Mideast Roundup

Nuclear Showdown Averted

Bush Defuses North Korean War Threat

North Korea and the United States are locked in a game of high-stakes brinkmanship whose key players include Russia and China. A nuclear Middle East and the coming US war against Iraq are also factors in the test of wills between President George W. Bush and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

The latest near-showdown was quickly defused by Washington.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Washington and Korean Peninsula sources report: Tuesday, December 9, the seized Singapore-registered So San was on course for the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia - after being intercepted in the Arabian Sea before it reached Yemen with a cargo of 15 North Korean Scud missiles - when Pyongyang slapped down an ultimatum to Washington: Release the freighter and cargo or else North Korea will invade South Korea, a threat which opened up the prospect of nuclear war.

The ultimatum was conveyed through "open intelligence channels" between the two countries. It carried no deadline. Therefore, no ticking clock needed dismantling by the Bush administration.

On Wednesday, December 11, after Yemen undertook to discontinue its ballistic missile purchases from Pyongyang, Bush, as US commander-in-chief, signed a directive ordering the US Navy to release the vessel and its cargo to the Yemen authorities.

The last time a US government faced a nuclear ultimatum was during the 1973 Middle East war, when Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev squared off against President Richard Nixon, demanding that Israel lift its siege over the Egyptian Third Army in Sinai. Neither Washington nor Moscow has to this day admitted how close they came to a nuclear showdown.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington say the president's signature was needed mainly to put to rest a fierce debate at the top of his administration over whether to call North Korea's bluff. The alignment of officials for and against toughing it out with Kim Jong-Il differed from the lineup on how to handle Saddam Hussein.

Secretary of State Colin Powell, the mandarins at State and CIA Director George Tenet led the camp favoring a quiet end to the crisis before it got out of hand, arguing that a military confrontation - let alone a nuclear standoff - with North Korea would be a major mistake.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice agreed - but for a different reason. They said the United States must not be deflected from its main mission of ousting Saddam.

War with North Korea would also be costly - and not only in terms of manpower and lives lost. Experts put the price of US military action on the Korean Peninsula at about $100 billion - on top of the $150 billion to $200 billion cost of waging war on Iraq. It is doubtful whether the US economy could stand the strain of an outlay that large over so short a time.

Deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage's departure for Seoul was meanwhile pushed forward in order to place an administration point man with South Korea's political, military and intelligence officials, in time for the tense presidential elections in that country on December 18. However, according to partial results, the next occupant of the presidential palace in Seoul will be the liberal Roh Moo-hyun, who has been labeled anti-American and seeks to revise the 50-year old alliance with Washington under which 37,000 US troops guard the country against the North. Roh also favors reconciliation with the communist regime in Pyongyang. His election may hinder rather than help the Bush administration's attempts to come to grips with the North Korean nuclear issue.

From the first, the section heads in the CIA as well as US military commanders advocated picking up Kim Jong-Il's gauntlet. US military circles argued that America's assurance that it had no plans to attack North Korea - as Powell did on December 16 - would be taken by Pyongyang as American pliancy, making the US military stance on the Korean Peninsula - and in the Middle East - that much more difficult. North Korea, they warned, would correspondingly harden its attitude on its nuclear program and try to dictate terms; Saddam would capitalize on the North Korean leader's example by challenging the United States with a military or terrorist threat on the same scale, hoping to achieve the same results

On one point, at least, the hard-line faction in Washington was soon vindicated. The ultimatums kept on coming.

On Tuesday, December 17 - one week after the Yemeni Scud boat episode - North Korea again rattled its nuclear saber. A statement from Kim Jong-Il's government declared that war on the Korean Peninsula was unpreventable and its atomic program would go through - unless the United States signed a nonaggression treaty with his regime.

At this point, Washington dug in its heels, implicitly threatening to cut off food aid, thereby ratcheting up the sanctions that include a moratorium on oil deliveries.

The view from Pyongyang

Clearly, Pyongyang is engaging in nuclear blackmail to further an agenda, in which DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Korean experts discern a dual rationale.

