That Israeli Air Strike....
 

‘So close to war’

We came so close to World War Three that day

James Forsyth and Douglas Davis
Wednesday, 3rd October 2007

On 6 September, when Israel struck a nuclear facility in Syria

A meticulously planned, brilliantly executed surgical strike by Israeli jets on a nuclear installation in Syria on 6 September may have saved the world from a devastating threat. The only problem is that no one outside a tight-lipped knot of top Israeli and American officials knows precisely what that threat involved.

Even more curious is that far from pushing the Syrians and Israelis to war, both seem determined to put a lid on the affair. One month after the event, the absence of hard information leads inexorably to the conclusion that the implications must have been enormous.

That was confirmed to The Spectator by a very senior British ministerial source: ‘If people had known how close we came to world war three that day there’d have been mass panic. Never mind the floods or foot-and-mouth — Gordon really would have been dealing with the bloody Book of Revelation and Armageddon.’

According to American sources, Israeli intelligence tracked a North Korean vessel carrying a cargo of nuclear material labelled ‘cement’ as it travelled halfway across the world. On 3 September the ship docked at the Syrian port of Tartous and the Israelis continued following the cargo as it was transported to the small town of Dayr as Zawr, near the Turkish border in north-eastern Syria.

The destination was not a complete surprise. It had already been the subject of intense surveillance by an Israeli Ofek spy satellite, and within hours a band of elite Israeli commandos had secretly crossed into Syria and headed for the town. Soil samples and other material they collected there were returned to Israel. Sure enough, they indicated that the cargo was nuclear.

Three days after the North Korean consignment arrived, the final phase of Operation Orchard was launched. With prior approval from Washington, Israeli F151 jets were scrambled and, minutes later, the installation and its newly arrived contents were destroyed.

So secret were the operational details of the mission that even the pilots who were assigned to provide air cover for the strike jets had not been briefed on it until they were airborne. In the event, they were not needed: built-in stealth technology and electronic warfare systems were sophisticated enough to ‘blind’ Syria’s Russian-made anti-aircraft systems.

What was in the consignment that led the Israelis to mount an attack which could easily have spiralled into an all-out regional war? It could not have been a transfer of chemical or biological weapons; Syria is already known to possess the most abundant stockpiles in the region. Nor could it have been missile delivery systems; Syria had previously acquired substantial quantities from North Korea. The only possible explanation is that the consignment was nuclear.

If Israel’s military strike on Dayr as Zawr last month was surgical, so, too, was its handling of the aftermath. The only certainty in the fog of cover-up is that something big happened on 6 September — something very big. At the very least, it illustrates that WMD and rogue states pose the single greatest threat to world peace. We may have escaped from this incident without war, but if Iran is allowed to continue down the nuclear path, it is hard to believe that we will be so lucky again.

Finish your assignment: (3 pages) http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magaz...that-day.thtml

Roscoe,

Last night on the History Channel they had a segment that was shown for the first time. It showed the site before the bomb raid with the big building that was a nuclear reactor and after the Syrians had time to clean up the rubble. The satellite photo almost made the ground around where the reactor had been look like glass.

Ron

Thats the pictures the TV showed. Looks as if they did a good job.

Ron :)

Either that bomb reduces everything to 'dust' or, it's before the structure was built?. The former I hope....

New commercial satellite photos show that a Syrian site believed to have been attacked by Israel last month no longer bears any obvious traces of what some analysts said appeared to have been a partly built nuclear reactor.

Two photos, taken Wednesday from space by rival companies, show the site near the Euphrates River to have been wiped clean since August, when imagery showed a tall square building there measuring about 150 feet on a side.

The Syrians reported an attack by Israel in early September; the Israelis have not confirmed that. Senior Syrian officials continue to deny that a nuclear reactor was under construction, insisting that Israel hit a largely empty military warehouse.

But the images, federal and private analysts say, suggest that the Syrian authorities rushed to dismantle the facility after the strike, calling it a tacit admission of guilt.

"It's a magic act — here today, gone tomorrow," a senior intelligence official said. "It doesn't lower suspicions; it raises them. This was not a long-term decommissioning of a building, which can take a year. It was speedy. It's incredible that they could have gone to that effort to make something go away."

Perry,

The big square in the first picture was the big building that housed the materials. I think the Syrians cleaned up the rubble from the way the TV show talked about it. It seems they have some in between pictures but won't release them.

Ron

I wonder how much radiation exposure the workmen had?????

Roscoe

Been wondering the same thing... if the strike was based on soil samples, then that are has got to be off limits for a long time. Also, so close to the river means its got to seep into the environment.

Mike

I thought the nuclear material was seized before the bombing... :confused:

( http://www.clubcobra.com/forums/show...2236&page=5#74 )

If there was much nuclear material present during bombing we might otherwise expect the Chernobyl effect. :JEKYLHYDE


...

It only takes about 150 pounds of U235 to have critical mass. It is quite possible that an Israeli strike team carried it out. Creating 150 pounds of U235 is another question. It takes years operating a few thousand centrifuges to get that. Iran has announced (and the IAEA has verified) that they have enriched to about 3-4%. 5-6% is ideal for power reactors. You need about 90% to get a bomb.

