WarSclerotic

How Next War In Mideast Will Shape Up And When – Investors.com.

The next Middle Eastern war may have already started.

Its first casualties may have been the five members of the Fogel family, Israelis slaughtered in their sleep by Palestinian terrorists in the town of Itamar on March 11 in the disputed territories of the West Bank.

Or the first shots of the war might have been heard on March 19 as the Hamas terror group significantly ramped up rocket and mortar attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Or perhaps it was in Jerusalem on March 23, when a backpack bomb spiked with ball bearings detonated, killing a British woman and wounding at least 25 others, the first such attack in that city in seven years.

The Israeli response to this increase in terrorist violence directed at its civilians has been predictable: measured, targeted attacks and arrests aimed at those who struck Israel.

The world response is also predictable: condemnation of Israel for exercising its right of self-defense.

We’ve seen this cycle before.

What’s different this time is that the shifting sands of the Middle East have raised the stakes in Israel’s confrontation with Hamas in Gaza and its terror ally Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy in southern Lebanon.

Who are Hezbollah and Hamas and what might the next Middle East war look like?

Prior to the attacks of 9/11, the Islamic terror group that had killed the most U.S. citizens was Lebanon’s Hezbollah (Party of God). Hezbollah carried out the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, killing 17 Americans and 46 others, and the Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. servicemen.

Shooting Into Politics

Since the 1980s, Hezbollah has transformed itself from a terrorist group to a violent Shiite Muslim political party. Hezbollah virtually runs Lebanon. With up to $400 million in funding from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah is thought to have assassinated Rafic Hariri, a well-regarded former Lebanese prime minister, in 2005.

Hezbollah has also shown increasing sophistication by working with the Mexican drug cartels to smuggle drugs into the U.S. as a method to finance their far-flung operations. In addition to being opposed to Western civilization, Hezbollah has stated, “It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth.”

Hezbollah staged a cross-border raid into Israel in 2006 to capture Israeli soldiers, killing three, wounding two and kidnapping two. This provoked a 34-day conflict that saw some 1,200 Lebanese and 158 Israeli deaths, with Hezbollah firing up to 4,200 rockets into Israel, targeting civilian areas. Hezbollah even managed to hit an Israeli naval vessel with an Iranian-supplied anti-ship cruise missile, demonstrating a new and militarily significant capability.

During the 2006 war, Hezbollah deliberately positioned military assets in civilian homes, schools, hospitals and mosques. The inevitable result was twofold: collateral damage to Lebanese civilians and heavy international criticism of Israel for civilian deaths.

For Hezbollah the lesson learned from the 2006 conflict was simple: double down on collocating rockets, ammunition dumps and command nodes with civilians. The cynical result: Hezbollah’s 40,000 Iranian-supplied rockets are aimed at Israel from densely populated civilian areas.

Hamas, a Palestinian Sunni Muslim terror group, runs the Gaza Strip, an area of 1.6 million people adjacent to southern coastal Israel. Hamas has ruled Gaza since 2006, when it won election over its more secular rival, Fatah, which now administers Palestinian affairs in the West Bank, where 1.5 million Arabs live.

After the election, Hamas, an Arabic acronym for “Islamic resistance movement,” purged its political rivals. Hamas is the Palestinian wing of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group that shares the goals of al-Qaida, namely, the destruction of Israel and Western civilization. The Muslim Brotherhood differs with al-Qaida on methods — hence, the mistaken view in the Western media that it is “moderate.”

Since taking over in 2006, Hamas has systematically imposed Shariah law on what was once a fairly secular population. With unrest sweeping the Arab world, it spread somewhat to the Gaza Strip, but Hamas brutally repressed these stirrings while attacking foreign journalists who tried to report on the protests.

Hamas is now in unity talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, an unheard-of possibility just a year ago. Formal negotiations are to start in Cairo in April — presumably under the watchful eye of Egypt’s military government, now fully melded with the Muslim Brotherhood. Abbas is preparing to submit a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood to the U.N. in September.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working toward unveiling a peace initiative with the Palestinians in May. Even if all of the Palestinian demands were met, less the dissolution of Israel itself, this effort will fall on deaf ears as Hamas feels newly empowered now that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is influencing policy in Cairo.