Firstly, Kim is determined to retain his independence of action in foreign and state policy. Second, by weaving his munitions industry and nuclear weapons production into Middle East and Gulf flashpoints, he gains leverage on world issues and distances the pressures on him by spreading his wings far from his frontiers. This makes it hard for Washington to deal with the North Korean nuclear program as a purely Asian issue.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in Washington say the US administration has also come to believe that Russia and China are quietly supporting North Korea's nuclear proliferation strategy as part of their growing opposition to a US military offensive against Iraq.

North Korean nuclear activity in the Middle East (See previous DEBKA-Net-Weekly issues on its collaboration with Middle East nations) and its sales of ballistic missiles are building up to an irksome distraction for Washington as it plots its strategy for the region.

Pyongyang has its hand in nuclear programs and missile technology transfers with several Middle Eastern countries, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iran and Iraq. Step by step, its engineers and technology have been quietly investing in the Libyan-Egyptian al Kufra nuclear center (where Iraqi nuclear scientists are also employed), its long-range missile components are assembled in Egyptian factories near Alexandria, Syria's medium-range missile assembly plant and chemical and biological weapons laboratories near Hama in the north use North Korean components and technology and, as most recently confirmed by satellite imagery, North Korea transferred nuclear manufacturing facilities, including uranium enrichment equipment, to secret Iranian sites at Natanz and Arak. These are all multibillion projects.

Any US military action in that part of the world would have to take those activities into consideration. In order to neutralize North Korea's leverage in the Middle East, the United States has a number of options:

A.
It could come to an arrangement with North Korea for its disengagement from the Middle East and the Arab world. That would almost certainly entail a US compromise with regard to the scope and aims of North Korea's nuclear program in Asia, on terms unacceptable to Washington.

B.
US President George W. Bush could appeal personally to the new Chinese president, Hu Jintao, and Russian president Vladimir Putin, asking them to lean hard on their North Korean neighbor to make him accommodate Washington's demands and terminate his nuclear weapons program immediately and unconditionally.

Proliferating for Profit

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources report that Bush did exactly that when he visited Beijing and Moscow last May, when Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin, was still in office. He did not mince his words, warning both leaders that their relations with Washington were on the line over this issue.

The US President was astounded when he found himself politely but effectively rebuffed. Jiang and Putin contented themselves with a half-hearted approach to the North Korean leader. But Jiang explained that his hands were full with the leadership changeover in Beijing, while Putin said he was too busy fighting terrorism to find time for an issue as complicated as North Korea's nuclear disobedience.

Both added that they could not ignore the long arm of North Korean military intelligence which had distributed its secret cells, some trained in terror tactics, across the vast Chinese and Russian Far East regions.

In fact, senior US administration officials believe the Russian and Chinese rulers cued Kim they were merely going through the motions of carrying out the American president's wishes, while advising him he still had their green light to go ahead with developing his nuclear program and Middle East trade. They realized that China and Russia were both intent on feathering their own strategic nests, so to speak.

As long as North Korea claims attention as a major stumbling block to American goals in the Middle East, by handing out nuclear assistance and ballistic missiles, it will take the heat off the indirect attempts by China and Russia to obstruct those same American goals.

The two powers also own a vested interest in Pyongyang's continued commerce. Russian and Chinese companies contribute substantial elements to some of the North Korean multi-billion nuclear and missile projects in Middle Eastern countries, earning them roughly a cool one billion dollars a year each. Both would like to keep these projects going uninterrupted.

Putin, in particular, complains that his support for American's war plans against Iraq has cost Moscow dear financially and cut into his political standing at home. He says he cannot afford any more sacrifices. To back up his complaint, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources report, Russian energy giant LUKOIL published a letter it claimed to have received from Iraqi deputy oil minister announcing Baghdad was ending its contract for the development of the West Qurna-2 oil field with LUKOIL and two other Russian companies, Zarabezhneft and Machinoimport. Iraq's ambassador to Moscow, Abbas Khalaf, said Sunday, December 15, that Baghdad terminated the contract because LUKOIL had failed to start work at the West Qurna-2 field. He dismissed LUKOIL's argument that it was hampered by UN sanctions against Iraq, retorting that other Russian companies had been able to maintain their operations in the country.

According to Itar-Tass news agency, LUKOIL had a 68.5 percent share in the $20 billion project. The two other Russian companies each had 3.25 percent and Iraq's Oil Ministry had 25 percent. In an interview with the Moscow Times, a top LUKOIL executive said Baghdad had rudely awoken the company from its dream of becoming the lead operator of a vast Iraqi oil field. This was Saddam's payback for Moscow's vote for UN Security Resolution 1441 on arms inspections.

