WarSclerotic

DEBKA.

Adm. Michael Mullen and Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi

Adm. Michael Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, visits Israel Sunday, Feb. 13 for the unprecedented gesture of a personal sendoff for Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi the day before he retires.
The two generals may not want to admit as much but their strong friendship and personal ties were largely responsible for Israel being ill-prepared militarily to cope with any menace arising from the Egyptian revolution and a potential decision by Cairo to end its 32-year old peace relations with Israel.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military and Washington sources disclose that Adm. Mullen had been entrusted with a secret mission by two US presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama: to restrain Israel from attacking Iran and its nuclear program.
Mullen performed his mission faithfully and in full.
He and Ashkenazi met some 20 times in four years. The US general’s Israel visit next week will be his fifth. Ashkenazi can then claim to have beaten Pakistani chief of staff Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani‘s record for the total number of meetings the American chief of staff has held with any other foreign military chief.
Mullen’s visit Sunday gives Ashkenazi a draw. When he takes off his uniform Monday, Feb. 14, he can boast that the American admiral gave preventing an Israeli attack on Iran equal time with the containment of Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan.
While in Tel Aviv, Adm. Mullen would use the occasion to meet Ashkenazi’s successor, Maj. Gen. Benny Gantz, the Pentagon announced. He hopes to cultivate the same kind of relationship with the new man as with his predecessor – meaning that he will continue to lean hard on Israel to hold back from attacking Iran. At the same time, this task has lost most of its urgency because the turmoil in Egypt has tossed Middle East military equilibrium into entirely unknown terrain.
Israel dismantled its southern units during decades of peace
Seen from Washington’s perspective, no matter how the Egyptian crisis pans out (See opening article in this issue: Only the Military Can Save Egypt Now), the Egyptian army may have to be excluded from the pro-Western regional balance of strength depending on the direction Egypt takes after Mubarak’s departure.
There is no knowing whether at some future point, Egypt’s generals might decide to turn their guns on Israel. A war between the two countries would be a nightmare for America: Both armies would fight with advanced weaponry supplied by the US. Israel’s only advantage in a conventional contest would be its electronic warfare and cyber warfare superiority. In all other branches, infantry, armored forces, air force, navy and special forces, the Egyptian army holds the advantage.
This bleak prospect was laid before a meeting of top Israeli political, military and intelligence officials convened Tuesday, Feb.1 by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu behind closed doors at the IDF Southern Command near Be’er Sheva just one week after the Egyptian disturbances flared (January 25).
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources disclose the six main issues aired at that conference:
1. Insufficient strength in the south: In three decades of peace, Israel’s 270-kilometer long border with Egypt has been stripped of armed strength for dealing with a military thrust from Egypt proper advancing through Sinai. In that sector, the IDF is also not up to dealing with Egypt’s lost of control in the strategic peninsula and its transformation into the nexus between the Palestinian Hamas of the Gaza Strip and the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt.
Gen. Ashkenazi led the view at the round table security conference that such events do not happen overnight and there would be enough time to prepare for them.
His confident assessment was quickly dashed by the rapid course of events in the subsequent ten days: The Egyptian army and its security forces lost control of the Sinai Peninsula, excepting only the Sharm el Sheikh pocket. Much of the territory was seized by Hamas gangs, the Army of Islam which takes orders from Al Qaeda in Iraq, and Bedouin militias. The last group established a form of local government calling itself “The Bedouin Force for Socialist Reform.”
On Saturday, February 5, a Hamas special unit blew up the gas pipeline carrying gas from Egypt to Israel, Jordan and Lebanon via northern Sinai. In just a few minutes, Israel lost 43 percent of the fuel used for running its electrical power stations.
Israel was caught unprepared by this blow without a strategic gas reserve.
No strategic reserve, trained combatants, desert units or equipment
2. Inadequate strategic reserve: The IDF currently lacks the strategic military reserves to pull from the multiple fronts with Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah, Iran to the east and Hamas in the southwest, without laying these volatile sectors open to enemy attack. Iran, Syria and Hizballah are aware of this situation, which gives them a strategic and tactical advantage over Israel.
3. Level of training: The IDF is short of forces trained to go straight into action after their transfer to the Southern Front, excepting only for the combat-ready troops facing the Gaza Strip and very small special operations units. Other units are short of both the equipment and training to fight or even operate in Sinai and the Suez Canal area. All of Israel’s military strength – tanks, armored infantry, air force, navy, artillery and missiles – were adapted in recent years to the topography and conditions of the potentially active fronts against Iran, Syria or Hizballah – separately or together.
4. Desert combat units needed: To fight in desert conditions, for the first time since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the IDF would have to transform itself from top to bottom, building new armored divisions, reassigning the navy and air force which are designed for fighting northern enemies and expanding recruitment. For now, Israel does not possess a manpower reserve pool for this scale of recruitment, nor the training camps, equipment for desert combat or field command and base facilities.
Even the active Southern Command tailored for defending southern Israel against Hamas terrorists is not up to meeting the needs of a major new front against Egypt. Above all, the tens of billions of dollars to pay for this transformation are well beyond Israel’s means.
The new Israeli Chief of Staff must rebuild the IDF from scratch
Defense Minister Ehud Barak was urgently dispatched by Netanyahu to Washington on February 7, to put before the administration initial estimates of Israel’s military and budgetary requirements in case Egypt reversed is peace policy in the wake of the upheaval. Wednesday, February 9, Barak met with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon.
5. New Intelligence framework: During the decades in which the Egyptian front was dormant, intelligence cooperation between Israel and the Mubarak regime covered Israel’s needs. This intelligence partnership was channeled mostly through Intelligence Minister Gen. Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s new Vice President. Israel also neglected to research the structure of the Egyptian army, its special units and logistical systems.
Today, Israel would have to build new frameworks for tapping into military intelligence for its southern units.
6. US facilities against Iran – irrelevant? For four years, the United States invested heavily in Israel’s military resources and in the construction of special forward American bases in the Negev – all designed for a conflict with Iran. Joint war games and training exercises over the years perfected missile systems and interceptors geared to combat with Iran.
All these efforts suddenly look irrelevant and above all, disconnected from the current rush of events in the Middle East and the new perils that may be lurking around the corner.
Therefore, on Sunday, when Lt. Gen. Ashkenazi and Admiral Mullen shake hands, embrace and part with warm words of farewell, neither will refer to their Herculean labors during four years – both to ready Israel for an attack on Iran and to prevent one – because in less than two weeks those labors have been proved misdirected if not meaningless.
The changing of the guard finds Maj. Gen. Gantz saddled with the mighty task of building Israel a new army from the scratch.