The first practical impact of the Muslim Brotherhood’s hijacking of the Egyptian revolution will be the de facto lifting of the arms embargo against Hamas. This will allow new and highly capable armaments to be shipped into Gaza from Iran and other regional players who seek Israel’s destruction. Among such troubling weapons systems are Chinese-designed, Iranian-made anti-ship cruise missiles.

Israel intercepted a shipment of these cruise missiles destined for Hamas on an Iranian-chartered cargo ship only three weeks ago. With Egypt beginning to turn a blind eye to illegal weapons smuggling to Gaza, it is only a matter of months before Hamas becomes significantly stronger militarily.

A calculation of when the next Mideast war might transition from the preliminary stages to intense, open conflict can be made by looking at the calendar of coming events.

Egyptian parliamentary elections are scheduled for September, with a presidential election in November. Egyptian politicians, in and out of the Muslim Brotherhood, are proving adept at blaming Israel and the Jews for all sorts of ills. An Israeli-Hamas war could stir Islamist sentiments to the advantage of the Muslim Brotherhood.

That the Palestinians intend to take their case to the U.N. in September offers a clue as well. Palestinian diplomats don’t expect to win international recognition of their unilateral declaration of statehood in the Security Council, where the U.S. has a veto and friends.

Rather, Palestinians expect to take their case to the larger U.N. General Assembly using the “uniting for peace” procedure created in 1950 as a work-around from continuous vetoes from the Soviet Union regarding the Korean War.

Winning a U.N. General Assembly vote wouldn’t, by itself, lead to formal statehood recognition for the Palestinians — the Security Council is needed for that — but it would provide their cause a great deal of legitimacy.

So September appears to be the critical month. Looking at the timelines of the last two conflicts between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah, 23 days and 34 days, respectively, Hamas would have to begin the campaign in mid- to late-August. This would achieve maximum political effect in the Egyptian elections and in the U.N. in September.

An earlier attack would draw an Israeli counterstroke that might be completed too soon, diminishing political gains.

It’s always a danger to project how military operations might unfold from past corollaries. But Israel’s response to Hezbollah aggression in 2006 and its 2008 response to increased Hamas rocket attacks, known as Operation Cast Lead, offer examples.

Hamas and Hezbollah have anti-ship missiles with range sufficient to blockade Israel’s two main ports: Haifa and Ashdod. Using these missiles against Israeli naval vessels and commercial shipping would mark an unprecedented escalation of the ongoing attacks on Israel, one that would threaten the Israeli economy.

Using anti-ship missiles in this way would also provide Hamas and Hezbollah with the optics of engaging in the traditional statecraft of a naval blockade, placing them on par with the U.S. and European powers. This is in contradistinction from their prior practice of firing unguided rockets indiscriminately at Israeli population centers — an action seen more as terror bombing than as a legitimate exercise of force.

Thus, a likely trigger of the coming war will be a joint announcement by Hamas and Hezbollah of a blockade of Israel.

Operation Cast Lead resulted in up to 1,400 Palestinian deaths, about half of whom were civilians. As with Hezbollah, Hamas has learned to locate its military hardware in civilian centers to purposefully maximize civilian suffering in return for maximized political effect.

Battle View

The war’s unfolding may be this simple:

• Hamas and Hezbollah declare a blockade and commence cruise missile attacks on shipping.

• Israel targets the Hamas and Hezbollah anti-ship batteries that will undoubtedly be located in densely populated apartment buildings.

• The terror groups trot out the international press to duly report on Israel’s “atrocities” against civilians.

• Hamas and Hezbollah initiate massive rocket barrages on Israel’s cities and towns.

• Israel responds with a 30-day air-ground operation to occupy and destroy the rocket-launching areas and their associated command and control centers.

In the end, Israel wins the battle, but loses the diplomatic and political war.