In these circumstances, Putin feels justified in seeking to cut Russian companies' losses and not adding to them by clipping North Korea's wings.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, the Chinese have taken a similar tack. Bush did not bother appealing to incoming Chinese leader Hu to squeeze North Korea, knowing the answer he would receive: Hu would say he was just setting out and too new in office to undertake policy decisions as major as this. The Bush administration may make one last approach to the outgoing president Jiang, offering him an open line to Washington after he retires - but with little prospect of success.

In the final reckoning, the United States will face the same narrow option of going it alone as it does in Iraq. Its task will be complicated by having to grapple with North Korea's nuclear facilities in two world regions: at home in Asia and in the Middle East, where Kim Jong-Il has spread his nuclear and ballistic missile web.


Eve of War Fever

Drafting Bush's Victory Speech

The new presidential adviser on Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, proposes that shortly after Baghdad is conquered by American-led forces, President George W. Bush will fly out and deliver a speech celebrating the New Iraq and calling on the Iranian people to rise up against the clerical regime in Tehran. Khalilzad was until recently the Bush administration's main policy architect on Afghanistan.

Suggestions for the day after the victory are pouring in to the White House from other parts of the administration. One is to shut the defeated Saddam Hussein up in an isolated building and place him under a siege, relegating him to a fate similar to that of Yasser Arafat, who is encircled by Israeli forces in his Ramallah headquarters, but has not been physically harmed. In effect, this would condemn Saddam and family to lifelong imprisonment as an American captive. He would become an object lesson for all brutal dictators, illustrating the destiny awaiting those who acquired weapons of mass destruction and refused to disarm or join America's global war on terror.

These reports, which come from DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Middle East and military sources, exemplify the current buoyant mood in the White House and in circles close to senior administration officials. There is a sense that the battle for Baghdad will be brief and America's victory swiftly attained. This optimism contrasts strongly with the cautious public statements emanating from the Bush administration, which stress that the President has not yet decided on military action against Iraq. The last timeline for the launching of the Iraq war was cited officially in Washington on Thursday, December 18, as some time between the end of January and mid-February.

According to our sources, this date is not binding. The attack could come earlier, from mid-January on, depending on weather conditions in the Middle East and the number of moonless nights, the longest of which occur between January 15 and 18.

While no one questions the victorious outcome of the US campaign, at least three leading American war planners are known to appreciate that the first ten days to two weeks hold great peril for the United States and its allies. Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers - who was in Moscow this week to tie up the ends of US-Russian military and intelligence collaboration in the Iraq War - and Central Command chief, General Tommy Franks, are all conscious of the dangers hanging over America at the battlefront and at home in this crucial period - as well as its supporters in the Middle East and Europe.

It is now obvious that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction systems have survived intensive American, British, Turkish, Jordanian and Israel attempts to seize and destroy them and that he is still able to deploy them against several targets simultaneously.

It is also clear that the American-British-Israel threat to counter an Iraqi unconventional weapons attack with a nuclear blast has no deterrent power. A few days ago, Saddam confided to visitors from the Gulf Emirates that he has taken into account that Iraq's main cities will be razed and their populations decimated by US-led retaliatory raids. This conversation prompted the predictions published in the last few days that Saddam is contemplating resorting to a course of scorched earth if he falls, including setting fire to his own oil fields.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, that was only a fragment of the leaked conversation. The Iraqi ruler went on to speak about igniting all the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, especially those of Kuwait and Oman. Those sources also reveal that high-ranking Saudi and Iraqi intelligence and military officers met on their common frontier this week. The Saudis asked for immunity from attack for their oil wells and installations, but were given no promises.

A potential spanner in America's Iraq war plans is a possible Middle East war. Despite US diplomatic efforts to keep the lid on regional tensions until the Iraqi conflict is resolved, our military experts see the heightened threat of a conflict erupting, drawing in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Israel. (See separate article in this issue).

If this happens, the United States may find itself entering Baghdad as a victor, yet surrounded by the flames of war in other parts of the region. American war planners are beginning to consider they might have to detach forces from Iraq and the Gulf at high speed to attend to conflagrations flaring in the Middle East as a result of war, the assassination of rulers, internal insurrections or military coups in countries that support the United States. Those currently most vulnerable are Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, and Yemen.