Steve

Hmm, If they were up to "peaceful" things, they would have had photographs of people wearing "baby milk" shirts doing the cleanup. No, this was something nefarious. Israel would have been blasted in the UN.

Nope. Syria was up to something.

Mike

Probably hiding the nuclear bomb that North Korea sent them.

Ron :confused:

A Digest of DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock Exclusives in Week Ending Oct. 25,
2007

Vol. 7, Issue 323, October 26, 2007

The Lethality of Plutonium
The Israeli Attack Pre-Empted Syria’s Production of the Ultimate Dirty
Weapon


The Syrian installation depicted by US media on Oct. 24 as the one
destroyed by Israel on Sept. 6 was a partially completed Producing
Reactor. This facility is too primitive to make a nuclear bomb, but it can
produce fissile or highly radio-active materials, usually plutonium, in
their most unstable, dangerous form.

Combined with explosives, these materials become a “dirty bomb” or RDD.
Even on its own, plutonium is an especially lethal tool of mass death.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s nuclear experts affirm that there is no technical
remedy able to provide complete safety from radiological attack in
existence today.

Our experts further note: The Syrian Producing Reactor (illustrated here)
lacks the dome, which usually houses an advanced reactor’s core and
coolant (or moderator). It is also short of the apparatus required to take
the nuclear process to the far more advanced level of separation and
uranium enrichment. It is primitive, easily operated and cheap (tens of
millions of dollars), compared with the far more elaborate, costly and
high tech full-scale program for making a military weapon.

The installation’s function would have been limited to the production of
the highly radioactive, highly unstable PU239 (plutonium), or nuclear
waste.

(DEBKA-Net-Weekly 320 of Oct. 6 first reported that the Syrian
installation was designed to produce a form of “dirty bomb”)

This product is in no way similar to a nuclear bomb - or even a bomb at
all. It is made by bombarding natural uranium – U238 - with neutrons which
split each atom, releasing more neutrons which continue the process (chain
reaction) and must be slowed by a “moderator” (possibly water or heavy
water) to prevent an explosion.



The ultimate contaminant



Combined with dynamite, it can be used as “the poor man’s” nuclear bomb, a
lethally radioactive device, which is suitable for the use of a suicide
bomber, who will be irradiated by its use together with his victims.

Unlike uranium, plutonium does not in exist in nature; it is entirely
manmade and the deadliest of contaminators. It is not susceptible to any
known preventive or protective measures.

PU239 can be carried as a powder or solid substance in a suitcase or
packed in a missile warhead and simply scattered. In this form, even
without being combined with explosives, plutonium contaminates everything
it touches; an easily portable amount poisons an area of several square
kilometers, causing death, acute radiation poisoning, lingering illness
and genetic changes. It poisons water and soil. Deposited in Israel ’s
scarce water sources which rise in Syria , it would poison a whole nation.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s nuclear experts, unlike natural
substances, whose radioactivity weakness in days, PU239 retains its
radioactive life for thousands of years. Cleanup may not be technically
feasible. Any city subjected to a plutonium attack would become a
permanently uninhabitable wasteland.

In this sense, even before Iran reaches its goal of a nuclear bomb, its
president’s wish “to wipe Israel off the map” could have been fulfilled by
Syria ’s plutonium reactor and its product – whether delivered by Syria ,
Hizballah, Hamas or the Islamic Republic itself.

Israel therefore went into action to destroy the Syrian Producer Reactor
before it went into production.

US government agencies tend to play down the menace of radiological attack
as a “weapon of mass disruption” rather than a “weapon of mass
destruction,” to prevent panic, because no one is equipped today to deal
with a radiological scenario of this kind.

The next article sheds new light on the form taken by Israel ’s raid of
Syria ’s nuclear reactor.



An Enigma Turns a New Page
Israeli Commandos Carry off Syria’s Reactor Equipment – or the Israeli Air
Raid that Never Was

Yet another version of what the Israel air attack over Syria on Sept. 6
was all about made the rounds this week of a select group of military,
intelligence and political figures visiting Washington from the Middle
East . This version was relayed to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in the
American capital. It put a fresh slant on the puzzling episode compared
with the various accounts postulated in US media in the absence of
authoritative information from official sources.

According to this version, the Israeli attack was a major operation in
size and did not entail an air strike.

A large number of special forces’ troops were dropped by helicopter over
the Syrian-North Korean site near the Syrian Desert village of Al-Tibna,
800 meters east of the Euphrates .

After disposing of the Syrian guards in a brief shootout, the Israeli
attackers corralled the personnel inside the compound of an unfinished
nuclear reactor, most of them Syrian military men and a small group of
North Korean nuclear and missile technicians, in a side room and kept them
under heavy guard.

The invaders now had several hours at their disposal for their main mission.

It began with the arrival of large Israeli Yasur transport helicopters
which disgorged teams of intelligence investigators and technicians. While
the first team interrogated the Syrian and North Korean captives, the
technical teams disassembled the North Korean nuclear apparatus. All its
components were loaded, together with the missiles and matching warheads
stored at the compound, onto the helicopter transports which lost no time
in taking off in an easterly direction.