A Hamas/Hezbollah blockade of Israel would present a serious threat to that nation. Compared with 2006 and 2008, Hamas and Hezbollah are far better armed and trained and will likely benefit from the placement of Iranian al-Quds force teams in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

This will result in collateral damage to the civilian populations that will likely greatly exceed what was seen in 2006 and 2008.

And, from the perspective of Hamas and Hezbollah, these thousands of civilian deaths will be well worth it — expendable martyrs in the grand jihad of delegitimizing Israel.

• DeVore served in the California Legislature from 2004 to 2010. He is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and served as a special assistant for foreign affairs in the Reagan-era Pentagon. He studied at American University in Cairo in 1984-85.

Michael Oren: What If Gadhafi Had Gone Nuclear? – WSJ.com.

The Libya experience highlights the risk of letting dangerous regimes—like Iran’s—gain the world’s most powerful weapons.

By MICHAEL OREN

America and its allies, empowered by the United Nations and the Arab League, are interceding militarily in Libya. But would that action have been delayed or even precluded if Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi had access to nuclear weapons? No doubt Gadhafi is asking himself that same question.

Gadhafi unilaterally forfeited his nuclear weapons program by 2004, turning over uranium-enriching centrifuges and warhead designs. A dictator like him—capable of ordering the murders of 259 civilians aboard Pan Am Flight 103 and countless others in many countries including his own—would not easily concede the ultimate weapon. Gadhafi did so because he believed he was less secure with the bomb than he would be after relinquishing it. He feared that the U.S., which had recently invaded Iraq, would deal with him much as it had Saddam Hussein.

A similar fear, many intelligence experts in the U.S. and elsewhere believe, impelled the Iranian regime to suspend its own nuclear weapons program in 2003. According to these analysts, the program resumed only when the threat of military intervention receded. It continues to make steady progress today.

The Iranian regime is the pre- eminent sponsor of terror in the world, a danger to pro-Western states, and the enemy of its own people who strive for democracy. It poses all of these hazards without nuclear weapons. Imagine the catastrophes it could inflict with them.

And if Iran acquires the bomb, other Middle Eastern states will also pursue nuclear capabilities, transforming the entire region into a tinderbox. The global enthusiasm recently sparked by Arab protesters demanding freedoms would likely have been limited if Middle Eastern autocrats had nuclear arsenals. Under such circumstances, the question would be not only which side—the ruled or the rulers—gains ascendancy in the Middle East, but who controls the keys and the codes.

The efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons have been obscured by the dramatic images emanating from the region, but the upheaval makes that campaign all the more critical. While cynically shooting its own dissidents, the Iranian regime is calling for the overthrow of other Middle Eastern governments and exploiting the disorder to extend its influence.

In Lebanon, Iran has installed a puppet government and gained a strategic foothold on the eastern Mediterranean—an achievement of historic gravity. Triumphantly, Iranian warships for the first time passed through the Suez Canal and maneuvered off the Syrian coast. Iran has also stepped up arms supplies to Hezbollah and Hamas, as revealed by Israel’s recent interception of the freighter Victoria laden with Iranian missiles. And last week Iran welcomed—or perhaps instigated—the firing of some 100 rockets and mortar shells into Israel from Gaza.

All the while, Iran has remained the target of international sanctions designed to dissuade it from pursuing military nuclear capabilities. These strictures have affected Iran’s economy, but they have yet to significantly slow the country’s nuclear program or dampen its leaders’ appetite for atomic weapons. In spite of some technical difficulties, according to International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano, Iran is enriching uranium “steadily, constantly.”

America’s policy, like Israel’s, is that “all options are on the table.” We know that only a credible threat of military intervention can convince nondemocratic regimes to abandon their pursuit of nuclear weapons. Sanctions alone are unlikely to prove effective unless backed by measures capable of convincing the Iranian regime that the military option is real. It is the very threat of such force that reduces the danger that it will ever have to be used.

The critical question then becomes: Does anybody in Tehran believe that all options are truly on the table today? Based on Iran’s brazen pronouncements, the answer appears to be no. And while the allied intercession in Libya may send a message of determination to Iran, it might also stoke the Iranian regime’s desire to become a nuclear power and so avoid Gadhafi’s fate. For that reason it is especially vital now to substantiate the “all options” policy.

