WarSclerotic

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report September 3, 2010, 8:40 AM (GMT+02:00)

Israeli warships targeted

Tehranand its extremist and terrorist allies, having failed to abort Barack Obama’s initiative for direct Israel-Palestinian diplomacy, have hit back with two belligerent steps. debkafile‘s military sources disclose that Syria and the Lebanese Hizballah have set up a joint military command for sinking Israeli warships, and Hamas has brought all 13 Palestinian rejectionist organizations under one roof for a sustained bid to intensify terror operations against Israel.
At a news conference in Gaza early Friday, Sept. 3 – shortly after the Washington talks were rated positive – a Hamas military arm spokesman announced the creation of a single command encompassing all 13 Palestinian rejectionist groups operating out of the Gaza Strip and Damascus for a concerted campaign of terror against Israel.
In answer to a question, Abu Obeida said the new policy of expanded attacks may well rain missiles on Tel Aviv. “From now on, everything is open,” the Hamas spokesman said.
At that moment, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was on a flight home from Washington, surrounded by an intense PR effort to present him as emerging from his first conversation with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas as a super-peacemaker. The Americans, the Palestinians and his own aides were well aware that the ceremonial inauguration of the talks had yielded very little after their goals were sharply pared down. No accord but only a document of general principles is now expected to come out of the continuation of the dialogue – once every two weeks in the coming year. This, too, would oblige Israel to withdraw from large sections of the West Bank. Further steps were relegated to the distant future.
In the meantime, Syria, Hizballah and the Palestinian terrorist community are using the very act of diplomacy as the impetus for a violent response.
Whereas the prime minister’s rhetoric in Washington laid heavy emphasis on the negotiations measuring up to Israel’s security needs, in practice, he refrained from ordering an Israeli reprisal against the Hamas command centers which ordered two attacks on West Bank roads, although four Israeli civilians paid with their lives and two more were injured.
Syria, Hizballah and the Palestinian terrorist commands operating out of Damascus, Gaza, Beirut and Sidon to took this restraint as a starting signal for reviving concerted attacks on Israel.
Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah decided to expand the secret military cooperation pact they recently concluded – to which no Israeli political or military leader has so far responded – to the Mediterranean Sea, where their operational and intelligence assets will together seek out and try and sink Israeli missile ships and submarines.
To this end, they have earmarked marine units and their Iranian- and Russian-made shore-to-ship missile force – the largest of its kind in the world – as well as Syrian assault helicopters flown by crews trained to strike seaborne targets. The Hizballah marine unit was trained and equipped by Iranian Revolutionary Guards marine instructors.
The Mediterranean coastal strip from Syrian Latakia in the north, running through the Lebanese ports of Tripoli, Sidon and Tyre and down south to the Gaza Strip, have been declared a joint sea front dedicated to attacking Israeli targets.
High-ranking Israeli military sources told DEBKA file Thursday night that while it was hard to imagine Syrian or Hizballah managing to hit Israeli submarines, they are quite capable of fomenting violence on the sea and attacking Israeli naval craft and bases. Their joint command means they are sharing intelligence on Israeli naval activity and monitoring the movements of vessels while still in Israeli territorial waters and before they take up stations opposite the Lebanese or Syrian coasts.
Our military sources add that, from the strategic viewpoint, the Washington dialogue and the disproportionate
hype surrounding it were counter-productive in that it led to the resumption of Hamas terrorist activities on the West Bank and strengthened the military partnership between Syria and Hizballah for aggression against Israel. Netanyahu’s single-minded focus on diplomacy at the expense of neglecting rising threats and blocking military activity allowed these perils to develop and abound.
His restraint did not help Mahmoud Abbas’ failing fortunes at home. His standing took a bad knock from the way Hamas managed to pull off two terrorist operations on the West Bank. In a desperate bid to show they were in control, Palestinian security sources reported Thursday night that two suspects were in custody for Monday’s drive-by shooting near Hebron and they had leads to the perpetrators.
debkafile‘s counter-terror sources disclose that the two “suspects” are the used car salesmen who sold the vehicle the Hamas gunmen used in their attack. They had no clues to offer about the identities or whereabouts of the purchasers who have disappeared without a trace.
Netanyahu is scheduled to continue his talks with Abbas in Sharm el-Sheikh on Sept. 14-15 – and again at fortnightly intervals during the coming year under Washington’s watchful eye. It is hard to see how they can keep going in a climate of rising military tensions and expanding terrorist outbreaks.