Leaked to lobby Bush into getting rid of Assad



The Washington visitors who talked to DEBKA-Net-Weekly said they did not
know from which direction the aircraft entered Syrian airspace or where
they refueled for the return flight – possibly at US facilities in Iraq ?
Neither were they told what happened to the Syrian and North Korean
personnel: Were they set free after the episode, killed or taken captive
to Israel?

All they know for sure is that the equipment for Syria’s North Korean
nuclear reactor was snatched - lock, stock and barrel - and flown to
Israel.

The same Middle East visitors also reported that an air umbrella spread
out over the eastern Mediterranean from Cyprus up to the Syrian and Iraqi
borders shielded the Israeli ground and air forces for the duration of
their operation. Since the Israeli Air Force could not have stretched to
an area of this size, they assumed that the US Air Force was responsible.

As soon as the reactor components were removed, Israeli forces blew up the
structures housing them – surface and underground - and were themselves
lifted out by the first fleet of helicopters, which brought them to their
Syrian Desert destination and waited to fly them out.

Bush administration officials – presumably from the Pentagon, the National
Security Council and the CIA - had a reason for spilling this highly
sensitive information to those visitors. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s
Washington sources, they were looking for help in swaying President George
W. Bush to change his attitude towards Syrian President Bashar Assad, by
the following argument.

With irrefutable proof in hand, procured by Israeli commandos and verified
by US intelligence, of Assad’s nefarious activities, the White House
cannot avoid the conclusion that the Syrian ruler must go. What is the
administration waiting for?

Why won’t the US dispose of Assad?



DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources reported the message made its mark.

Some of the Middle East visitors were willing to ask quite simply: If
Israeli soldiers could purloin a complete nuclear reactor from Syria in
one night, the Americans should not find it too hard to cut down the Assad
regime. They insisted that until the Syrian president was removed, there
would be no end to the Iraqi and Palestinian wars, and Lebanon would
continue to be plagued by political assassination and instability.

Furthermore, the advocates of Assad’s removal maintained that he is not
only regarded as a pariah in the West and cold-shouldered by his Arab
peers, but many people in his own country are ready to see the back of
him. Syrian underground dissidents are only waiting for a green light from
Washington to go into action.

There would never be a better opportunity.

But some of those anti-Assad lobbyists suspect Israel may be behind the
Bush administration’s reluctance to dispose of Assad, lest he be replaced
by an Iranian or Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Damascus . The Syrian
president is therefore regarded as the lesser evil, a huge miscalculation,
in their view.



A reminder from the past



Our Middle East military watchers find striking similarities between
Israel’s Syrian operation, as described in this article, and an IDF action
38 years ago, when a commando-helicopter transport force carried off a
complete P-12 Soviet-made Egyptian radar station shortly after its
installation at Ras-Arab, near the confluence of the Gulf of Suez and the
Red Sea.

It took the paratroops a day to dismantle the seven-ton radar station and
pack its components for removal.

On Dec. 27, 1969, one of two Ch-53 helicopters carried the communications
caravan and radar antenna and the other the radar itself across the Red
Sea to Israel . The secrets yielded up by the system afforded the Israeli
Air Force new countermeasures against Egyptian air defenses. The novel
radar installation was later handed over to the US at a time when the Cold
War with the USSR was at its peak.

Calculated Disinformation
Syria’s Nascent Plutonium Reactor Reopens the Case of Iraq’s Vanished WMD


Two US congressmen, who say they were the only members of the House in
whom the Bush administration confided the secrets of Israel’s Sept. 6 air
attack over Syria - after binding them to confidentiality - nurse a
serious gripe, which is outlined in an open letter to The Wall Street
Journal of Oct. 20.

They are Peter Hokstra, member of the House Intelligence Committee, and
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen - both Republicans.

While sticking to their pledge of secrecy, the two lawmakers’ words
indicate that Israel ’s target was a Syrian-North Korean-Iranian nuclear
installation under construction - and possibly shared with other rogue
nations – for the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction based on
plutonium.

They state in their open letter: “We are concerned that, although the Bush
administration refuses to discuss the Israeli air strike with the American
people or with the majority of Congress, it has not hesitated to give
information on background to the press to shape this story to its liking.

New York Times writer David Sanger authored and coauthored articles on
Oct. 14 and 15 that appeared to reflect extensive input from senior policy
makers. Washington Post writer Glenn Kessler coauthored an article on
Sept. 21 that also cited information from the administration. We believe
this is unacceptable.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Washington interject here that the Bush
administration and Israel are indeed pursuing the strategy of propagating
a false picture of the episode by spreading misleading data. This is not
out of a desire to mislead the US and world media, but a much more
convoluted calculus: By feeding out cock-and-bull tidbits, they are giving
Syrian president Bashar Assad a chance to deny them with complete honesty
and so vindicate his credibility, especially among the very few of his
political and military insiders who know the truth.