DEBKA.

Behind the sound and fury in Egypt, Iran is quietly developing its naval westward momentum for extending a military loop around the Persian Gulf and out to the Red Sea and Mediterranean. The American fleet is also quietly redeploying around Egypt and in the Suez Canal.
Sunday, Feb. 6, for the first time ever, Iranian war ships docked at the Saudi Red Sea port of Jeddah opposite the Egyptian coast – just days after the USS Kearsarge Expeditionary Strike Group took up position in the Suez Canal.
The two navies are quietly maneuvering around one another though without facing off.
The Iranian movement appears to signal a radical reshuffle of the pieces on the region’s checkerboard, say DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Middle East experts: Up until now, Saudi Arabia, in close conjunction with Egypt and its President Hosni Mubarak, has led the Sunni Arab thrust to contain Iranian expansion – especially in the Persian Gulf. However, the opening of a Saudi port to Iranian war ships for the first time in the history of their relations points to the Egyptian uprising causing a shift in a new direction – a point Tehran has gladly made against American and Israel silence.
The Iranian Navy’s 12th Flotilla is received in Jeddah, on the Red Sea
Just an hour after the Iranian Navy’s 12^th flotilla, which has been deployed in the Gulf of Aden to secure its shipping against Somali piracy, put in to Jeddah Sunday, Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari announced they were on a mission of peace and friendship to the states of the region:
“In pursuit of a powerful (military) presence in the high seas and to consolidate our friendly ties and declare our message of peace and friendship to the regional countries,” said Sayyari, “the flotilla of warships of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Navy has entered Saudi Arabia’s port city of Jeddah.”
He listed the ships as Khark cruiser Kharg-class replenishment ship, hull no. 431, Alvand destroyer – IRIS and Alvand-class frigate, hull no. 71.
The Saudis have kept the Iranian warships’ arrival quiet. Even more intriguingly, they held their silence when Iran trumpeted its assumption of the exclusive right to decide which “alien” vessels and forces may be present in or transit the entire Persian Gulf.
Monday, Jan. 31, less than a week before Iranian warships entered Jeddah port, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces, said explicitly that the presence of alien forces and warships in the Persian Gulf was “unacceptable” to Tehran. This was closer than Iran had ever come to claiming sovereignty over the entire sea.
He pointed out that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s southern shore extended from the northern reaches of the Persian Gulf to the strategic Strait of Hormuz (through which Gulf oil reaches world markets). Firouzabadi admitted passage via the Persian Gulf was not illegal, but his tone made it clear that it was entirely up to Tehran to determine which movements were legal and which were not – the pretext of security against threats being unacceptable.
Iran claims right to control passage in the entire Persian Gulf
Indeed, Iranian Navy warships were deployed in Persian Gulf waters around the clock “to register the names and other details of foreign ships before permitting their passage,” he added, ignoring altogether the US Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain, the navies of the Gulf states and the British, French, Dutch and German warships cruising in the Persian Gulf.
And if the US thought it calls the shots on Persian Gulf traffic, Tehran advised Washington to think again. The Iranian Army and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps navies are working together to control the country’s waterways and protect its interests inside territorial waters and on the high seas, Firouzabadi said.
In the past, this sort of talk from Tehran always drew a strong response from Riyadh. Saudi lack of response this time may be due to the illness of King Abdullah, absent from home for two months and recuperating at his palace in Morocco, or possibly the outcome of a Saudi reassessment of the fallout on its own interests from Egypt’s popular uprising against Mubarak.
Saudi rulers may also have drawn certain conclusions from US President Barack Obama‘s treatment of Mubarak. King Abdullah is reported by our Persian Gulf sources as so enraged by what he sees as “Obama’s betrayal” of the Egyptian president – virtually giving him his marching orders – that the White House felt compelled to send a special personal envoy to the Saudi palace in Morocco this week to smooth his ruffled feathers and explain the game the administration has been playing in Cairo.
(More about the Saudi-US rift in Hot Points below)
Saudi king will never forgive Obama for driving Mubarak out
