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DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report July 30, 2011, 10:57 AM (GMT+02:00)

Al Qaeda rides into Sinai capital, El Arish

In a Taliban-style raid, at least 150 masked, uniformed al Qaeda gunmen rode into the Sinai capital of El Arish on pickups and motorcycles Friday, July 29, shooting up the desert town with heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and automatic rifles. Before they rode out six hours later, at least seven people were killed, and upward of 30 injured.

Egyptian police and troops pulled back to their fortified station as terrified citizens of this desert town of 150,000 inhabitants fled the rampage. At least two of the dead were Egyptian civilians, a man of 70 and a 13-year old boy shot while take a cell phone picture.

debkafile‘s military sources report that round about 1800 hours, the assailants split into two groups, one keeping up the street attacks, the other heading for the police station.

Witnesses said the masked gunmen were not local because they lost their way several times and asked for directions to the police station. They then attacked the building with rockets and a battery of five mortars – the first time al Qaeda in Sinai is known have procured mortars, setting a police armored truck and other vehicles on fire. Rather than capturing the police station, the gunmen appeared concerned to keep the police pinned down in a shootout and to prevent from interfering with the deliberate occupation of the town.

The Egyptian news agency reported an Egyptian lieutenant colonel and captain died in the shootout . The number of dead and injured may be higher than reported. Two military planes were sent out from Cairo to evacuate the casualties.
After nightfall the gang withdrew to central Sinai.
El Arish townsmen are convinced that the black-uniformed jihadis, having demonstrated that they can’t be stopped, will be back and next time, stay to proclaim Sinai a Muslim caliphate.

debkafile notes that El Gorah, 20 kilometers to the west, houses the international MFO established there nearly three decades ago to monitor the Sinai demilitarization provisions of the Israel-Egyptian peace treaty. Attached to the force are 1,000 troops, most of them American and Canadian marines.
This command center has been on supreme alert for an al Qaeda threat for seven months. Since President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown, Hamas, al Qaeda and Bedouin gunmen have been running riot through Sinai, while Egyptian security officers stay holed up in their bases.
Israeli forces deployed the length of the Egyptian border likewise stood aside while El Arish was occupied and terrorized by al Qaeda. According to debkafile‘s counter-terror sources, none of the Egyptian, Israeli or American intelligence agencies monitoring the desert peninsula were prepared for al Qaeda to raise a force of hundreds of men, oufit them with uniforms, heavy arms and vehicles and train them in the military skills and disciplines required for capturing a complete town two and-a-half hours drive from Tel Aviv and five hours from Cairo.

Until July 29, al Qaeda in Sinai was believed to be no more than a handful of cells mostly working with local Bedouin dope and arms smuggling rings. None suspected them of acquiring quasi-military competence.

This evaluation will have to be urgently revised now that the Egyptian authorities have lost their grip on Sinai. The lawlessness reigning today in this strategic territory, which abuts on Israel, the Red Sea and Suez Canal, is cause for Israeli and US alarm.

EDITORIAL: Obama gets tough on Tehran – Washington Times.

Administration targets the Iran-al Qaeda connection

The Obama administration is going where no White House has gone before: directly accusing Iran of supporting al Qaeda. This long overdue move to get tough on Tehran deserves to be applauded.

On Thursday, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on six al Qaeda operatives based in Kuwait, Qatar, Pakistan and – significantly – Iran. The U.S. government accused Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil, a “prominent Iran-based al Qaeda facilitator,” of operating his network with the complicity and cooperation of the Tehran government. “This network serves as the core pipeline through which al Qaeda moves money, facilitators and operatives from across the Middle East to South Asia,” according to Treasury, “including to Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a key al Qaeda leader based in Pakistan.” Mr. Al-Rahman, who reports directly to al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, was also named in the action.

David S. Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, explained, “By exposing Iran’s secret deal with al Qaeda, allowing it to funnel funds and operatives through its territory, we are illuminating yet another aspect of Iran’s unmatched support for terrorism.”

The degree of Iran’s support for al Qaeda is a topic of debate in the intelligence community. One camp argues the Shiite regime in Tehran would never support al Qaeda’s Sunni extremism. They note that fomenting open warfare between the sects was part of al Qaeda’s strategy in Iraq. Common interest, however, is a more reliable predictor of behavior in the chaotic international realm, and Iran and al Qaeda share powerful adversaries, including the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel. When the two work together against these countries, their theological divide is irrelevant.