Now is the moment to dissuade the Iranian regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon that might deter any Libya-like intervention or provide the ayatollahs with a doomsday option. If Gadhafi had not surrendered his centrifuges in 2004 and he were now surrounded in his bunker with nothing left but a button, would he push it?

Mr. Oren is the Israeli ambassador to the United States.

DEBKA.

Bashar Assad

Every afternoon, since the protests against the Syrian government erupted three weeks ago, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan has phoned President Bashar Assad with daily updates from the Turkish intelligence agency – MIT – about events in Syria and the situation in the Kurdish regions on the Syrian and Turkish sides of their border.
Erdogan is keeping close tabs on the level of dissidence among the 3.5 million Syrian Kurds (about 10 percent of the population) because of his own concerns. He maintains a strong Turkish intelligence presence in the Kurdish cities close to the Turkish border and among the hundreds of thousands of Kurds living in Syria’s capital Damascus and its financial and commercial hub, Aleppo.
The Turkish prime minister also keeps his Syrian friend abreast of possible signs of Iraqi Kurdish infiltration of Syria or arms smuggling from Iraq for a Kurdish insurrection against the Assad regime to match the Sunni revolt in the southern Syrian province of Horan and its capital Daraa.
Up until now, Erdogan has been able to assure Assad that the Kurdish front is fairly quiet and poses no serious threat, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources.
This information is vitally important to Assad.
External support system no help against domestic defiance
If the largely Sunni Muslim Syrian Kurds rise up in a body against him, the rest of the country’s Sunnis (76 percent of the population) may well follow suit. So far, most are keeping their heads down, staying clear of street protests and watching from the sidelines to see how they unfold.
But the moment they rally en masse around the opposition, Assad knows his fate is sealed.
The Syrian ruler knows better than most how fickle external support can be. (Where is his closest ally Iran at his time of need?) When the chips are down, no foreign power will help him outgun or outrun his own people.
They are not impressed by his short-order pacifiers, such as a superficial cabinet reshuffle and reforms promised but not delivered. Neither will the Muslim Brotherhood, riding high since it won a place in the Egyptian sun, be put off its role in the opposition’s Days of Rage by the closing of Syria’s only casino Wednesday, April 7, or the lifting of the ban on a full Islamic veil for schoolgirls.
And pent-up popular frustration born of long repression by a tyrannical minority regime is ruffling the populace’s passivity.
Scraping the bottom of the barrel for assets to quell protest
In Cairo, the Supreme Military Council which replaced the Mubarak regime had to accept that it does not control the Egyptian army any more than the deposed president did. The generals are therefore wary of issuing direct orders for fear of disobedience or outright insubordination.
The Syrian president is in much the same boat because the Assads and their ruling elite belong to the minority Allawite denomination, whereas the majority rank and file of the armed forces is Sunni, like the rest of the country.
Only one of the Syrian army’s seven divisions, the Fourth – which is also the Republican Guard commanded by Bashar’s younger brother Maher Assad – is manned by Allawites and therefore trustworthy. The other six cannot be counted on to obey the Allawite regime’s orders.
Given the makeup of the armed forces, the Syrian president has not only resorted to brutal tactics but also to acrobatic maneuvers to scrape up enough loyal military resources for putting down mounting popular outbreaks.