The king received the envoy but, after hearing him out, said very distinctly that for as long as he reigns, he will never, ever forgive the US president for his treatment of the Egyptian president and his attitude toward the Arab states counted as American friends and allies.
It was revealed later that he had set in motion the process for raising the level of diplomatic ties between Riyadh and Tehran after a bitter conversation by phone with President Obama.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Iranian and military sources report that Iran’s push to the west continues beyond the Red Sea. On February 2, less than a week before the Iranian warships docked in the Saudi port, the Iranian Navy’s Lt. Commander, Rear Admiral Gholam-Reza Khadem Biqam, instructed naval commandos that their next mission would take them to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal on their way to the Mediterranean.
Tehran is making no secret of its objective to establish a strategic presence far from its shores and close to the action.
This objective cast a bright light on Tehran’s order to the Palestinian Hamas fundamentalists late last week to muster all the combat strength they had in the Gaza Strip, transfer it across the border into Egypt’s Sinai peninsula and establish an operational link with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military and intelligence sources report. (See debkafile‘s exclusive report of Feb. 8: Lawlessness spreads in N. Sinai as Hamas transfers Al Qaeda cells).
Tehran commands Hamas to seize North Sinai
Hamas obeyed the command. Its armed men moved into Sinai along with senior Hizballah operations officers present in Gaza and 22 Hizballah escapees from Egyptian prisons. They had been convicted of running a spy and terrorist network in the Suez Canal cities in 2007-2008 under the command of Sami Shehab, a Hizballah officer very close to the organization’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Hamas was told to use the Egyptian riots for a jailbreak to release the entire Hizballah cell from Cairo prison, which it did last week.
In April 2009, Nasrallah admitted he had sent Sami Shehab to Egypt to establish the network. He explained this was a blow in the service of Arab interests versus the US and Israeli takeover of Egypt. But by then, he knew that Egyptian interrogators (members of the intelligence service headed by the new Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman, then Minister of Intelligence) had anyway extracted from Shehab under torture every detail of the network’s ties with Hizballah leaders in Beirut and they were no longer a secret.
Now, two years later, Nasrallah and Tehran appreciate the usefulness of the suddenly-freed Hizballah network and its knowledge of the cities on both banks of the Suez Canal, combined with the knowhow of Hamas special units on the loose in Sinai, for achieving six goals:
An Iranian super-plan to annex Sinai to Gaza for a radical Palestinian state
1. To cut off, even partially, the US military and naval Persian Gulf forces from their main route for supplies and reinforcements;
2. To establish an Iranian military-naval grip on the Suez Canal, through which 40 percent of the world’s maritime freights pass every day:
3. To bring an Iranian military presence close enough to menace the Egyptian heartland of Cairo and the Nile Delta;
4. To thread a contiguous Iranian military-naval line from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea through the Suez Canal and the Gaza Strip and up to the ports of Lebanon, where Hizballah has already seized power and toppled the pro-West government.
(See DEBKA-Net-Weekly 479 of Jan. 28: An Iranian Naval Base Planned in Beirut).
5. In the long term, to sever the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, annex it to the Gaza Strip and establish a large Hamas-ruled Palestinian state with access to the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea.
A Fatah-led Palestinian state on the West Bank within the American orbit would by comparison be politically and strategically inferior.
6. To tighten the naval and military siege on Israel.
US fleet takes up position in Suez Canal
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military and Washington sources note that, given the scale of Tehran’s expansionist and hegemonic ambitions, it is no wonder that President Obama last week ordered the USS Kearsarge Expeditionary Strike Group (LHD 3) to take up position in the Greater Bitter Lake of the Suez Canal.
The Kearsarge is accompanied by the amphibious transport dock USS Ponce, the dock landing-ship USS Ashland, the cruiser USS Normandy, the guided-missile destroyer USS Gonzalez, the guided-missile frigate USS Kauffman, the fast-attack submarine USS Scranton and the 26^th Marine Expeditionary Unit.
Based at Camp Lejeune, NC, the 26^th consists of Battalion Landing Team, 2^nd Battalion, 8^th Marines; Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 162 (Reinforced) and MEU Service Support Group 26.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report February 10, 2011, 4:31 PM (GMT+02:00)

