese Hizballah and Iraq. The most dangerous threat of all comes from the domestic front. This week, a chorus of criticism went up against the IDF's 11-day siege-and-destruction operation against Yasser Arafat's government compound in Ramallah - and the way it was lifted. It came mostly from various self-interested Israeli politicians.
The fact of the matter, according to DEBKAfile's military sources, is that Israel's siege of Arafat's headquarters has not been lifted. Arafat's top guns, the ones who designed his suicide-massacre campaign and were in the process of planning mega-strikes against Israeli targets in cahoots with Iraqi intelligence, especially Col. Tawfiq Tirawi, commander of the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, remained trapped. This in fact was just as Washington intended from the start.
How did this happen? After the cameras had finished clicking and whirring, the reporters were gone and the Palestinian victory celebration over, the Israeli siege rolled back into position, albeit in reverse order: the tanks forming the outer circle, special forces units next, and sharpshooters poised around the last standing Palestinian building, on the alert for escape attempts.
Before leaving for Moscow Sunday, September 29, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon made it clear that none of the wanted men, including the fugitives, would enjoy Israeli immunity - and that went also for Arafat.
On Tuesday, October 1, defense minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said the countdown had begun for the American assault on Iraq. He went on to declare: "If the Iraqis do attack us, it will only be if they are in critical distress. The Americans will do their utmost to crush Iraq's capability, inter alia to fend off an Israeli response." Then: "The Iraqis do have a surface missile capability, but they can carry no more than small quantities of chemical and biological materials. If we are attacked, we have the right to act to defend ourselves."
Israel's defense minister did not assert that Israel would fight back; he only noted that it has the right to do so.
Sharon's own contribution to Israel's deterrence has been equally uncertain. Last week, he went on record as saying that Israeli would not respond to just any Iraqi strike - only one that caused damage to life and property.
This stream of halfhearted rhetoric that emanates from domestic political agendas sends equivocal messages to the outside world. Blair quickly spotted the weakness, as no doubt have Saddam Hussein, Hassan Nasrallah and Yasser Arafat.
3 September: The Israeli writer and novelist David Grossman, in an article published in the New York Times Tuesday, October 1, lays out his theory that Israelis know only the side of their conflict with the Palestinians that Israel chooses to tell itself.
Grossman's article is captioned: Dangerous delusion: Israelis don't hear the whole story.
It seems to us that maybe the writer suffers from his own brand of the ignorant delusion he attributes to his fellow Israelis. Three facts offered here by DEBKAfile might suggest that the picture David Grossman presented New York Times readers is sorely deficient, if not one-sided.
1. Abu al-Abbas
This week, a reader wrote in with a reminder of a long-ago, terrorist episode:
Many have forgotten that it was Abu al-Abbas, head of the Baghdad-based Arab Liberation Front chief, close collaborator of Col. Tawfiq Tirawi, who masterminded one of the most horrific of Palestinian terrorist attacks way back in 1979 in the north Israeli Mediterranean town of Nahariya. On April 22, a Palestinian cell member used his rifle butt to smash in the skull of 4-year old Einat Haran and helped murder her father, Danny Haran aged 32 in the same attack. Two-year old Yael Haran died when her mother, watching her family murdered from an attic, accidentally smothered the child to death to keep her from crying out.
Two of the Palestinian terrorists were killed in the attack; Samir Kuntar, was captured and imprisoned. His freedom was the object of the hijack of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 by his controller, the same Abu al-Abbas. This time, he gained lasting infamy by throwing a wheel-chair-bound Jewish American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, overboard to his death.
In 1996, Ehud Barak's government allowed al-Abbas to visit the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. In October 2000, al Abbas demonstrated his gratitude by enlisting his organization to Arafat's Intifada. Since then, his group has channeled millions of dollars donated by Saddam Hussein to the families of Palestinian suicide-killers.
Grossman starts the catalogue of Palestinian "errors and war crimes" two years ago. The massacre of Danny Haran and his babies occurred in 1979 - and that crime was not a lone instance then either.
2. A long-planned "spontaneous" uprising:
Some facts that will show David Grossman how carefully the Palestinian leadership choreographed the "spontaneous popular uprising" that "erupted" in September 2000, complete with weapons and war equipment, at least two years before the failed Camp David peace summit of summer 2000. Its supreme planner was Yasser Arafat assisted by diligent aides. The names of four of the wanted terrorist bosses cornered in Arafat's compound today are less well known than Tirawi and the Force 17 commander Mohamed Demara. However their actions in the run-up to the September 2000 "eruption" are a glaring betrayal of the forward planning invested in the violence to come:
Ramzi Khouri: Arafat's bureau chief, he sent his family overseas on September 25, three days before the Intifada began.
Adnan Saadi: This senior security officer in charge of Arafat's personal safety shipped his wife and three children out of the country on September 13, sixteen days before Arafat's D-Day.
Atallah Aweid: He was close enough to Arafat to have the advance knowledge for sending his wife and children out of the country six months before the violence began, on April 14, 2000.
Said Zahran: Arafat's spin doctor got his family out of harm's way on August 10, 2000, days before the Camp David conference, knowing that its failure was built into the Intifada master-plan.
Rat Poison as Terror Weapon
Another chapter of the "whole story" that seems to have escaped the notice of David Grossman was revealed by the Washington Post on the same day as his article appeared in the New York Times. Here is a quote:
"Doctors in Israeli hospitals had been noticing that when they operated on people wounded in homicide bombing attacks, patients often continued to bleed even after being sutured. Eventually, a young medical resident figured out why: The terrorists filled their bombs with as many nails, screws, glass shards and pieces of shrapnel as they could, and these were first dipped in rat poison. The rat poison worked as an anticoagulant. Now Israeli emergency room doctors can treat bombing victims with Vitamin K to control the bleeding, but as the Rocky Mountain News reported, stronger drugs can cost up to $10,000 per vial."
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