DEBKA.

US convoy

Night after night, in the weeks leading up to the end of US combat mission in Iraq on Aug. 31, long American army convoys made their way from Iraq to Israel via Jordan. Their big lights were turned off as they travelled the Hashemite kingdom’s roads with Jordanian Engineering Corps escorts. They switched high again after crossing the border posts and the bridges which separate the kingdom from Israel.
Most of the military equipment shipped out of Iraq goes to the largest American emergency depot in southern Kuwait and is redirected to Afghanistan to meet US military needs there.
The overflow was diverted through Aqaba, Jordan’s Red Sea port into the Israeli Negev desert, some of it ending up in US emergency military depots, the second largest strategic reserve stores in the Middle East after the Kuwait depot.
Some of the trucks also rumbled across the Damia Bridge, also known as the Adam Bridge which spans the Jordan River border, 30 miles north of Jericho, traveled for another hour and a half or so up to the big Israeli military maintenance bases near Haifa, in central Israel east of Tel Aviv or at Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources, the Pentagon calculated that it would not be cost-effective to ship the hundreds of tons of US military equipment evacuated from Iraq to Persian Gulf bases or America. Piling up now at US Negev facilities, they are being sorted and distributed for their next functions by hundreds of US maintenance personnel assisted by Israeli counterparts from the IDF’s Supply and Ordnance Corps.
Shiny new US military vehicles repainted for IDF units
Western military sources familiar with the convoys and the equipment divide it into five categories:
1. Thousands of military vehicles: light armored combat vehicles, command vehicles, light and heavy trucks, fuel tankers, all-terrain vehicles, communications vehicles, mobile engineering gear including portable cranes, repair shops and ambulances.
2. Armored personnel carriers.
3. Tanks.
4. Convoys loaded with masses of ordnance.
5. Millions of pieces of military equipment from the First Theatre Sustainment Command (TSC), Third Army, which managed the massive logistics operations for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
The vehicles in good repair are checked, washed and repainted with IDF plates and insignia, handed over for the use of US units based or training in Israel, or stowed away in US storage centers. The vehicles unfit for further military use will be lined up outside Israeli bases and offered used military vehicle salesmen. Most will end up in Africa or East Europe.
Observers were struck by the large number of US-military issues of vehicles, especially APCs, trucks and command and communications trucks, all bearing shiny coats of fresh paint, when they watched Israel’s massive military movement northward to the Sea of Galilee and Golan regions on Aug. 9-12, to drill the transfer of armored units in war conditions, and the transfer of the Kfir Division from the West Bank to northern Israel after weeks of threatening rhetoric and weapons movements from Syria and Hizballah. (See the first item in this issue on the establishment of the joint Syrian-Hizballah military command.)
Superfluous to needs in Afghanistan
DEBKA-Net-Weekly heard a high-ranking Israeli officer commenting: “The injection of American military equipment from Iraq has definitely boosted the quality of our operational fleet at several levels. We’ve been able to junk outdated items, some from the early 1990s and take several jumps ahead qualitatively.”
He added: US gear is not foreign to us because the Israeli officers and instructors who advised the American army in Iraq in counter-terror tactics – and even took active part in some US operations, began working with this equipment some years ago.
Personnel who have meanwhile ended their military service have been called up to the reserves to assist in the rapid absorption of the newly-arrived US supplies from Iraq.
Two billion dollars’ worth of fuel for military purposes took the same route as the munitions to the Israeli military after US military depots in Afghanistan were filled by the overflow from Iraq.
The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) informed Congress on Aug. 6 of the transfer to Israel of 1.075 billion liters of JP-8 jet fuel; 478,000 liters of diesel fuel for tanks; 227,000 liters of unleaded fuel for military vehicles.
With the end of the US combat in Iraq, the 50,000 American troops remaining there have no need of these massive quantities of fuel or munitions and the Pentagon decided that shipping them to Israel was the quickest and cheapest way to be rid of them.
A softener for Netanyahu’s hard edges for talks with Palestinians
Expedience was not the only consideration for this action.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Middle Eastern sources have no doubt that the Obama administration poured out this military largesse to soften Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu‘s positions ahead of the first direct talks with Palestinian leaders in 20 months when they started in Washington on September 2. He was meant to understand flexibility on concessions to the Palestinians would translate into more provisions for his armed forces.
It may have worked up to a point. The Netanyahu government’s rather stiff relations with Washington looked up surprisingly as the extras flowed in as, too, the tone of communications with Jordan’s King Abdullah.
Apropos of this policy, as Netanyahu was preparing to fly to Washington this week, the administration informed Israel of the go-ahead for negotiations to bring the state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries-IAI into the manufacture of the new top-of-the-line US F-35 stealth fighter aircraft. The IAE would be asked to build the wings for about a quarter of this super-warplane, of which Lockheed Martin plans to turn out some 3,200, at a cost of $96 million each.
An Israeli official disclosed Monday, August 30: “We are in advanced talks with the Americans for IAI to produce around 800 sets of wings.”