US and Israeli government circles believe his credibility must be propped
up if he is to weather the humiliating knock on the head administered by
Israel in its Sept. 6 attack.



The Syrian reactor as back-up for North Korea and Iran



The suspicions cited in the foregoing article are therefore correct: The
Bush administration and Israeli’s political and military leaders, having
concluded that they could do worse than Bashar Assad in Damascus , have
decided it is worth their while to help keep him in power.

The two Republican congressmen are also correct when they say:

If the Israeli air strike last month is related to covert nuclear
collaboration involving Syria and either North Korea , Iran or other rogue
states, this may or may not be an issue that can be easily addressed by
negotiations alone. It is certain, however, that such a serious
international issue will not stay secret forever.

Congress, therefore, needs to be fully briefed, not just on the details of
the air strike but on how to address this matter and how, if press reports
are true, rogue states will be held accountable for what could amount to a
very serious case of WMD proliferation.

The two Republican lawmakers suggest that the Syrian reactor was
manufactured by the same party as the plutonium-producing model in
Yonhboyn, which North Korea is committed by its accords with the US to
dismantle in the coming weeks, albeit not its stockpile of weapons, whose
number is estimated at between 6 and 8 nuclear bombs.

What Congressmen Ros-Lehtinen and Hokstra are saying in effect is this:
The Syrian reactor is meant to provide backup for North Korea ’s use after
its own program has been taken apart, and also for Iran , insofar as its
nuclear program is severely disabled in a military attack.

It also transpires that the Israeli strike served two goals:

Israel’s goal was to demolish the reactor before it was finished in order
to keep atomic weapons out of Syrian hands and deny Iran a back-up
facility for its own project.

America’s goal was to send Pyongyang a warning: Now that the US has proofs
of his nuclear involvement in Syria , Kim Jong Il would be wise not to
slip to Iran or deposit with Syria , or any other Iranian trustee, any of
its stocked weapons.

If he did, it would be blasted to extinction in the same way as Israel
destroyed the nascent Syrian reactor.

But there is one secret which the Bush administration withheld from the
two lawmakers, even after their pledge of secrecy.

Assad’s charmed life



The Syrian-North Korean-Iranian site was located in the general vicinity
of the hiding-place where the Syrian engineering corps buried Saddam
Hussein’s WMD four years ago after they were spirited out of Iraq .

The Syrian Desert is one of the most desolate and arid places in the
Middle East.

It was chosen now, as in late 2002, for a proscribed nuclear purpose,
because habitation is so sparse that scarcely a trail is to be found
across the region.

The only people who have taken an interest in this bleak place are Israeli
intelligence watchers.

In December 2002 and early 2003, they observed Syrian engineering corps
units moving around the desert with heavy earthmoving equipment and
drawing dirt tracks. They then dug deep pits and lined them with concrete.

At the time, Israeli intelligence suspected the Syrians were taking the
first steps for building an atomic reactor. But on Jan. 10, 2003, two
months before the US invasion of Iraq , trucks and tankers filled the pits
with components of Iraq ’s WMD systems.

Their location was conveyed to the Bush administration at the time with
maps and coordinates.

And no one to this day has the answer to the puzzling question of why
President George W. Bush never sent in special forces to expose the
contents of the pits. It may be that parts of the administration were
skeptical of the information brought by Israel , just as some circles are
today.

Even now, the Syrian president lives a charmed life, notwithstanding his
murky record in helping insurgents fight American soldiers in Iraq ,
hatching assassination conspiracies to destabilize Lebanon , hosting the
most radical and belligerent of Palestinian terrorists, colluding with
Saddam Hussein in hiding his weapons of mass destruction, and planning his
own deadly plutonium project.


US Sanctions Hit Revolutionary Guards’ Pocket
Washington Hopes to Out Short Ahmadinejad’s Creeping Coup


The launching of the tough new US sanctions package for Iran was timed
deliberately with an eye to the rough-and-tumble in Tehran at the top
level of the Iranian regime.

Thursday, Oct. 26, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Treasury
Secretary Henry Paulson jointly unveiled sanctions against Iran’s
Revolutionary Guards Corps as proliferators of weapons of mass destruction
and the al Qods Brigade as sponsors of terrorists.

There is no precedent for a government meting out punishment to the armed
forces of a foreign country and branding them as terrorists engaged in
nuclear proliferation.

Washington had clearly decided to strike while the iron was hot.

There would be no more waiting for results from the coming drawn-out
rounds of diplomacy between Iran’s newly-appointed nuclear negotiator Said
Jalili and European Union executive Javier Solana, or the UN Security
Council and, most of all, from the waffling international nuclear watchdog
IAEA and its director Mohammed ElBaradei.

US officials hope the tough new sanctions will bring the infighting
between two camps of the Revolutionary Guards Corps and its al Qods
Brigade, Tehran ’s primary overseas terrorist branch, to a constructive
conclusion.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington sources report that the sanctions
announcement capped a heated debate in the Pentagon, State Department and
Central Intelligence Agency. One side maintained that sanctions would
deepen the divisions cleaving the Iranian leadership; the other that they
would only unite the quarreling factions behind President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, whose offensive for seizing absolute power in all parts of
the regime is in full flight.