In better times

The conversation between President Barack Obama and Saudi King Abdullah early Thursday, Feb. 10, was the most acerbic the US president has ever had with an Arab ruler, debkafile‘s Middle East sources report. They had a serious falling-out on the Egyptian crisis which so enraged the king that some US and Middle East sources reported he suffered a sudden heart attack. Rumors that he had died rocked the world financial and oil markets that morning and were denied by an adviser to the ruling family. Some Gulf sources say he has had heart attacks in the past.

Those sources disclose that the call which Obama put into Abdullah, who is recuperating from back surgery at his palace in Morocco, brought their relations into deep crisis and placed in jeopardythe entire edifice of US Iran and Middle East policies.

The king chastised the president for his treatment of Egypt and its president Hosni Muhbarak calling it a disaster that would generate instability in the region and imperil all the moderate Arab rulers and regimes which had backed the United States until now. Abdullah took Obama to task for ditching America’s most faithful ally in the Arab world and vowed that if the US continues to try and get rid of Mubarak, the Saudi royal family would bend all its resources to undoing Washington’s plans for Egypt and nullifying their consequences.

According to British intelligence sources in London, the Saudi King pledged to make up the losses to Egypt if Washington cuts off military and economic aid to force Mubarak to resign. He would personally instruct the Saudi treasury to transfer to the embattled Egyptian ruler the exact amounts he needs for himself and his army to stand up to American pressure.

Through all the ups and downs of Saudi-US relations since the 1950s no Saudi ruler has ever threatened direct action against American policy.
A senior Saudi source told the London Times that “Mubarak and King Abdullah are not just allies, they are close friends, and the King is not about to see his friend cast aside and humiliated.”

Indeed, our sources add, the king at the age of 87 is fearful that in the event of a situation developing in Saudi Arabia like the uprising in Egypt, Washington would dump him just like Mubarak.

debkafile‘s intelligence sources add that replacement aid for Egypt was not the only card in Abdullah’s deck. He informed Obama that without waiting for events in Egypt to play out or America’s response, he had ordered the process set in train for raising the level of Riyadh’s diplomatic and military ties with Tehran. Invitations had gone out from Riyadh for Iranian delegations to visit the main Saudi cities.