The revolt in the Hurani town of Daraa near the Israeli border was the most conspicuous case in point – though unlikely to be the last. The officers and men of the Sunni-dominated Second Division permanently stationed in that region kept to their barracks, while a substantial part off the Republican Guard had to be sent out of Damascus for the crackdown on rioting protesters.
If the Sunnis were to rise up en masse, elements of the army rank and file might well join them and turn their guns on the regime and its loyalists.
Erdogan grinds his own Kurdish axe
The Turkish Prime Minister has more than a neighborly interest in propping up the embattled Syrian ruler, primarily his fear of a spillover of Syrian Kurdish unrest into the eleven provinces of southeastern Turkey populated by 16-20 million Turkish Kurds, who represent about a quarter of the total population.
If that happened, the Arab Spring could quickly evolve into a Kurdish Spring, imperiling Turkish stability.
Assad’s fall, furthermore, would break up the Ankara-Tehran-Damascus axis which Erdogan has worked hard to put together since 2009.
It would also write finis to the Turkish prime minister’s dream of heading a new Muslim bloc to replace the disintegrating Egyptian-Saudi alliance as the main cog of Middle East equilibrium. The Turkish premier was encouraged by the Egyptian revolution and Mubarak’s overthrow to believe he was on the road to realizing his ambition. The uprising against Assad showed him he still has a way to go.
For help in preserving the Syrian president in power, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Washington sources report that Erdogan turned to the White House some weeks ago and opened a running dialogue with President Barack Obama.
He counted on the US president sharing an interest in preserving the Ankara-Tehran-Damascus axis as the only available line of communication to Tehran for a possible deal on the Iranian nuclear program.
Erdogan also believed they were both interested in keeping Lebanon from capsizing. As he sees it, Assad’s fall would shatter the fragile multi-sectarian structure holding Lebanon together and plunge the country in another civil war alongside the conflicts already raging in Libya and Yemen.
Saudi king helps Assad to shield his own backyard
Quite a few of the US president’s advisers share this view and are encouraging Obama to keep up the regular personal exchanges as a useful window for assessing the state of affairs in the Arab world.
Obama has not explicitly subscribed to Erdogan’s views in any of their conversations, but senior sources in Washington say the very fact that he has been listening provided the Turkish prime minister with periodical openings to ask for intelligence data useful to Assad, which were duly passed on to him.
Another important gear in Assad’s support system revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Middle East sources is the helping hand extended from a surprising source, Saudi King Abdullah.
For reasons of his own, the king told his Director of General Intelligence Prince Muqrin bin Abdulaziz to instruct Shammar tribal chiefs in Syria not to join the uprising against the Syrian president.
Shammar tribal lands straddle Saudi Arabia and Jordan as well as southern Syria, where the town of Abu Kamal, strategically located near the Iraqi border, is the urban center for its 1.2 million members.
For Assad, Saudi input in keeping this sensitive part of the country calm is as important to his survival as Erdogan’s contribution.
It is surprising given the many years of personal animosity between King Abdullah and Assad which culminated in 2010 in the Syrian ruler’s stubborn rejection of every Saudi offer of cooperation in Lebanon.
But Riyadh stepped up to Damascus out of concern for its own backyard.
Abdullah reckons that if Assad goes, Jordan’s King Abdullah II will be the next skittle to fall. So just by helping the Syrian ruler keep his head above water, the Saudi monarch believes he is building a protective moat around the Jordanian king’s palace and safeguarding the northern border of his realm.