Toppling the Revolutionary Guards economic base



The Bush administration was galvanized into settling the argument by three
events.

1. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s epic visit to Tehran on Oct. 16
ended unexpectedly in his backing off from further Russian involvement in
the construction and activation of Iran ’s nuclear reactor in Bushehr.

(Putin’s flip-flop on Iran and its tie-in with the disposition of Caspian
Sea resources are discussed in the next article.)

2. The sudden resignation of Ali Larijani as senior Iranian nuclear
negotiator on Oct. 20. DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports that experts on Iran in
the West are not of one mind over whether Ahmadinejad fired the
exceptionally adept diplomat, or his resignation was requested by supreme
ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his senior adviser Hashem Rafsanjani to
prepare him to run for the presidency against the incumbent.

Both clearly regard Ahmadinejad is getting too big for his boots and
should be stopped.

3. The rumors in Tehran from Tuesday, Oct. 23, that another prominent
figure, foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki had resigned. Though denied,
this was taken by the experts as a further symptom of an advancing climax
in the power struggle of the top echelons of Iranian government.

When all the pros and cons were put before President George W. Bush and
Vice President Dick Cheney, the deciding factor turned out to be the
prospect of the new sanctions package toppling Iran ’s economic and
financial establishment. These national institutions are managed largely
by the Revolutionary Guards Corps, which milk them to cover their
operations and to finance Iran ’s missile and nuclear programs.

Bush and Cheney calculated that, when the middle and lower IRGC ranks
begin to feel the bite of the sanctions, they will rise up and the corps,
Iran ’s powerhouse, will split down the middle.

Dividing Revolutionary Guards ranks



One segment will follow the radical Ahmadinejad line dedicated to the
relentless pursuit of a nuclear bomb; the other will opt for the less
extreme, more pragmatic path led by Khameni, Rafsanjani and Larijani,
which urges Iran to be content with the ability to make a bomb without
going all the way. This is the way, they believe, to avoid an economic, or
even military, crunch with the United States.

The White House calculated that if the second course prevailed in Tehran ,
Ahmadinejad would lose his power base.

It is hard for people in the West to comprehend how fired up the Iranian
president is to lead the world into a Gog and Magog confrontation with
America . It is even harder to understand his fanatical conviction that
this conflict is inescapable because, although the slaughter will be
unparalleled, it will bring about the coming of the Shiite messiah, the
Mahdi or Emam-e Zaman.

All mankind will then embrace the true Islam, the Shia, and there will be
no more wars.

This may seem to Western minds the ravings of a lunatic. However,
Ahmadinejad is sincere in his wild beliefs and powerful enough to act on
them.

He has even set aside and furbished a splendid hotel in Tehran “for the
Mahdi.” Thousands of believers make the pilgrimage to the hotel every
month for obeisance to a well in its grounds, where they have been told
the Madhi is hiding until his time comes.

Since he was elected president in early 2006, Ahmadinejad has worked hard
to make his apocalyptic vision come true. He draws inspiration from his
mentor Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, who preaches tirelessly that
eternal redemption is near and all of mankind will soon bow to Shiite
Muslim hegemony.

Ahmadinejad is now bent on usurping Ayatollah Khamenei as supreme ruler,
constantly sniping at the ayatollah and chipping away at his authority –
especially since there is a fresh round of rumors of his serious illness.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources, Khamenei was twice
hospitalized in the past month in a private ward. The nature of his
illness is not known.

Under the Islamic Republic’s constitution, only a high-ranking cleric may
officiate as supreme ruler.



Ahmadenijad strips the supreme ruler of his mainstays



Ahmadinejad does not meet that job description, but since he became
president he never stops sermonizing. Even his appearances at New York ’s
Columbia University and the UN General Assembly last month turned on
religious themes.

He seems to believe that because he has the support of the powerful
Revolutionary Guards, he can rise to the top job without qualifying as an
accredited ayatollah.

Our Iranian sources confirm that Mottaki did indeed tender his resignation
as foreign minister, although he and the president later denied it. He is
paying the price for his general lack of enterprise and lackluster
performance. But his head will roll because Ahmadinejad has determined
that Iran must adopt an aggressive foreign posture and plans to insert his
own man in the job.

In the president’s eyes, Larijani’s departure was a prime asset. It
weakens Khamenei’s inner circle by removing a talented and formidable
official.

He is now gunning for Khamenei’s closest ally, the former president
Rafsanjani - in particular, since this week he came out in support of the
students’ revolt against the president in person at Tehran ’s Amir Kabir
University . Rafsanjani approved of their struggle for democracy in Iran
and the students’ right to freedom of speech and protest, praising them as
the country’s “generation of the future.”

Rafsanjani talked to the students after two days of riotous demonstrations
demanding the release of three of their number, who had been sentenced to
long terms in prison

The meeting was covered by Iranian state television reporters and cameramen.