Another hazard looming over American plans is a terrorist outbreak. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terror experts predict a severe escalation in terrorist activity will accompany the onset of the US offensive against Iraq. Ominous warnings in the name of al Qaeda appeared during the holy month of Ramadan in November, threatening mass casualty attacks around the "feast of gift-sharing". These references were at first linked to Ramadan, when Muslim martyrs are rewarded with lavish gifts in Paradise. However when November came and went and the only terrorist strike occurred in Mombasa - and even then it ended disappointingly for the terrorists when they failed to shoot down an Israeli airliner - the experts' attention switched to Christmas and the Christian New Year as the target period.

Since those dates come close to the approaching American assault on Iraq, a high terror alert for mass-casualty strikes has been declared in America's main cities - particularly New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Detroit. In Washington, such key government centers as the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, are labeled high risk, while Vice President Richard Cheney and his staff have been consigned to a hidden location. Mainline transport facilities, air, sea and rail are deemed potential targets. Similar hazards are seen in London and big British cities; a high state of terror alert was declared in France, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Italy Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

There is a dearth of intelligence on the scale of potential attacks. However the general evaluation is that they will be carried out by al Qaeda network cells, some of them sleepers, which are already on location at their targets, under orders to get set for pre-determined action. Most intelligence and terror experts no longer doubt that Iraqi military intelligence has joined forces with Osama bin Laden's organization in the planning and execution of these attacks. Therefore, the first terrorist strike may also be the opening shot of the US-led war on Iraq. As in Afghanistan and Israel, the civilian population will find itself part of a warfront.

Late Thursday night, December 19, just as we were closing this issue, al Qaeda published a new report, which says:"·fighters brotherhood will spread some diseases viruses and Ibola· in north Kuwait to· the soldiers of America and Britain" preparing to launch war against Iraq.


Inconclusive Skirmishes

Early Portents of Protracted Iraq Conflict

Judging from the two battles swinging back and forth indecisively for weeks between US special forces units and Iraqi troops, the coming US-Iraq conflict is beginning to look to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military experts as though it will be far more protracted than originally estimated by US war planners. The time frame should be counted in months rather than weeks.

The southeastern battleground stretches from al Qut to the Gulf port of Basra, the northern one between Halabjah on the Iranian border and the Kurdish town of Suleymaniyeh. In the first, US forces are up against men of the elite Babel division of the Iraqi Republican Guard; in the second, a mixed Islamist Kurdish-al Qaeda-Iraqi military intelligence force. Both have mounted heavier than expected resistance to American-led initiatives.

In the southeast, where the fighting has been raging for seven weeks, the relatively small US contingent at first made rapid advances in its bid to push Iraqi forces into the cities of Al Halfyah, Al Amarah, Musallan, Al Qurnah and Al Muzayriah, and take control of the southern approaches of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and their confluence. But the Iraqis rushed large armored, anti-tank and anti-aircraft units to the front, slowing US progress and in several places halting it completely.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say the US command was surprised by the mobility displayed by the Iraqi reinforcements. In contrast to the first Gulf war, when the Iraqi army stuck to static lines and then retreated, Iraqi units today move swiftly from place to place and disappear after fighting subsides. Experts chalk up the improvement to portable and movable heavy equipment, such as radar and missiles. When US warplanes strike, for example, mobile units are sent to the scene to replace those that are destroyed or damaged.

All this has caught the US war command by surprise. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say US intelligence had predicted that Saddam Hussein would deploy the bulk of his forces around Baghdad and Tikrit to try to draw the US army into a hand-to-hand urban war of attrition. Instead, he dispatched top-notch units to eastern Iraq, near the Iranian frontier, where they stand ready for one of the most crucial engagements of the war.

Military and intelligence experts told DEBKA-Net-Weekly that Iraqi intelligence reached the conclusion that control of Iraq's main waterways, the Euphrates and Tigris, was the key to determining the victor in the battle for the main cities of Baghdad and Tikrit. The Iraqi assessment was based mainly on intelligence information about a deployment on an unprecedented scale of a special US naval invasion force, spearheaded by the Seals, after it was trained especially in river warfare. The main strength of this naval force is positioned on the Iranian side of the border near the city of Abadan, although some units have entered eastern Iraq.