Jordan’s Abdullah comes around too
The coolness from Amman has also warmed up.
In the past year, King Abdullah II has acted as voluntary Arab propagandist against Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu in particular – both in the Middle East and the West.
Sunday, August 29, all of a sudden, King Abdullah welcomed Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to his palace. They held a wide-ranging conversation on four topics of mutual interest: the prospects of success for the first direct talks between Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas in Washington four days hence; the alignment of the Jordanian and Israeli positions on these talks; the critical situation unfolding in Iraq (See a separate item on the Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah takeover of Iraq) which holds menace for Israel and Jordan alike; and the passage of American military convoys from Iraq to Israel via Jordan.
The conversation ended amicably enough for King Abdullah to suggest inviting Abbas to his palace that same night for a three-way get-together with the Israel defense minister on common factors ahead of the formal opening of the talks in Washington.
Barak flew to Jerusalem by helicopter to consult with Netanyahu before returning that night to join the king and the PA leader.

DEBKA.

Bashar Assad

Alarm bells began ringing in Washington and Jerusalem over the information, first revealed here by DEBKA-Net-Weekly, that Syrian President Bashar Assad will be on a secret trip to Tehran next week, shortly after the onset of Israeli-Palestinian talks in Washington. It will be followed by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‘s two-day state visit to Beirut on Sept. 10 during the Jewish New Year holiday.
Obama administration and Israeli officials were wondering what business was so urgent for the Syrian ruler that his talks with top Iranian leaders in Tehran had to take place right after Ramadan and could not wait another week.
It is suspected that Damascus and Tehran are on the verge of actions momentous enough to require supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei‘s ultimate say-so.
One would be a timeline for embarking on the next Middle East war. In this regard, American and Israeli sources cite the visit to Damascus on Aug. 20-21 paid by Revolutionary Guards commander Ali Jafari, who rarely leaves home soil.
Soon after his departure, Syria and Hizballah signed a military cooperation pact (details of which are disclosed exclusively in the opening item of this issue.)
In informal contacts this week, Syrian intelligence informants tried selling the Americans the proposition that the new pact, actually distanced Hizballah from Iran because by deepening his mutual military ties with Damascus, its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, made himself more independent of Tehran than ever before.
This argument was dismissed by our intelligence and Iranian sources, who strongly doubt that Nasrallah is capable of acting independently of Iran.
The Assad-Nasrallah scheme for a new Iraqi government
Another urgent piece of business on the Syrian president’s plate might well be the fast-moving crisis in Baghdad in which the hands of Damascus and Hizballah are actively meddling.
How did this come about?
On Wednesday, Sept. 1, US Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen presided over a military ceremony in Baghdad marking the end of America’s combat involvement in the war.
It was hard to tell what they were thinking when the military band struck up with the American national anthem as a sign of farewell after seven years of harsh warfare and 4,000 US military dead.
Did they appreciate exactly what they were leaving behind in Iraq? Or what would become of the 50,000 troops remaining there until the end of 2011?