DEBKA.

Yet another Middle East topsy-turvy situation saw Israel taking covert action in Sudan to keep Libyan chemical weapons including nerve gas from reaching their destination in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip after they were in the hands of Iranian and Palestinian agents, smuggling contractors and traffickers in Sudan.
This week too, Saudi Arabia went into action against Iran’s nuclear momentum.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence and counter-terror sources report that Israel acted in Sudan at Washington’s behest. America’s war on al Qaeda has been hobbled. Yemen’s decision to suspend covert US anti-terror operations on its soil (see first article in this issue on the Saudi-US breach) holds down US operational assets from fighting Al Qaeda in the entire strategic region of East Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea – i.e., in Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea.
The Western declaration of war on Muammar Qaddafi has moreover cut short the flow of information coming from Libyan intelligence, which he controls, about Al Qaeda activities in those regions.
However, from mid-March US undercover agencies had discovered that high-ranking rebel officers in Benghazi were willing to sell the stocks of Libyan mustard and nerve gas they had captured to the highest bidder and warned Israel that Hizballah and Hamas purchasing delegations were on the point of clinching a deal under Tehran’s direction and paid for in Iranian cash to the tune of $18 million
This was reported exclusively for the first time by debkafile on March 31.
The chemical weapons consignments wiped out before reaching their destinations
The first consignments of shells and poison gas were ferried to the Iranian intelligence bases in Iran, which oversee the arms smuggling routes to the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, by a gang of Sudanese weapons smugglers based in the northeastern town of Atbara, 215 miles from Khartoum.
The Sudanese ring is part of a network with long arms reaching as far as Montenegro on the Adriatic, the Iranian island of Kish in the Persian Gulf, Mogadishu, Somalia and the Lebanese port of Tripoli on the Mediterranean.
In March 2009, the Americans joined an Israeli air strike on an Iranian 23-truck convoy of illegal arms wending its way through Sudan to Egypt, supporting the operation with spy satellites, reconnaissance planes and assault craft.
But this time, they passed the operation onto Israeli intelligence, air force and special units, including the naval commando Shayetet 13 unit.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources report that the missile attack Tuesday, April 5 on a car carrying two arms smuggling handlers, one Iranian and one Hamas near Port Sudan, was only a small corner of a major operation.
(See debkafile story of Thursday, April 7: Special operations team hits top Iranian-Hamas arms smugglers in Sudan).
Other strikes hit Iranian, Hizballah and Hamas command centers in the Port Sudan area and wiped out the entire shipment of chemical and nerve gas shells from Libya.
Khartoum decided to release word of the deaths of two unidentified passengers as a result of a missile hit and the photo of a burnt car – and nothing else. It made no mention of the band of special operations units armed with surface-to-surface missies that were deployed to keep Sudanese and Iranian forces and their allies away from the targeted chemical weapons consignments.
Not a word has come out so far about the scores of agents and operatives killed and the trail of torched command centers left by the Israel teams in their wake.
Two foreign deaths and a totaled Sonata Hyundai could hardly justify the three inquiry commissions set up by Sudan to probe the episode. However, the effect of the destruction of a quantity of poison gas on the civilian population needed to be addressed in a hurry before word leaked out and started a major panic.
Rumors are already circulating about strangers seen in the neighborhood wearing masks and anti-contamination clothing.
Saudis will act to stop Bushehr going on line – with or without Washington
In Riyadh meanwhile, the Saudi government decided to bring out in the open the menace posed to the region by the Iranian nuclear reactor at Bushehr and Tehran’s military nuclear program. The dangers were brought to the attention of all the inhabitants of the Persian Gulf in light of the catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.
The Saudis decided to make a major issue of Iran’s nuclear drive, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Gulf sources report, after receiving word that Tehran means to activate the Bushehr reactor in August, notwithstanding the warnings of the Russian designers that the reactor was not safe to operate and might explode. The same danger emanates from other parts of the program.
Saudi rulers are convinced that a nuclear catastrophe on the Fukushima scale is hanging over the Gulf as a result of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
In an attempt to calm Gulf fears, Tehran staged two events this week.
Monday, April 4, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Deputy Director of the Iranian Nuclear Organization, Nasser Rastkhah, made two appearances and said that in the aftermath of the disaster in Japan, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran – AEOI had increased the number of nuclear Emergency Alert Systems (EAS) deployed at its nuclear facilities from 13 to 50 to maximize the detection of radioactivity in case of nuclear mishaps.
Rastkhah said that the new environmental radiation surveillance stations “detect any change in the environment’s gamma rays profusion, which is the best indicator of the occurrence of nuclear accidents or experiments.”
Ahmadinejad insisted at a press conference in Tehran that the Bushehr nuclear reactor, the country’s first nuclear power generator, could safely start operation later this year. Referring to the Japanese disaster, he said that although Bushehr is situated on the Persian Gulf, this body of water has no history of tsunami.
He only omitted to mention its proneness to earthquakes, two of which shook the region in the past year alone.
He also explained that whereas the technology at Fukushima is half a century old, Iran’s is completely up to date.
The Saudis have dismissed this argument as “absurd and dangerous.”
On Wednesday, April 6, Saudi King Abdullah warned US Defense Secretary Robert Gates when they met in Riyadh that if Washington doesn’t stop Iran from activating the reactor – even if necessary by force – Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states would take care of it themselves.