It is supported by a large number of amphibious armor, ships, landing craft, self-propelled pontoon bridges and amphibious planes. Some of the military experts consulted by DEBKA-Net-Weekly described the naval task force as the largest of its kind fielded for a military operation since the Vietnam War. The force is able to go into action at two to three hours' notice. With a protective umbrella from planes taking off from air bases and aircraft carriers in the Gulf, the US Navy may well determine the outcome of the battle for eastern Iraq.

In northern Iraq, fighters from Jalal Talabani's pro-US Patriotic Union of Kurdistan have failed for nearly three weeks to repulse a mixed pro-Saddam force made up of the Kurdish Ansar al-Islam, al-Qaeda and Iraqi military intelligence. Talabani is America's most important ally in this region and US special forces and intelligence units are fighting alongside his men.

When, on December 3, the Islamist contingent descended from its northern stronghold of Bayara on two PUK hill strongholds overlooking the key town of Halabjah, US military and Kurdish sources made little of the setback. They depicted the attackers as unskilled in combat and small in scale. In reality, the assault-force has proved to be highly organized, well trained and massively armed with heavy weaponry, such as artillery and 122 mm Katyusha rockets. As the battle raged non-stop last week, its reserve forces moved agilely around the battle sectors in brand new trucks.

The Kurdish defenders are reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources as having mounted with limited success a series of sorties to dislodge the pro-Saddam force from positions threatening Halajbah, home to 44,000 Kurds, and break its grip on the highway to Suleimaniyeh, Talabani's political and military center, which also serves as headquarters for the US units positioned around the big northern oil city of Kirkuk.

The pro-American Kurdish fighters were able to drive Ansar al-Islam and al-Qaeda out of the two hilltop positions they captured and kill their commander, Abu Abdallah al-Shafei, an al Qaeda man and veteran of its Afghan training camps. But the Islamic contingent retains a foothold in the area strong enough to have US military commanders and planners worried. Its position enables it to cut west from the Halabjah-Suleymaniyeh highway and sever US forces from access to Kirkuk. Alternatively, the Islamic fighters could strike directly at US army headquarters and transportation lines.

In any case, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources estimate that the US command must decide very soon which units to assign to wiping out this hostile element - American, British or Turkish.


Israel

Second Yom Kippur War Afoot?

The threat of a multi-Arab assault on Israel, bolstered by al Qaeda, the Hizballah and Palestinian terrorists, being launched in the course of the US campaign against Iraq, has raised its head.

A possible scenario to this effect was painted disturbingly by Israel's new defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, when he made the rounds of Washington this week. He called on secretary of state Colin Powell, defense secretary Donald Rumseld and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and conversed by video-phone with vice president Dick Cheney, who has been consigned to a safe house outside Washington as a precaution against a Christmas terror attack affecting the functioning of the White House.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports from its Washington sources that Mofaz brought word to US officials that more than one Arab government - not just Iraq - may be contemplating going to war against Israel. This would be in addition to predicted attacks by the Hizballah, with Iranian and Syrian support, the Palestinians and al Qaeda. Intelligence sources, he revealed, had named Egypt, with whom Israel signed a peace pact, and Saudi Arabia, as potential aggressors. In the light of this information, Israel is building up military strength along its southern border with Egypt's Sinai desert and around its Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat to face a possible joint Egyptian-Saudi strike.

The Israeli defense minister assessed this combined threat, if it materialized, as the gravest Israel has faced in its 53 years of statehood, far in excess of the previous four assaults by combined Arab armies. Whereas previous actions centered on Israel's borders, this time, its population centers would be targeted - both by external forces and inland terror.

Opening shot from Iraq

As portrayed by Mofaz to US officials, the opening shot of the multiple Arab strike would be launched from Baghdad shortly before the US offensive begins. Saddam Hussein would release a flock of missiles, light planes or drones over Israeli towns, armed with chemical or biological agents. This raid would constitute Baghdad's pre-emptive strike in advance of the American military attack.