Abdullah stressed he had more than one bone to pick with Obama. The king accused the US president of turning his back not only on Mubarak but on another beleaguered American ally, the former Lebanese Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri, when he was toppled by Iran’s surrogate Hizballah.

Our sources in Washington report that all of President Obama’s efforts to pacify the Saudi king and explain his Egyptian policy fell on deaf ears.
Arab sources in London reported Tuesday, Feb. 8, that a special US presidential emissary was dispatched to Morocco with a message of explanation for the king. He was turned away. This is not confirmed by US or Saudi sources.

The initiation of dialogue between Riyadh and Tehran is the most dramatic fallout in the region from the crisis in Egypt. Its is a boon for the ayatollahs who are treated the sight of  pro-Western regimes either fading under the weight of domestic uprisings, or turning away from the US as Saudi Arabia is doing now.

This development is also of pivotal importance for Israel. Saudi Arabia’s close friendship with the Mubarak regime dovetailed neatly with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s alignment with Egypt and provided them with common policy denominators. The opening of the Saudi door to the Iranian push toward the Red Sea and Suez Canal tightens the Iranian siege ring around Israel.

Signs of friction between Washington and Riyadh were noticeable this week even before President Obama’s call to King Abdullah. Some American media reported the discovery that Saudi oil reserves were a lot smaller than previously estimated. And Saudi media ran big headlines, most untypically, alleging the US embassy and consulate in Dahran were paying sub-contractors starvation wages of $4.3 a day for cleaning work and $3.3 a day for gardening work.

Jewish Tribune – Israel may have to attack Iran, retired Israeli general says.

Barbour: Iran biggest threat to global security.

Mississippi Governor and 2012 Republican presidential hopeful Haley Barbour on Wednesday said that Iran is the world’s top threat to peace and stability. Barbour made the comments while speaking at the Herzliya Conference.

Barbour stated that world leaders should be judged by their success in responding to Iran’s nuclear program and what he says is its support for terrorism and destabilizing governments abroad.

The popular governor received a warm ovation from the prestigious security conference.

Barbour also congratulated Israel on its recent offshore gas discoveries.

Barbour, whose own state is an energy producer, criticized an American moratorium on drilling put in place by the Obama administration after last year’s BP oil spill. He said the ban “is inflicting a disaster on America.”

Barbour is on a five day visit to Israel sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition.

He was scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during his visit.

The Mississippi governor has not officially announced his intentions to run for president, but has said he will decide by spring whether or not to seek the Republican nomination.

Barbour’s trip to Israel followed visits by Republican presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6684255/with-friends-like-this-who-needs-enemies.thtml

I have previously noted (here, here and here) that the Cameron government is shaping up to be one of the most hostile towards Israel in living memory. David Cameron himself and Foreign Secretary William Hague have consistently treated Hamas propaganda about casualty figures in any war with Israel as reliable, even though they are invariably a pack of lies, and have furthermore astoundingly replicated the Arab strategy of turning Israeli self-defence into aggression at every opportunity. While he was in opposition, Hague infamously condemned Israel’s behaviour during the 2006 war in Lebanon as ‘disproportionate’; Cameron himself condemned Israel for its ‘attack’ on the Turkish terrorist boat the Mavi Marmara and designated Gaza a ‘prison camp’.

Now Hague is at it again. With the Arab world convulsed by the unrest in Tunisia and Egypt and with the acute danger that such instability will result in the region lurching even further into Islamic theocratic tyranny, the British Foreign Secretary’s response is – to bash Israel. Never mind that the uproar in Egypt and Tunisia, along with the nervousness in Jordan and Saudi Arabia that their regimes may also be swept away by rising extremism, demonstrates the utter absurdity of the claim that regional tranquillity depends on resolving the issue of ‘Palestine’. Hague makes a point of declaring that the casualty of the unrest will be… the Middle East peace process.