Iran has been linked to al Qaeda since before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America. Al Qaeda cooperated with Iranian-backed Hezbollah in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. The 1998 indictment of Osama bin Laden for the African embassy bombings noted his group, “forged alliances … with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.” The 9/11 Commission found evidence that the mullahs reached out to bin Laden after the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole, but that the al Qaeda leader was wary about crafting too close a relationship for fear of alienating his supporters in Saudi Arabia.

Iran became an important transit point for al Qaeda terrorists. Of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers, eight to 10 passed through the Islamic Republic between the time of the Cole bombing and February 2001. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Iran gave safe haven (called “house arrest”) to scores of al Qaeda operatives, including bin Laden’s sons. Currently, Iran supplies advanced explosively formed penetrators to insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and pays bounties to those who kill U.S. troops.

The George W. Bush administration knew about Iran’s ties to al Qaeda but didn’t press the case. Mr. Obama initially followed suit, implementing an outreach campaign to Tehran early in his administration which was soundly rebuffed. Now the White House is willing to take a stand against Iran’s support for America’s top terrorist enemy. Hopefully, this is a harbinger of many stronger policies to come.

KAHLILI: Iranian missiles could soon reach U.S. shores – Washington Times.

Mullahs’ navy equips ships for attacks from Atlantic

While America focuses on its internal problems and its involvement in three wars and the world focuses on the global economy, Iran is progressing on three dangerous fronts: nuclear weapons, armed missiles and naval capability.

Despite four sets of United Nations sanctions and pressure by the United States and Europe, Iran has chosen not only to continue its nuclear program but to expand it. Iran’s leaders, dominated by fanatical mullahs, announced in mid-July that the installment of faster centrifuges had begun and that they will soon triple the production of enriched uranium to 20 percent at the Fardo nuclear facility deep in the mountain near the city of Qom. It is estimated that Iran will have enough highly enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb within two months and currently has enough low-enriched uranium for three nuclear bombs.

Iran is also perfecting its missile-delivery systems. Recently, the Revolutionary Guards held war games in which they launched several long-range ballistic missiles from missile silos. They also successfully tested two long-range ballistic missiles, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, into the Indian Ocean. The guards’ ballistic missiles have a range of 1,200 miles, covering all U.S. bases in the Middle East and all of Israel, and now they possess missiles from North Korea with a range of 2,000 miles, which covers most of Western Europe.

The Iranian navy has also been busy expanding its operation on the orders of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has emphasized the navy’s strategic importance in protecting the Islamic republic’s interests and confronting its enemies.

In February, for the first time in three decades, two Iranian naval vessels passed through the Suez Canal en route to Syria. Iran’s navy then successfully expanded its mission in the Indian Ocean, and its submarines completed a two-month-long mission in the Red Sea.

In an alarming July 18 statement, Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari said the Iranian navy plans on deploying warships in the Atlantic Ocean as part of a program to ply international waters, although he did not say where in the Atlantic the ships would be sent. Two days later, Rear Adm. Seyed Mahmoud Mousavi revealed for the first time that the Iranian navy has equipped a number of its logistic vessels and units with long-range surface-to-surface missiles. He stated, “Missile frigates and destroyers have been equipped with these missiles since a long time ago, and the surface-to-surface missiles of the logistic vessels were successfully tested and assessed during the recent naval war games, dubbed as Joushan.”

More ominous is the warning by the chief commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari: “Currently, we are seeking to utilize our defensive capabilities in open seas. And it means that if the enemy plans to pose a threat to the Islamic republic, Iran is capable of taking reciprocal action, and this strategy is currently on our agenda.”

The Revolutionary Guards have successfully test-launched long-range ballistic missiles from a ship before, so the statement that they are arming some of the vessels with such missiles should worry the United States. An Iranian navy ship or any commercial vessel operated by the Iranians could easily launch a missile from outside the Gulf of Mexico and essentially cover most of the United States. Much more alarming is the fact that once in possession of a nuclear bomb, Iran could successfully carry out its promise to bring America to its knees by a successful electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on America.

“One nightmare scenario posed by the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States From Electromagnetic Pulse [Attack] was a ship-launched EMP attack against the United States by Iran, as this would eliminate the need for Iran to develop an ICBM to deliver a nuclear warhead against the U.S. and could be executed clandestinely, taking the U.S. by surprise. Because an EMP attack entails detonating a nuclear weapon at high altitude, in space, it leaves no bomb debris for forensic analysis, no fingerprints identifying the attacker. We might never figure out who hit us, assuming the nation survives and recovers from an EMP attack,” warns Peter Vincent Pry, president of EMPact America, who served on the congressional EMP commission.