When he heard of these events, Ahmadinejad cut short his state visit to
neighboring Armenia on Oct. 23 and rushed home. His first action was to
order television and radio to black Rafsanjani’s meeting with the
students.

On his way to the top, the president is determined to finally crush his
rival. If he succeeds, there will be little to stop the creeping coup
d’etat he is pursuing, egged on by the ferocious Revolutionary Guards,
with grave repercussions for world peace.

This was in the mind of George Bush when he ordered the new round of
sanctions.


Putin’s Standoff with Tehran
Deal on Caspian Resources - or No Nuclear Ties


No one is admitting this in public, but Russian president Vladimir Putin’s
hyped-up visit to Tehran Oct. 16 ended in crisis.

Nine days later, a cover statement was issued by First Deputy Prime
Minister Sergei Ivanov in Moscow Thursday, Oct. 25:

“The Bushehr nuclear power plant Russia is building for Iran will operate
under the strict control of the United Nations nuclear watchdog,” he
declared. “After the fuel is delivered to Iran , it will come instantly
under the full and total control of the IAEA.”

Ivanov said the timetable for Russia to deliver the first consignment of
nuclear fuel to Bushehr depends on “resolving disputes” with Iran about
payment for the plant.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Moscow and Tehran sources disclose, however, that no
timetable has been fixed for the delivery of nuclear fuel for a more
compelling reason than the usual bickering over payment between Russia and
Iran .

During his talks with Iranian leaders, which took place alongside the
Caspian Summit of Russian, Iranian, Azerbaijan , Turkmenistan and Kazakh
rulers, Putin laid down his terms: Either Tehran accepts the accord
drafted in Moscow for the exploitation and distribution of Caspian Sea
resources, or Russia discontinues its work on the Bushehr nuclear reactor
and withholds the fuel for its activation.

One of the terms obliges Iran to agree in advance that the oil and gas
extracted from the Caspian be moved out through Russian-owned pipelines.

The president further stipulated that Russia would lay down the
international benchmarks for the distribution of these natural resources.
Tehran must pledge not to interfere in the secret contracts Moscow signed
in the past with Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan for dividing the Caspian region
and its riches amongst themselves.

The only issue on which the Caspian rulers agreed was to refrain from
further exploration or drilling in the sea bed. By bottling up the
underwater resources, Moscow , Tehran and the other three Caspian partners
made sure to keep world oil prices jacked high.

Our Moscow sources reveal that Putin felt safe in turning the screw on
Iran in view of its deep economic crisis and acute shortage of cash for
catching up on its arrears for work the Russians have already performed on
the reactor.

High expectations of a thaw are premature



Both Bush officials and Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert jumped in fast,
in the hope of capitalizing on the Moscow-Tehran impasse.

Washington put forward a compromise proposal for a joint US-Russian
mechanism to determine the point at which Iran’s long-range missiles
become a menace to Europe and warrant the activation of the US-led missile
defenses to be based in Poland and the Czech Republic, and possibly also
in Azerbaijan. Russian teams would also be present in these bases.

These concessions were offered to allay Putin’s firm objections to the
missile shield Bush planned to deploy in Europe . The eventual outcome of
such a deal, it was hoped in Washington , would be for Moscow to turn a
blind eye to a possible American attack on Iran if it stood by its refusal
to give up uranium enrichment.

Olmert made an unannounced trip to Moscow on Oct. 18 and spoke for three
hours with the Russian president. On Oct. 25, he described Putin to a
group of American Jewish leaders as “one of the most important friends
Israel has today.”

However, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Moscow sources report that the expectations of
an imminent thaw may have been premature in Washington and Jerusalem .

The Russian ruler has not burned all his bridges to Tehran . And whether
the Bushehr reactor is finished or not will not hold up Iran ’s military
program. With regard to the Caspian issue, Putin will be as tough with the
Americans as he was with Tehran .

He will drive a hard bargain with Washington for accepting a compromise on
the European missile deployment and maybe other issues: No less than US
acceptance of Russian control of Caspian natural resources and at least a
partial abandonment of the planned US military bases in that region.

If the Bush administration fails to come around, relations between Moscow
and Washington will remain at sub-Cold War temperatures.

Back to top

HOT POINTS
A Digest of DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock Exclusives in Week Ending Oct. 25,
2007

Nuclear watchdog is checking US spy satellite images of Syrian site hit by
Israel on Sept. 6 for signs of secret nuclear activity



19 Oct. DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report that the credibility of
the data Israel presented to Washington before the strike continues to be
questioned in some Washington quarters. They contend that, even if the
target was a nuclear facility under construction, it would not have posed
a threat for years.

One purpose of this argument is to belittle Israel ’s intelligence
findings and detract from questions about how other agencies and the
nuclear watchdog missed them. Another is to put the Bush administration on
the spot for approving the Israeli air attack as a deterrent against a US
military strike against Iran .

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources have reported from Day One that

the structure Israel attacked was located between the Euphrates and Lake
Assad and that the Syrians misled correspondents by showing them a site at
Deir al-Azur. Our military sources also refuted Damascus ’ claim that
Israeli bombers had ejected unmarked fuel tanks over Turkey . They were
dropped by the Turkish air force, as Syrian president Bashar Assad was
informed during his visit to Ankara this week. The authentic Israel fuel
tanks with Hebrew markings were shown this week by Al Arabiya TV.