DEBKA.

Robert Gates

The sixty-year old US-Saudi alliance has had its ups and downs but the differences were never allowed to sink to the icy level which marks them today and is seriously hurting America’s strategic standing in the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf.
By the time Defense Secretary Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived in Riyadh Wednesday, April 6, things had gone too far for his rescue mission to have any chance of success, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Gulf sources report. His conversation with King Abdullah got exactly nowhere.
Gates hurried over to Riyadh after a secret Saudi message was received in Washington announcing a freeze on arms purchases from the United States, a first in Saudi-US military relations. The message explained that Riyadh needed spare funds to finance military operations against Iran in view of the deteriorating security situation. It hinted at the high cost of deploying Saudi troops in Bahrain and buttressing the oil kingdom’s border with Yemen in view of escalating civil warfare and Yemen President Abdullah Ali Saleh‘s uphill battle against his opposition.
Underlying the words was a hint that Riyadh intended to go shopping for cheaper weapons systems outside the United States, which was unheard of until now. New ground was also broken by Riyadh’s explanation that it needs to address the military and nuclear threat coming from Iran. For decades, America was accepted without question by all parts of the Gulf region as their as trusty security shield.
First Saudi arms shopping expedition ever outside the US
The blow to American pockets as well as its prestige is disastrous: Saudi Arabia is the top buyer of American military hardware. It committed last year to a package, including F-15 fighter jets and a range of helicopters, worth $60 billion, the largest America’s military industry has ever landed.
Shortly before Gates landed in Riyadh, US officials briefing the press traveling on his plane assured them he would bring “good news” from Riyadh on the arms deal. But other officials admitted that the Saudi Arabian monarchy was “so unhappy with the Obama administration for the way it pushed out President Mubarak of Egypt” that it had sent senior officials to the People’s Republic of China and Russia in search of expanded business and defense procurement opportunities.
The conversation between the Saudi King and US defense secretary ranged over four main subjects: Iran, Bahrain, Yemen and the Saudi-US arms transaction, whose content is revealed here for the first time by DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Gulf sources.
On Iran, Riyadh and Washington were wider apart than ever before, their differences on the handling of Iran’s expansionist thrust and nuclear program exacerbated by the latest Arab turmoil.
In a blistering denunciation, the king told Gates he found it hard to excuse the Obama administration’s obdurate disregard of Saudi intelligence updates to the CIA on the complicity of Tehran and Hizballah in destabilizing Lebanon and Bahrain.
Bushehr – a ticking Fukushima on Saudi Arabia’s doorstep
Even less excusable in the Saudi view was Washington’s refusal to take seriously the testimony offered after Saudi troops entered Manama to defend the Bahraini throne that Iran was stepping up its preparations for military intervention after fomenting riots among the 2 million Shiites living in the eastern Saudi oil regions.
The Saudi ruler had concluded that no matter what evidence was put before President Barack Obama, he would never be deflected from his policy of engagement with Tehran.
Abdullah warned that American indulgence of Iran’s nuclear aspirations was placing the very survival of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states in grave jeopardy.
The king had a particular bone to pick over the Iranian nuclear reactor at Bushehr, our sources disclose. Despite all of our warnings, Abdullah told Gates, you tried to persuade us (in August 2010) that Iran’s first reactor would be harmless. And what do we see today if not a potential Fukushima on our doorstep? Even Tehran is scared to activate it after witnessing the Japanese nuclear calamity, realizing that if it explodes, millions of Iranians will die.
So how are we supposed to feel now about the Iranian reactor and US assurances?
(See a separate article on the role of chemical and nuclear weapons in the Arab revolt).
Abdullah was harshly critical of the US presidential advisers’ counsel to the White House to withhold endorsement from Saudi military intervention in Bahrain.
As long as Washington hopes to topple the Bahraini and Saudi kingdoms by promoting pro-democracy revolutions on the Egyptian pattern, why would you expect the Persian Gulf rulers to support America and treat it as an ally? he asked the US defense secretary.
Abdullah tells Saleh to turn his back on Washington and hold tight
King Abdullah explained that once he had realized the Obama administration had no intention of acting in consideration of the security interests of the Saudi and Gulf nations, he resolved to take their affairs into his own hands. He said he now feels free to do what he thinks necessary to advance those interests without resorting to – or even consulting with – Washington.
Gates confirmed that the US did have “evidence” of Iranian meddling in the turmoil besetting Bahrain and other Middle Eastern countries, refuting the Obama administration’s public statements denying Iran was a primary factor. But this admission most probably came too late. Abdullah has set his course on a new policy that distances the kingdom from the United States. Even though Gates disagrees with Obama on the Middle East – and especially on military intervention in Libya – the Saudi monarch knows that his time is almost up at the Pentagon.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Gulf sources, Riyadh has in the past 10 days struck out against the United States by launching an independent course in Yemen.
Last week, the Obama administration reversed its policy of support for President Abdullah Ali Saleh and told him it was time to negotiate terms for his departure with the opposition.
The Saudis stepped in thereupon and told Saleh to ignore Washington and hold tight because from now on, he could count on Saudi-led GCC backing taking the place of the United States.
This was Riyadh’s first public demonstration of the new policy as exercised in the Arabian Peninsula. It was followed, according to our exclusive counter-terror sources, by intensive consultations between the Yemeni president and Saudi intelligence chiefs who visited the palace in Sanaa, and at least two top-level conversations between King Abdullah and the Yemeni president.
US special forces and CIA operations suspended in Yemen
The upshot was dramatic and never until now revealed.
Late last week, a communication from President Saleh reached Washington announcing the suspension of US special forces’ operations at their secret base near the port city of Hodeida and the hold-up of covert CIA activity against Al Qaeda in Yemen.
In other words, American forces are banned from using Yemeni soil or its Red Sea waters as bases for striking Al Qaeda terrorists in Arabia.
This is the first time that fallout from Arab Revolt – called by some the Arab Spring – has impaired America’s war on Al Qaeda. It has increased the danger that terrorists hiding in Yemen, the most notorious of whom is the Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is connected to at least three terrorist attacks, including the Fort Hood shooting, will be free to resume their attacks in the United States.
That is just one of the side-effects of Saudi King Abdullah’s new policy.