The West has tried for years to negotiate with the radicals ruling Iran with the hope that they would halt their nuclear-weapons program. However, the Islamic regime has turned down every incentive offered, and its officials have openly stated that there is nothing the West can do to stop their nuclear program.

With the world’s economy on the line and terrorism a major concern, global stability and security should be the top priority for world leaders. For that reason alone, the Iranian regime, which supports worldwide terrorism, not to mention the many Iranian officials wanted by Interpol, should not be allowed to have nuclear weapons.

A nuclear-armed Iran will change our world with horrific consequences.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for an ex-CIA spy who requires anonymity for safety reasons. He is the author of “A Time to Betray,” about his double life as a CIA agent in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (Simon & Schuster, 2010).

Security & Defense: Sailing … JPost – Features – Week in review.

    By far the smallest branch in the IDF, the Israel Navy has made an impressive leap in its capabilities in recent years, turning into a major player in the country’s military operations.

But at the same time, its future hangs in the balance as the IDF General Staff deliberates whether to approve an ambitious plan to purchase two new large vessels that the navy has requested to meet the challenges it faces in the region.

The purchase was supposed to happen several years ago; it was approved by the General Staff under the “Tefen” multi-year plan, which will expire by the end of the year.

In 2007, close to $500 million was set aside to buy the two new surface combatants, with the navy’s eye originally set on the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), under development by Lockheed Martin. By 2009, though, Israel decided to pull out of the program due to rising costs and began searching for an alternative.

The first idea was to buy the new ships from Germany’s Blohm+Voss, but that plan was also abandoned due to lack of funding. The current idea, which the navy favors, is to purchase designs from Blohm+Voss and to have the vessels built by Israel Shipyards, a privately owned company based in Haifa that already builds the navy’s smaller Shaldag patrol boats.

The budget for each ship, including accompanying weapons and command systems, is expected to reach around $300m.

But the question now is whether the navy needs the ships to begin with. At the core of the question is an ongoing and heated debate at the military’s top levels over the navy’s raison d’être and the role it is supposed to play in times of war – and also of peace.

For decades and under consecutive prime ministers, defense ministers and IDF chiefs of staff, the navy has always been viewed as something of a “stepbrother” to the rest of the military’s branches, and has been particularly under-budgeted in comparison to the air force and the ground forces.

This was done despite the fact that Israel’s sea lines of communication are a strategic asset for the small country and span the length of the Mediterranean and around North Africa’s Magreb region.

Some 99 percent of all goods arriving in Israel come by sea, as do over 90% of security-related supplies and military hardware. The coast is also lined with strategic installations, such as power plants, ports and oil refineries, as well as a significant percentage of the country’s seven million people.

In Israel’s first years as a state, the navy consisted of a mere five vessels, and this neglect contributed to the loss of the Eilat destroyer, which was hit by Egyptian anti-ship missiles off the coast of Port Said in 1967. By the Yom Kippur war of 1973, the navy had transformed itself into a force to be reckoned with after it received a new generation of Sa’ar fast missile boats armed with Gabriel anti-ship missile systems.

Using innovative tactics and electronic deception, the navy succeeded in wreaking havoc on opposing Syrian forces in a sea battle off the coast of Latakia, which proved to the world that it was on par with other branches in the IDF.

But then the investment in the navy stalled. Peace with Egypt and Jordan raised the assessment that threats to Israel were mostly by land from Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon – which has accumulated tens of thousands of rockets – and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The threat from the sea was perceived as minimal.

The navy also had difficulty integrating itself into larger IDF operations like the Second Lebanon War in 2006. While the army was fighting Hezbollah on land, the navy attempted to fight from the sea and imposed a sea blockade on Lebanon.

Unfortunately, though, it disregarded the other side’s capabilities, and on July 14, 2006 – two days into the war – Hezbollah and Iranian operatives fired a radar-guided, Chinese-made C-802 anti-ship missile at the Sa’ar 5-class Hanit missile ship. Four soldiers were killed in the attack, and while little damage was caused to the vessel, the strike resonated throughout the IDF.

The thinking then was that the navy was doing more bad than good.

Later, it was discovered that the soldiers aboard the Hanit had not activated its Barak missile defense systems due to a gap in intelligence regarding Hezbollah’s missile capabilities.