Ahmadinejad’s Aggressive Nuclear Policy Prevails in Tehran



20 October: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has laid down the gauntlet.

Having prevailed over the more pragmatic elements of the Islamic
Republican regime headed by supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, he and
his Revolutionary Guards are challenging the United States to do its
worst.

Saturday, Oct. 20, the fire-eating president succeeded in removing the
formidable Iranian nuclear negotiator, head of the National Security
Council, Ali Larijani, from his path. He then sent the Revolutionary
Guards missile and artillery commander, Gen. Mahmoud Chaharbaghshe, to
warn that, in the first minute of an attack on Iran , the Islamic Republic
would fire 11,000 missiles and mortars against enemy (US and Israeli)
bases. The scale of ordnance threatened implied Tehran ’s certainty that
Syria , Hizballah, Hamas and the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq would join
the assault.

DEBKAfile’s Iran sources report that the president’s venture into
brinkmanship points to his confidence that neither the US not Israel can
or will dare to strike at Iran ’s clandestine nuclear facilities. Khamenei
has shown no sign as yet of reining him in.

Our military sources stress that the Iranian nuclear program no longer
relies exclusively on uranium enrichment to attain a weapon, but has also
turned to plutonium as an alternative path to a weapons capacity. The
production of plutonium for weapons is relatively simple and cheap, a fact
that was exposed by Israel ’s air strike in northern Syria on Sept. 6.

If even Syria can build a small nuclear reactor for plutonium production
with North Korean help, there is no reason to assume that Iran has not
built an active reactor of this kind and is hiding it underground.



Shin Bet foils Palestinian Fatah faction plot to assassinate Olmert at
Jericho talks with Abbas. Israel lodges strong protest with PA



21 Oct. This first Palestinian conspiracy to kill an Israeli prime
minister was directed at his June meeting with Palestinian Authority
chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Jericho . The Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin
reported to the cabinet in Jerusalem Sun. Oct. 21, that five Fatah-Al Aqsa
terrorists plotted to shoot up the Israeli convoy bringing prime minister
for talks as it entered the West Bank town, which is under full
Palestinian security control.

Israel caught two of the five would-be assassins and, acting on Shin Bet
information, Palestinian officers arrested three.

However, last week, they released the detainees - all of them on the
payroll either of Abbas’ US-subsidized Force 17 presidential guard or
Tawfiq Tirawi’s General intelligence - in time for the US secretary of
state Condoleezza Rice’s visit.



Hamas gunmen injured in Israeli air attacks in Gaza Sunday afternoon



22 Oct. Earlier, the Palestinians fired six Qassam missiles from Gaza at
S. Ashkelon, Sderot and Erez. There were no casualties.

Palestinian Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas said in Jakarta Sunday that no
progress towards a peace settlement was possible without Hamas which,
despite its violent takeover of Gaza , remains a part of the Palestinian
Authority.

DEBKAfile’s sources report that Abbas’ Fatah has for the past two weeks
been in secret dialogue with Hamas which is internationally boycotted as a
terrorist organization.



Relics of Solomon’s Temple uncovered for the first time in a sealed layer
on Temple Mount, Jerusalem



22 Oct. Undisturbed since circa 800 B.C.E., the layer yielded fragments of
bowls and shards decorated in the style of the First Temple Period, the
base and handle of a small jug used to ladle oil, the rim of an oil
storage jar and animal bone.

They may be the relics of a sacrificial rite held in the First Temple
built by King Solomon in the 10th century B.C.E. before it was destroyed
by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. thus ending the era in which Jewish
kingdoms reigned over much of the present-day area of Palestine .

Jerusalem regional archeologist Jon Seligman said the find could finally
help scholars place Solomon’s Temple at its precise location and
reconstruct its dimensions for the first time.

Over the centuries, the Muslim rulers of Jerusalem built the al Aqsa
Mosque and Dome of the Rock on the holiest site of Judaism, paving it,
calling it the Noble Sanctuary and making it the third holiest shrine of
Islam. They denied the Jewish Temple had ever stood there.

Olmert sounds alarm: Iran has crossed red line for developing a nuclear
weapon. It’s too late for sanctions



22 Oct. This is the message prime minister Ehud Olmert is carrying
urgently to French President Nicolas Sarkozy Monday and British premier
Gordon Brown Tuesday, according to DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence
sources.

Last week, Olmert placed the Israeli intelligence warning of an Iranian
nuclear breakthrough before Russian president Vladimir Putin, while Israel
’s defense minister Ehud Barak presented the updated intelligence to
American officials in Washington , including President Bush.

Olmert will be telling Sarkozy and Brown that the moment for diplomacy or
even tough sanctions has passed. Iran can only be stopped now from going
all the way to its goal by direct, military action.

Information of the Iranian breakthrough prompted the latest spate of
hard-hitting US statements. Sunday, Oct. 21, US vice president Cheney
said: "Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand
by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions.''