Never mind that this process has stalled because Abbas and co won’t even negotiate. Never mind that even these so-called ‘moderates’ insist they will never accept Israel as a Jewish state, and thus refuse to renounce their nine-decade long war of extermination against the Jewish presence in the land. Never mind that they continue to incite their people and their children to hate Jews and murder Israelis. Hague knows that Israel is to blame. As the Times (£) reports:

The Middle East peace process is in danger of becoming a casualty of the revolutionary tidal wave sweeping the Arab world, and Israel is putting itself at risk by failing to compromise, William Hague told The Times yesterday. Speaking on an emergency peace mission covering five countries in three days, the Foreign Secretary issued a blunt instruction to Israel to tone down the belligerent language used by Binyamin Netanyahu, its Prime Minister, since the uprising and protests, which have spread from Tunisia to Egypt and beyond.

… Mr Hague responded to increasingly militaristic pronouncements by Mr Netanyahu, who has been urging his nation to prepare for ‘any outcome’ and vowing to ‘reinforce the might of the state of Israel’. The Foreign Secretary said: ‘This should not be a time for belligerent language. It’s a time to inject greater urgency into the Middle East peace process.’

Belligerent? Israel is currently petrified that, if Islamists come to power in Egypt and tear up its 30-year old peace treaty as the Muslim Brothers have said they will do, it will face the nightmare of a renewed threat of war from the south as well as from Iran/Hezbollah in the north and Iran/Hamas in Gaza. It will be thus encircled by truly ‘belligerent ‘ enemies. It will have to turn its entire military and strategic thinking upside down in order to defend itself against such a grim prospect – and yes, of course it will have to reinforce its defences. Even more young Israelis will have to be called up to army service and face the risk of death to prevent their country from being wiped off the map. For William Hague to represent the warnings by Israel’s Prime Minister that his country must now prepare itself for this terrifying eventuality as ‘belligerency’ is simply obscene.

Let us hear no more nauseating hypocrisy from Cameron or Hague about how they are Israel’s staunch allies. With ‘friends’ like these, who needs enemies?

Egypt: Hizbullah, Iran want to ‘ignite the region’.

Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah is “walking in the footsteps of his mentor,” Iranian Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Husam Zaki told the Saudi daily al-Watan on Wednesday.

The spokesman accused the two Shi’ite leaders of wanting “to ignite the region.”

“Nasrallah does not have the right to accuse Egypt of being a follower of Israel and the US at a time when he works on shattering the unified front in Palestine and Lebanon to implement Iranian agendas,” Zaki said.

Hizbullah did not address comments from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, but it did say that one of its senior members who escaped from an Egyptian prison during the unrest surrounding anti-government protests in that country was still in Egypt. Reuters had previously reported that Sami Chehab had arrived in Lebanon, according to London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat Arabic language newspaper.

Hizbullah said that it would have properly welcomed Chehab, who was arrested last year for allegedly plotting to attack targets in Egypt, if he had arrived in Lebanon.

Also on Wednesday, Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman said that terror organizations are the primary threat to the security of Egypt and that many operatives of Al-Qaida and other Jihadist organizations had escaped from the country’s prisons recently. Suleiman also told Egyptian paper Al-Ahram that those terrorist organizations had refused to stop the violence and unrest in Egypt, which he seemed to blame on them.

IDF says enlisting hackers – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Spokesman tells panel on internet ‘as strategic weapon’ army wants 120 ‘new media fighters’

Boaz Fyler

IDF Spokesman Avi Benayahu said Tuesday that the army is currently in the process of enlisting “new media fighters”.

Benayahu told a panel on the subject of “the digital medium as strategic weapon” that the army was searching for “little hackers who were born and raised online”.However, Aliza admitted, “we are still learning and we have a long way to go”.

“We screen them with special care and train them to serve the state,” the spokesman told the panel, which was part of the Herzliya Conference. He added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was personally supporting the venture and that he had supplied a budget of NIS 6 million ($1.63 million) for the enlistment of 120 soldiers.

Benayahu said the internet had had a significant effect on recent uprisings in Arab nations such as Tunisia and Egypt. “We cannot but be impressed at how Western technology harms regimes at the other end of the spectrum, such as Iran, or at how one cell phone camera can harm a regime more than any intelligence agency’s operations,” he said. Egypt, however, “still does not understand the power that is being given to the public, while slowly being taken away from its leader”.

The spokesman said he also plans to establish blogs for other spokesmen and commanders as a PR tool. “We are at this front and proceeding slowly,” he said, and recommended that the government appoint a “new media minister”.