The major change came two-anda- half years later during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, launched in late 2008.

During the operation, the navy positioned itself as an integral partner in the land battle laying siege to Gaza to prevent weapons smuggling, and at the same time exercising sea-ground support while demonstrating a close level of interoperability with IDF infantry units ashore.

In addition, teams of commandos from the Navy’s Flotilla 13 – better known as the Shayetet – were employed in a wide-range of missions, sometimes on classified operations, but other times as part of larger-scale IDF ground maneuvers.

Another example was the navy’s decision after the Gaza operation to bolster its amphibious landingcraft capabilities to land ground forces in places like Lebanon and Gaza by sea in a future conflict.

It is also undergoing an unprecedented procurement phase, with new submarines, fast patrol boats, unmanned sea vessels and the integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into its operations.

By 2013, for example, it is slated to receive two new Dolphin-class attack submarines, which are being built in Germany to join the three it currently has in its fleet. In April, the Defense Ministry concluded negotiations for the purchase of a sixth submarine as well.

Reportedly equipped with the ability to launch cruise missiles tipped with nuclear warheads, Israel’s submarine fleet is purported by foreign analysts to be its second-strike capability and viewed as a strategic asset in the face of Iran’s race for nuclear power.

Another change following the Second Lebanon War was the understanding in the IDF that the navy was integral to combating Iranian weapons smuggling to Hezbollah and Hamas.

One of the known smuggling routes is in Eastern Africa, where boats unload weaponry onto trucks that then drive up through Sudan to the Gaza-Egyptian border, where it is smuggled into Gaza via a network of tunnels.

As a result, the navy is operating more frequently in the Red Sea and has sent a number of vessels, including a submarine and Sa’ar 5 class corvettes, through the Suez Canal over the past couple of years.

In addition, rumored operations far from Israel that succeeded in thwarting smuggling plans to Gaza and Lebanon have been attributed in the press to commandos from the Shayetet.

BUT THE question now comes down to the new surface vessels and whether they are really needed, or whether the Navy could instead continue to rely on its current fleet of three Sa’ar-5 class corvettes and a number of Sa’ar 4.5 corvettes for long-range operations.

V.-Adm. Eliezer Marom, the current commander of the navy, has pushed hard for the new ships. He believes they are key to the navy’s efforts to keep Israel’s shipping lines open and to effectively conduct operations far from the country.

Marom’s argument is backed by a number of officers in the IDF who are concerned with the growing instability in Egypt and believe Israel needs to reinforce its navy to counter the massive Egyptian Navy one day if needed.

On the other hand, former navy commanders like Yedidya Ya’ari – the current head of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems – is opposed to purchasing the new ships at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars and instead believes the money should be invested in the weapons systems the ship will carry.

“The type of ship is less important,” one senior officer who agrees with Ya’ari explained recently.

“The question is what weapons will be installed on the ships, and this can be done with a simple freighter or auxiliary ship.”

Both schools of thought agree, though, that the navy needs to increase its firepower, particularly when it comes to sea missiles.

One such system is the LORA missile developed by Israel Aerospace Industries, which has a reported range of several hundred kilometers and superior accuracy.

The US Navy, for example, uses sea-to-surface missiles such as the Tomahawk missile and similar weapons in growing numbers.

The main argument in favor of investing in naval firepower capabilities is that in a future war, the air force and ground force bases would come under heavy missile fire from Hezbollah and possibly Syria. In addition, the IAF would need to focus – at least at the beginning of a war – on suppressing enemy missile fire.

By contrast, Israel’s current enemies cannot easily track navy ships and have invested most of their resources in missiles and rockets.

The ships can also operate out of range of Hezbollah’s missiles, which is not the case with IAF and IDF bases.

“The IDF must build its naval force to take advantage of this situation,” V.-Adm. (res.) Gideon Raz, a former deputy head of the navy, wrote in a recent article published in Military and Strategic Affairs.

“The naval force would enhance the inventory of weapons that would be possible to operate at any given time against targets in enemy territory.”

While two years have passed since the Gaza operation and five since the Lebanon War, the navy has yet to be able to sail calm seas, especially in the face of potential war on multiple fronts.

Whether he gets new ships or not, Marom and his staff vow to continue to remain relevant. The navy, these officers say, will stick to its current procurement plans, will increase training and will fight to participate in every future IDF operation as it works to retain its status as a key player in Middle East warfare.