Israel's two Arrow anti-missile missiles batteries - one in the Negev and the other in central Israel near Hadera - and the 14 US-made Patriot missiles operated by US and Israeli crews across the country, would be fired to intercept the aerial invaders. Israeli air force warplanes would take to the sky to shoot down any assault craft sent to raid Israel's main cities. American aircraft would stand ready on the decks of carriers in the Mediterranean to come to Israel's aid. The US fleet would also monitor incoming civilian aircraft closely, in case they were hijacked by al Qaeda as mass destruction weapons for slamming into Israeli cities, their prime target being Tel Aviv.

A US command and control center on a US AGIES warship in the Mediterranean is to coordinate the US-Israeli air defense system, with the aim of reducing to the minimum or aborting any hostile penetrations of Israel's home front.

A perfect defense would make an Israeli offensive or instantaneous retaliation to an Iraqi attack superfluous. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say US President George W. Bush and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon have agreed that Israel will hold back from retaliating - at least in the first stage of the US campaign - if the damage it incurs falls below a certain low threshold.

On this subject, the news agencies reported on Wednesday, December 18: "Mofaz meets Rumsfeld, Rice in Washington Wednesday to discuss advance notice to Israel on the Iraqi war offensive. He reiterated that Israel will not automatically respond to an Iraqi attack in any circumstance."

After the opening shot - which Washington hopes will meet with a zero Israeli response - the US offensive will swing into full momentum. That will be the signal for the second Arab round against Israel: the 10,000-strong Lebanese Hizballah legion, well seasoned by the long and systematic cross-border shelling of northern Israel, will begin volleying thousands of missiles against targets as far south as the northern outskirts of Hadera. This massive barrage will be conducted with the help of appropriate launchers, a sophisticated transport system and military technical support, all pulled together by expert command, control and intelligence coordination. Its designated commanders are officers of the Iranian National Guards and Syrian military personnel who have been assigned to different frontline sectors.

The Hizballah, aided by Iranian Guardsmen and Syrian officers, have secured their vast missile structure by means of three lines of defense running the full width of southern Lebanon, from the Mediterranean in the West to the Syrian Hermon Mts. in the east.

In the early stage of the assault, Israel will not attempt to breach these defense lines. The Israeli command would rather not send Israeli Chariot-3 and Chariot-4 tanks into the anti-tank missile trap the Iranians and Syrians have set up at strategic points. Its war planners have chosen instead to eradicate the entire Hizballah-Iranian-Syrian military edifice by means of a combined aerial-missile-helicopter-missile boat assault of major proportions.

Conflict turns into multilateral Arab assault

A senior Israeli security source told DEBKA-Net-Weekly: "The Israeli counteroffensive will be mightier and more extensive than any US aerial action in the last decade against Iraq and America's Afghan War bombing campaign. Its objective will be to destroy every last military unit and source of potential aggression in the zone."

Our military sources add that Mofaz told his American hosts that Israel will run its counteroffensive in two waves, the first, to cut down Hizballah-Syrian-Iranian firepower in the initial stage of their missile offensive; the second, to silence the missile barrage totally in the space of 32-36 hours.

But even that all-inclusive blitz will not stamp out the missile threat to northern Israel.

Both American and Israeli intelligence have received information that a second-strike capability is under preparation, to be launched from Syria. Like Iraq, Syria possesses chemical and biological warheads. If they are deployed, Israel will re-orient its counteroffensive to the east. The confrontation will then mutate into full-scale war between the two countries, the signal for Syrian armored forces to advance on the Israeli section of the Golan Heights, and for Israeli armor to begin rolling in the opposite direction towards Damascus.

According to our sources, British prime minister Tony Blair warned President Bashar Assad of Syria's peril if he went to war, during his four-day visit to London this week, the first by a Syrian ruler. Blair was taken aback by his guest's deadpan response: he admitted that a group of leading Arab nations had formed a bloc to launch a joint military offensive against Israel and turn the limited confrontation into a regional war. The moment Israel attacked Syria, said Assad, he had received "more than binding guarantees" that Egypt and Saudi Arabia would hit Israel from the south.

This was the first time that this top-secret intelligence, known only to the United States, Israel and the Arab governments concerned, was openly shared with another party.

During his meetings in Washington, the Israeli defense minister presented Israel's plans for breaking up the Egyptian-Saudi assault, if it took place. They all hinge on Israeli carrying its military thrust deep into its assailants' territories.

As to the means of warfare, it is clear that a conflict pitting Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq against Israel will necessarily bring into play the largest number of ballistic missiles ever deployed in any war arena.