For they must have known that the situation in Baghdad was slipping out of US control and looked like being determined in the days – and possibly months – to come by two non-Americans, whose names had never cropped up in the seven years of hostilities.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Baghdad sources name the two individuals as Brig. Gen. Mohammed Nassif, special adviser to the Syrian president, and Hizballah’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah.
Maliki is reinstated with the backing of radical Sadr
Our sources report that Americans and Saudis alike were astounded to discover earlier this week that Assad and Nasrallah had seized the moment and sprung on them a nasty surprise. They had fashioned an Iraqi government, which had been stalled for six months, with the outgoing Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki in the saddle – for the time being at least. (This is necessary qualifier for any political moves in Iraq.)
The gambit was orchestrated from start to finish by the Syrian Brig. Gen. Nassif.
He persuaded Maliki to reach out to the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, his most bitter rival of many years, and invite him to join a coalition government.
As a Syrian military intelligence veteran, Nassif knew that many members of Sadr’s militia had received their first training in guerilla warfare from Hizballah’s chief of security, the late Imad Moughniyeh.
(In September 2003, DEBKA-Net-Weekly began exclusively tracking Moughniyeh’s arrival in Iraq and his organization of Sadr’s military and intelligence networks in the South Iraqi towns of Nasseriya, Najaf, Karbala and Baghdad. In May 2004, our sources reported Moughniyeh’s departure from Iraq.)
The Syrian general accordingly asked Nasrallah to use his undercover connections with Sadr and urge him to accept Maliki’s offer.
At the end of last week, the initiative paid off. Maliki and Sadr came to terms on a new Iraqi government and the distribution of government portfolios. The 40 seats Sadr’s Free Shiite Independents won in the new Iraqi parliament bulked out Maliki’s State of Law Party 89 mandates (which came in second in the Iraqi election). Together they command a majority.
Assad uses a shady spook, lawless terrorists, Shiite radical to scuttle US-Saudi scheme
This Syrian-Hizballah coup in Baghdad was found to have derailed the overall plan charted by the Obama administration and the Saudi King Abdullah to lure Assad over to their side in the Middle East balance of power against the radical-terrorist camp in Iraq, after collapsing in Lebanon.
(DEBKA-Net-Weekly covered this plan and its demise from Issue 455 of July 30: New US-Saudi Strategy for the Middle East: Assad Offered High Status in Beirut and Baghdad for Dumping Tehran and Hizballah)
What happened was that the Syrian president, instead of fitting in with the US-Saudi scheme, turned the tables on them with the help of Hizballah and Muqtada Sadr.
For Washington, the success of Assad’s move – however transient – would be a nightmare.
Biden, Gates and Mullen sat there wooden-faced as a shady Syrian spook, repository of some of the region’s most unsavory secrets, together with the notoriously warlike Lebanese Hizballah, listed universally as lawless terrorists, managed to overturn American hopes for Iraq and plant the flag of extremism and instability in Baghdad.
For Riyadh it was a dream turned ominous:
After sinking a billion dollars in the Iraqi election to rid Baghdad of a Shiite-dominated regime, the Saudis find their next-door neighbor ruled by Shiite extremists, Riyadh’s influence ousted by an open door to Tehran.
To be sure of pulling off his scheme for Iraq, Assad needs to have Iran behind him all the way. In the view of some Middle East sources, it was this errand that may have caused him to hurry over to Tehran next week.
However, as every regional politician knows, Iraq being Iraq, no one can afford to count their chickens in Baghdad before they are fully hatched.

DEBKA.