IAF hits targets in Gaza after Hamas calls for cease-fire.

The Israel Air Force struck a building used for terror activities and three smuggling tunnels in in the Gaza Strip overnight Thursday after Hamas announced an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip in an effort to reign in growing escalations.

After consulting with various other Palestinian terrorist factions in Gaza and other international Arab officials, Hamas said that the cease-fire went into effect at 11 p.m. Thursday.

Hamas reportedly ordered all armed factions in Gaza to halt fire into Israel.

Earlier Thursday, the Hamas military wing, the Izzadin Kassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for firing a Kornet anti-tank missile at a children’s schoolbus near Kibbutz Saad in the Sha’ar Hanegev regional council, which left a 16-year-old in critical condition and the driver in light condition.

The attack was “the first response to the continuing crimes of the occupation,” a Hamas statement said.

In response to the attack, the IDF spokesperson said that the air force had struck nine targets in the Gaza Strip and that artillery forces had struck the area from where the anti-tank missile was fired.

Five Palestinians were killed and 33 injured in the strikes, Palestinian medical sources reported.

Speaking at the IDF’s Southern Command earlier Thursday night, Defense Minister Ehud Barak spoke about the school bus attack and called it a “very serious event that hit deep into Israeli territory from deep within the Gaza Strip. That is something that we cannot accept,” he added.

Commenting on IDF,  IAF and artillery strikes on Gaza, the defense minister said: “The actions being taken right now are a response to [the attack] and they will continue as long as necessary in order to make clear that things like this cannot continue.”

The responses by the IDF are both purposeful and effective, Barak said, adding that, “We see Hamas as responsible for everything originating in Gaza, and we expect that Hamas will understand what is allowed, and of course, what is forbidden.”