“The army is too involved with internal public relations. The army must not fill a space left by the state – it should be taking care of this.” Aliza, a lone soldier from the US, explained about the new unit at the IDF Spokesperson’s Office. “We began to work with new media during Operation Cast Lead. Bloggers are very important and very influential,” she said.

This is about the democratization of information, and about the fact that you cannot stuff information down people’s throats but you can make it more palatable.” Aliza said the office’s YouTube channel is currently its most successful venture. “Photos catch the eye and constitute visual proof that is better than words,” she said, adding that IDF footage from the flotilla raid became the most-watched videos online and affected “media reports in the world as well as online debates”.

Mullen to arrive in Israel to bid farewell to Ashkenazi.

In an unprecedented farewell gesture to IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, will arrive in Israel on Sunday to give a personal sendoff to the retiring Israeli army head.

Ashkenazi and Mullen have met close to 20 times over the past four years, and next week’s visit will be Mullen’s fifth trip to Israel.

When he made his first trip in 2007, he became the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs to visit Israel in a decade.

IDF sources said Mullen will arrive Sunday morning and hold a final working session with Ashkenazi. He will attend a farewell party for Ashkenazi that the IDF is planning for Sunday night on the campus of Tel Aviv University, where he is expected to speak.

Mullen will also attend the change-of-command ceremony at the Kirya Military Headquarters in Tel Aviv, and immediately afterward will sit down with incoming chief of General Staff Maj.- Gen. Benny Gantz. The two know each other well from the period that Gantz served as the IDF’s attaché in Washington.

Over the years, Ashkenazi and Mullen have developed a unique friendship that has assisted Israel in retaining its strong strategic ties with the US even during the increase in tension between the Netanyahu government and the Obama administration.

Mullen was last in Israel in June when he made a brief stopover on his way home from visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan. During that trip, Mullen said he always tried to view regional threats from an Israeli perspective.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report February 8, 2011, 11:20 PM (GMT+02:00)

USS Kearsarge with Marine helicopters

A fresh surge of popular anti-Mubarak protest ripping across Egypt Tuesday, Feb. 8 has brought the country closer to a military coup to stem the anarchy than at any time since the street caught fire on Jan. 25.

Vice President Omar Suleiman warned a group of Egyptian news editors that the only choice is between a descent into further lawlessness and a military takeover in Cairo. The distinguished political pundit of the 1960s and 1970s Hasnin Heikal saw no other way out of the crisis but a government ruling by the army’s bayonets.

The arrival of US naval, marine and air forces in the Suez Canal’s Greater Bitter Lake indicated that the crisis was quickly swerving out of control.

debkafile‘s military sources report that the American force consists of the USS Kearsarge Expeditionary Strike Group of six warships. Helicopters on some of their decks are there to carry and drop the 2,200 marines of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit which has been bolstered by two special operations battalions.

The flotilla has a rapid strike stealth submarine, the USS Scranton, which is designed to support special forces’ operations.

The US strike force has taken up position at a strategic point opposite Ismailia between the west bank of the Suez Canal and its eastern Sinai bank. It is poised for rapid response in the event of the passage of about 40 percent of the world’s marine freights through the Suez Canal being threatened or any other extreme occurrence warranting US military intervention.

For a few hours Tuesday, it looked as through Egypt was finally going back to normal after a two-week popular uprising. But then, suddenly, thousands again took to the streets and squares of Egyptian towns – from the Western desert on the Libyan border up to the northern Sinai town of El Arish in the east, recalling Hosni Mubarak’s warning of chaos if he were to depart too soon.

Tuesday, the protesters mounted their biggest demonstrations of their campaign to oust Mubarak – in Cairo, Alexandria, the Delta Cities, the industrial belt around Mahalla-el-Kebir and the steel city of Heluan, shouting “Death to Mubarak!” and “Hang Mubarak!”
Although reforms and pay hikes have been pledged by the new Egyptian government, large groups of workers, mainly in Cairo, rebelled against state-appointed managements and set up “Revolutionary Committees” to run factories and other work places, including Egyptian state TV and Egypt’s biggest weekly “Ros el-Yusuf.”

The stock market and the pyramids remained closed and traffic blocked solid on the streets of Cairo.