Iran

Radicals Want Urgent Crackdown

Iran's radical leaders have tired of waiting for the United States to invade Iraq so that can start cracking down on the reformists. On Sunday, December 15, they congregated at the residence of spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to try and persuade him to authorize their plan of action without further delay.

The original blueprint provided for Khamenei to announce a national emergency as soon as the Americans invaded Iraq, declaring that Iran was next on the American hit list. This would be the pretext for dissolving parliament and shutting down the independent press. Reformist civil servants would be jobless, security forces would round up dissident student leaders and civil rights advocates, and the reformist president Mohammed Khatami given an ultimatum to retire from political life or join the hardliners.

But, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Tehran sources, Khamenei balked at the demand for precipitate and drastic action, warning that failure could bring down the government. He only promised the radicals to review the plan if the situation changed.

Later this week, when it transpired that a US offensive was not expected before mid-January at the earliest, Khamenei reviewed the radicals' arguments for an early crackdown.

Student demonstrations have gotten out of hand and spread to universities across the country. In recent protests, security forces arrested hundreds of students - sparking more demonstrations. Many were released on bail but will go on trial soon. The radicals warned Khamenei the situation could snowball and undermine the regime. Many Iranians, they said, still believe it is too dangerous to join the students but, once they grow bolder, who knows where the demonstrations could lead.

The radical and reformist camps are on course for a head-on collision in the political arena. The Iranian parliament is currently considering legislation that would widen Khatami's authority to enforce articles of the constitution and strip the conservative Constitutional Council of its power to disqualify liberal candidates to the Majlis. The reformist camp threatened to demand a public referendum if the Council vetoed the legislation. The radicals stood fast against a referendum, whereupon the reformists threatened to resign en masse from government service, effectively a civil rebellion. This threat was withdrawn when the reformists understood it would play into the hands of their foes. However, the moment of truth is fast approaching.

Although Europe has always followed a foreign policy independent of Washington, it has joined the United States in recent months in demanding the respect of human rights in Iran. A European delegation came to Tehran this week to evaluate the human rights situation, a visit widely viewed as Iran's surrender to a European attempt to link expanded trade to an improvement in civil liberties.

The delegation achieved very little and was denied access to leading political prisoners.

But the Europeans did manage to raise with Iranian authorities the issues of prison torture and rape, executions, show trials and discrimination against women, minorities and religious groups. Europe has also demanded that Iran recognize Israel, stop sponsoring terrorist organizations and abandon its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Ordinary Iranians are losing patience with the government's harsh regime of repression. This week the reformist dominated parliament enacted a bill enabling Iranians to legally view approved foreign television stations, seen as another sign of weakness on the part of the regime. According to one parliament member, there are three million satellite dishes in Iran, which means that one-fifth of the population has access to foreign programs, including eight Persian-language stations that broadcast 24 hours a day and some of which are intensely critical of the clerical government.

The economic situation in Iran is getting worse, with poverty on the rise along with drug abuse among young people and an unprecedented increase in prostitution.


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

15 December: Jordanian information minister Mohammad Adwan fingered Saad bin Suwied and Yasser Ibrahim as the murderers who fired eight bullets from the silenced gun that slew USAID executive Lawrence Foley outside his home in Amman on October 28. Adwan described Suwied - a Libyan who entered Jordan on a Tunisian passport and Ibrahim, a Jordanian - as al Qaeda members who were paid $68,000 for the assassination.

According to the information reaching DEBKAfile's intelligence sources, the two assassins are not al Qaeda; they are in fact members of two Palestinian groups, who work in conjunction - the pro-Iraq Arab Liberation Front, whose leader Abu al Abbas is based in Baghdad, and the Jordanian wing of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. They were apprehended by Jordanian security forces in November in a sweep of the south Jordanian Islamic fundamentalist town of Ma'an. After a brief interrogation, the captured men admitted working for Palestinian groups operating in Jordan on behalf of Iraqi military intelligence.

When this information reached Arafat in Ramallah, he threatened Amman through emissaries that if the two murderers' Palestinian affiliation was made public, he would see to it that Jordanian Palestinian terrorists created havoc in the kingdom. The threat was effective. Security in Jordan is already shaky and Palestinian terrorism on the rise. Therefore, Jordan's security and intelligence services advised the king and his government to fix the blame for Foley's murder away from the Palestinians. Al Qaeda was accordingly named the culprit.