Friday, the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael
Mullen said US forces are capable of operations against Iran ’s nuclear
facilities or other targets. At his first news conference, he said: “I
don’t think we’re stretched in that regard.”



Olmert reveals Hizballah handed over a letter missing Israeli navigator
Ron Arad wrote to his wife Tammy shortly after his capture



22 Oct. Hizballah withheld the letter for 21 years until the latest swap
deal.



Maj. Gen Avi Mizrahi assumes command of Israel’s Ground Forces



22 Oct. Outgoing commander Maj. Gen Benny Gantz is named IDF military
attaché in Washington .



Bush and Putin Rough out Breakthrough Strategic Deal for Dumping Iran



23 October: The outline of the American role in the deal surfaced in
Prague Tuesday, Oct. 23, when US secretary of defense Robert Gates
suggested a possible delay in activating the proposed US missile
interceptor project in Poland and radar station in the Czech Republic -
until an Iranian threat was “definitely proved.”

Gates added that the US would proceed with plans to build the sites, but
possibly wait before putting them in working order.

"We would consider tying together activation of the sites in Poland and
the Czech Republic with definitive proof of the threat — in other words,
Iranian missile testing and so on," Gates said.

The proposal has already been presented to the Russians who have expressed
interest. Gates described a related proposal that might mean permitting a
Russian presence at US missile defense bases, including at the Polish and
Czech sites.

US president George Bush spoke a short while later at the National Defense
University in Washington . He said the US-led missile defense system in
Europe is urgent, but spoke positively about Putin’s offer of missile
defense facilities in Azerbaijan and southern Russia . The entire project,
said the US president, is “part of a broader effort to move beyond the
Cold War.”

DEBKAfile’s military sources add: If this deal goes through, it would
dramatically reduce Iran ’s strategic options to abandoning its nuclear
ambitions or else facing crippling penalties.



Lebanon will be a second Iraq, says Hizballah in strident threat against
US bases



23 Oct. Lebanese and Israeli military sources advise taking the threat by
Hizballah’s Nawaf Mussawi seriously. Its gunmen will violently oppose the
American plan for its military and instructors to provide the Lebanese
national army with an edge against the Hizballah militia. They will also
fight tooth and nail any American bid to implement UN Security Council
Resolution 1559 ordering the disbanding of Hizballah, and no doubt receive
orders from Tehran to pre-empt a US military presence and bases in Lebanon
.

The Shiite extremists’ bellicose response follows exclusive disclosures in
DEBKA-Net-Weekly and DEBKAfile of the master plan developed by US CENTCOM
chief, Adm. William Fallon, for upgrading and augmenting the Lebanese
army.

Nerves in Beirut are growing tauter: US military projects move forward, on
the one hand, while on the other, Tehran and Damascus are pro-active in
Lebanon ’s military and political affairs. The repeatedly delayed disputed
presidential election, now postponed to Nov. 12, hangs over Lebanese
heads.



Fatah-al Aqsa claims Palestinian drive-by shooting which injured two
Israelis, a soldier seriously, on West Bank



24 Oct. The shooters’ van zigzagged wildly down the road, raking Israeli
vehicles with gunfire. At Ariel, the van U-turned and fired at the
soldiers waiting at the Ariel hitchhikers’ post on the Trans-Shomron
Highway before disappearing. Six vehicles were hit by flying bullets.
DEBKAfile’s military sources: There were no Israeli roadblocks on the road
either to halt the lethal vehicle or hold up its escape from the scene of
attack, because of Israeli concessions to Palestinian leader Mahmoud
Abbas..

Tuesday night, Mubarak al Hasnat, 37, a member of the Popular Resistance
Committees, was killed in an Israeli air strike. He was a key controller
of the latest, escalated spate of Qassam rockets against Israeli targets
from the Gaza Strip.

During the day, Gazan Palestinians fired eight missiles and eight rockets
at Israeli targets. One exploded near a strategic facility in southern
Ashkelon , aimed at the power station (which also supplies current to the
Gazan population). The eighth hit and destroyed a house in Sderot. Ten
were fired Monday.



Washington unveils extra-tough sanctions for Iran Thursday



25 Oct. DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources recall that the Islamic regime
announced in advance that approval of these extra-tough measures would be
deemed an American declaration of war on Iran and call forth retaliation.
Tehran would target US interests in the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan
or Israel by means of Special Groups, i.e. Iran ’s foreign intelligence
networks, Hizballah or Hamas.

DEBKAfile’s sources reveal that since the supreme ruler, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei is commander-in-chief of Iran’s armed forces, including the IRGC
and its al Qods Brigade, Tehran cannot afford to let Washington’s
accusations against them as sponsors of terror and proliferators of WMD go
unanswered.

The new sanctions package includes US financial penalties for world firms
trading with the IRGC. The Iranian economy is already hard hit by
Washington ’s systematic blockage of its access to international banks.
Iran has appealed urgently to Indonesia for gasoline and heavy oil,
because it has run out of currency to pay for imported refined oil
products.

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