Rights group: Syria forces shoot dead 20 civilians in protests – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Syrians in their thousands take to streets nationwide to demand an end to President Bashar Assad’s rule; protesters killed in Latakia, Hama, Homs, Daraa, Kiswa, Deir al-Zor, in and around the capital Damascus

By Reuters

Syrian forces shot dead at least 20 civilians in attacks on pro-democracy demonstrations across the country Friday, the Syrian human rights organization Sawasiah said.

Syrians in their thousands took to the streets nationwide for the 17th consecutive Friday to demand an end to President Bashar Assad’s 11-year rule, activists said by telephone, defying an intensifying military crackdown on an uprising for political freedoms.

	Thousands gather for anti-Assad protest, sign reads “We will never forget our martyrs and prisoners”, July 22, 2011.
	Photo by: AP

“The security forces are continuing violent repression against peaceful demonstrations demanding freedom and the downfall of the regime, firing live ammunition at most protests all over Syria Friday,” Sawasiah said in a statement sent to Reuters.

Sawasiah said it had the names of 20 people killed in the cities of Latakia, Hama, Homs, Daraa, Kiswa, Deir al-Zor and in and around the capital Damascus.

Syrian authorities have expelled most independent journalists since the uprising began, making it difficult to verify reports of clashes, and do not usually comment on reports of killings.

Arrests continued across the country in the last two days, rights campaigners said, including hundreds of people in Damascus, where they said Republican Guards deployed in force in the central Maidan district Friday to prevent protests.

The official Syrian news agency said a member of the security police was killed in the town of Albu Kamal on the border with Iraq, and that saboteurs bombed an export oil pipeline near the central city of Homs Friday,

The attack caused an oil leak, it said. Homs, where the army has deployed tanks, hosts one of Syria’s two oil refineries and has been hit by big street protests.

“Our main goal is the downfall of the regime,” a preacher told worshippers at the central Orontes Square in the city of Hama, scene of a massacre by the military in the 1980s.
Inspired by “Arab Spring” uprisings that toppled veteran leaders in Tunisia and Egypt, popular protests broke out in March against four decades of repressive rule by the Assad family. The unrest is now taking on sectarian overtones, with protesters from the Sunni Muslim majority pitted against minority Alawites who dominate the power elite.

Crackdown in eastern oil region

Military intelligence, in charge of securing loyalty to Assad among the army’s mostly Sunni rank and file, has been spearheading a crackdown in Syria’s Sunni tribal east, a strategic oil-producing region near the border with Iraq.

Many inhabitants of the region have weapons because the government earlier armed eastern tribes, which have close links with Iraq, as a counterweight to Syria’s Kurdish population, much of it in regions adjacent to Deir al-Zor province.

Residents of Deir al-Zor, speaking to Reuters by telephone, reported fighting from the early hours of Friday, with tanks entering the city overnight.

The fighting later subsided but at least a dozen helicopters were seen ferrying troops to a military airport, and tank reinforcements arrived and took positions around the city, residents said.

There have been individual instances of Syrians using weapons during the unrest, for example defending their homes during assaults on restive cities by security forces.

But the fighting reported in Deir al-Zor appeared to represent an armed response by a significant number of people to Assad’s iron-fisted clampdown on public dissent.
Sunday, Assad replaced the civilian governor of Deir al-Zor province with the head of the country’s main prison, two days after the biggest pro-democracy demonstrations in the province so far.

Last week the army surrounded the town of Albu Kamal on the easternmost edge of Deir al-Zor after 30 soldiers defected following the killing of four protesters, residents said.
Deir al-Zor is the center of Syria’s daily oil output of 380,000 barrels but is among the poorest of the country’s 13 provinces, afflicted by drought and economic mismanagement.
The Syrian leadership blames “armed terrorist groups” for most killings during the revolt, which began with demands for political liberalisation and now seeks the toppling of Assad, who succeeded his late father, Hafez al-Assad, in 2000.

The global activist group Avaaz said in a new report that Syrian security forces had killed 1,634 people, while at least 2,918 had disappeared in Assad’s violent crackdown. Another 26,000 had been arrested, many of whom were beaten and tortured, and 12,617 remained in detention, it said.

The Syrian government has said more than 500 soldiers and security personnel have been killed. Human rights campaigners say soldiers who have refused to fire on civilians have been shot dead. They add that army conscripts and rank and file members have been defecting in increasing numbers.