Not that the accusation held much water; Palestinian fingerprints on the crime are too blatant.

For one thing, on the day itself, October 28, a group called Shurafa al Urdun ("Nobles of Jordan") claimed responsibility. The name comes out of the secular terminology of Arab nationalism whose values are anathema to the fundamentalist Islamic network. Furthermore, al Qaeda, unlike the Palestinians, rarely goes in for assassination; its hallmark is mass murder.

But most tellingly, Arafat himself, in his usual circular style, gave the game away in a speech he made to the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah, on October 29, the day after the USAID director was gunned down in Amman. He repeatedly praised the "shurafa", the Nobles, an expression dredged up from the old vernacular of PLO infighting which Arafat has not used for years.

On Sunday, December 15, the Sunday Times published in London an interview with Arafat, in which he bitterly accused Osama bin Laden's group of "hiding behind the Palestinian cause for his own purposes."

He forgot to tell his interviewers that in Jordan Palestinian gunmen who murdered an American diplomat were now hiding behind al Qaeda. He also forget to mention that, last April, the Israel troops who invaded his Ramallah offices found documents that revealed that as far back as 1995, the Palestinian leader and the heads of his security agencies were in continuous communication with senior al Qaeda officers through go-betweens in Bosnia.

The Times interview therefore represents only one of Arafat's two faces. In Europe, he is the proud leader of a national liberation struggle. At the same time, in the Palestinian and Arab arenas, the Palestinian terror campaign is a vital front of the international Holy War. Every Palestinian he sends on a suicide mission is therefore a "shahid", a martyr, who belongs in Paradise just as much as any al Qaeda fighter.

18 December: Israel's election campaign has got off to a murky start.

Instead of a national debate on such core issues as Palestinian suicide terror - and how to stop it, peace terms, threats from Iraq, Hizballah and al Qaeda, the recession-wracked economy and acute social afflictions, Israel's news media are engulfed by the daily allegations of election fraud and vote trafficking at last week's contests for the two main parties' parliamentary lists.

The loudest and most scandalous charges are leveled against prime minister Ariel Sharon's Likud, although the police, brought in to investigate the charges, are focusing on both Likud and its main adversary Labor. Under the pressure of these allegations, Sharon promised to initiate law reforms to improve voting procedures and impede fraud; after two Likud central committee members were placed under house arrest on suspicion of soliciting bribes, he promised to evict miscreants from the party.

DEBKAfile's political analysts have no doubt that some of the charges against Likud, if not all, will stick; a certain amount of vote trafficking, fraud and bribery has become a feature of this and other party mechanisms for choosing their party representatives. The Labor leader may protest that his party's primary contest was the essence of an honestly run democratic process - "no deals, intrigue, or political assassinations". However, several hundred of the party's ballot boxes are under scrutiny, their contents either inconsistent with the size of the local turnout or strongly suggesting prepared lists and block voting.

It therefore behooves both of Israel's leading parties to spring-clean without delay. The trouble is that little time is left for real campaigning and the airwaves are too clogged with scandal to leave space for a national debate on the real issues.

What is already apparent is that all the important parties are fighting for a foothold at the political center. Sharon, though confident of sufficient votes to manage without Labor, has vowed to establish a national unity government, a euphemism for sharing power with Labor. Mitzna, who gained his party's top spot as a dove, is making sure not to lean too far left, although he swears he will not join a Sharon government.

Sharon, to the dissatisfaction of sections of his party, is committed to a demilitarized and limited Palestinian state alongside Israel and peace bought with "painful concessions", although shying away from timetables and the uprooting of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He stands by his demand for terrorist violence to halt as a sine qua non.

Mitzna is committed to uprooting Hebron's Jewish population, eliminating Jewish habitation in the Gaza Strip and the unilateral separation of the Israeli and Palestinian populaces. He also talks about handing over Temple Mount and parts of historic Jerusalem to the Palestinians.

Yet, "as next Israeli prime minister," he warned the Palestinians Tuesday, December 17, that those who continued to wage terror "would be beaten to pulp," while anything that moved in south Lebanon would be "exterminated" if the Hizballah went to war.

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