Bashar Assad and Hassan Nasrallah

Expectations among seasoned Middle East hands of anything coming out the first direct talks Thursday, Sept. 2 between Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas were never high. President Barack Obama‘s attempt to formalize the occasion as his first foreign policy coup after the withdrawal from Iraq had little to go on. There was even less substance to Netanyahu’s bid to build himself up as a peace leader of historic vision ready to go the extra mile for peace – even with Syria.
(See DEBKA-Net-Weekly 450 of June 25: Preparing for Obama – Netanyanu Ready to Cede Most of Golan to Syria)
But last weekend, Syrian President Bashar Assad and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah swept those nebulous illusions away by concluding a secret military cooperation pact. Its object is laid out clearly in the preface which states that the accord is dedicated to the premise that a Syrian-Hizballah war on Israel is no longer a matter of speculation but of inevitability for the near future.
Reporting this, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military and intelligence sources disclose that the secret pact commits the Syrian armed forces and the Lebanese Hizballah militia to complete their preparations for the war together and sets out the ground rules and military frameworks for their march against Israel in lockstep.
These preparations are designed for two optional game plans: 1. Syria and Hizballah will make war on Israel together; 2. Hizballah will take Israel on alone under military and intelligence support from Syria.
Red lines for generating Syrian attack on Israel
Our sources have obtained access to the pact’s twelve pertinent clauses:
1. Damascus and Hizballah hereby set the red lines which, if crossed by the IDF in an invasion or military operation within Lebanon, will automatically set in motion a Syrian war on Israel.
For instance, if an Israeli force pushing north in an engagement with Hizballah veers towards the eastern Lebanese Beqaa Valley or the Mt. Hermon ridge, the Syrian army will be authorized to cross into Lebanon or drive south into Israel through the Golan and Sea of Galilee lines to counter-attack.
Such Syrian military intervention would be immediate under the accord, requiring no prior consultation. Neither would it be held up for, say, either of the allies to offer Israel conditions of surrender to save itself from invasion.
2. The joint military command will be made up of two high-ranking Syrian and two Hizballah officers and divided between Damascus and Beirut. One Syrian and one Hizballah officer will serve at each command.
3. A large network of Syrian and Hizballah liaison officers will keep operational communications flowing freely in a war situation and maintain the interaction between the two commands, among their respective staffs and among their field units.
Shared Israeli targeting lists to avoid duplication
4. The two commands will establish a joint war-room.
5. Syria and Hizballah will share their lists of Israeli targets for attack to avoid duplicating their efforts.
Our military sources report the joint command will divide the list up and specify which targets are to be struck by Syria and which by Hizballah, whether by missile, air or naval incursion.
6. From the date of signing the war pact, Hizballah will relay to Syrian military intelligence all the data in its possession on the distribution of Israeli bases along its borders with Syria and Lebanon. This will include the layout and location of Israeli early warning and radar installations. It will detail naval, aerial and undersea radar devices (for detecting detect troop movements inside tunnels or at remote locations by reading the seismic waves they set up) and the network of sensors operating in northern Israel.
Hizballah will also elaborate to opposite numbers on the Syrian side on its clandestine measures for countering Israel’s early warning systems.
Full reciprocal Syrian-Hizballah intelligence exposure
7. Syrian intelligence, for its part, has already begun feeding Hizballah with input routinely gathered by its undercover agencies on the military facilities in Israel and the movements of IDF forces around the country. Much of this data is collected by Syrian electronic listening stations that keep track of happenings in Israel.
8. During armed hostilities – or even amid rising military tension, Syria will keep Hizballah abreast in real time of ongoing activity at Israeli Air Force installations. The information will alert the Lebanese terror group to the times and numbers of the warplanes taking off and their estimated times of landing.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources note that this clause is essential for the allies’ missile forces to know who targets which Israel air base for missile or shelling attacks and adjust their targets, especially the remote ones in southern Israel, to their respective capabilities. Timing knowledge is also crucial. A Hizballah attack on an Israeli air base while planes are landing or taking off will maximize the damage extending it to the installations and the aircraft alike.
9. Syria will monitor the deployment of Israeli reservist units, determining the timing and size of mobilizations, where they are deployed and the directions of their movements. This information will enable Hizballah to fire its rockets at Israeli reserve units with greater precision.
Israeli submarines as prime targets for joint naval action
10. Syria and Hizballah are to merge their air defenses without delay and place them under a united command henceforth.
11. Their naval forces are to be similarly amalgamated. From the date of signing their pact, Syria and Hizballah agree to treat their Mediterranean coastlines as a single military region under allied naval command.
12. Syria and Hizballah are building marine units and equipping them with the latest attack helicopters. Their first task will be to seek out and strike the Israel Navy’s Dolphin submarines deployed in the Mediterranean. These submarines, which constitute Israel’s second-strike capability, are armed with cruise missiles with fissile warheads.
Any country would be justified in viewing the Syrian-Hizballah military cooperation pact for war on Israel as a declaration of war by an enemy axis, a senior Israeli army officer familiar with the content of the military agreement signed between Syria and Hizballah told DEBKA-Net-Weekly after scrutinizing they first operational steps take by Syria and Lebanon to put its clauses into practice.
However, Israel is governed by a duo – Binyamin Netanyahu, prime minister, Ehud Barak, defense minister – who have so far opted out of action against the Iranian nuclear program. This inertia appears to be tying their hands in the face of the concerted Syrian-Hizballah front on Israel’s northern borders.