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Found 1294 articles

Obama Enlists Both Clintons to stop a Palestinian state

November 14, 2009, 1:54 PM (GMT+02:00)

Bill Clinton heads from Kosovo to Ramallah

After US Secretary of state Hillary Clinton warned Mahmoud Abbas on Oct. 31 that he was going against the wishes of president Barack Obama, the White House hauled out a heavy contingent of big American guns to make him see reason. They visit Ramallah Sunday, Nov. 15, to lean hard on him to back off his plan for a unilateral declaration of the Islamic Republic of Palestinian within 1967 or 1949 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, following the Kosovo example of 2008, according DEBKAfile's Washington and Jerusalem sources. Obama took advantage of the Sadan Forum's sixth session taking place in Jerusalem Saturday to assign key participants to this mission, including former president Bill Clinton, governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, five US congressmen and several presidential advisers including Dennis Ross.
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No Homegrown US Islamist Terror Network proven by FBI arrests

October 17, 2009, 4:14 PM (GMT+02:00)

Born in Afghanistan, suspected of terror in New York

A deceptive impression has been gained from the rash of FBI (preventive) arrests in recent weeks that a home-grown network of Islamist terrorists is raising its head to strike in the US, like the one which has taken shape in Britain. However, in America, the cases were all in different states, unrelated to each other and the suspects reeled in were small fry. The case of Najibullah Zazi, 24, the Afghan shuttle van driver, was the most serious. In other cases, unrelated to the first, a Jordanian Muslim was detained trying to blow up a Dallas office tower and two American Muslims were taken in for questioning. In contrast, local jihadi networks in Britain managed to attack the London railways system in July 2005, killing 51 people, tried and failed to plant liquid explosives on seven transatlantic airliners bound for the US from Heathrow in 2006, and staged an attack on Glasgow airport in June 2007. No organized terror network on this scale appears to have sprung up in America although the latest arrests appear to suggest that the country's transport systems and high-rise buildings are in danger.
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Israel is the loser from the Geneva encounter, Shalit tape release

October 17, 2009, 4:13 PM (GMT+02:00)

Pulling the wool over international eyes

After the hype evaporates from the Geneva encounter between the six powers and Iran and the raw emotions fade from the videotaped sight of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit, Israel is left to take stock of where it stands in relation to its enemies, Iran and the Hamas. The score is Israel - nil; Iran and its ally Hamas - two up. In the first place, Iran has gained substantially from the Obama administration's decision to abandon the US demand for Iran to freeze uranium enrichment as the precondition for talks. This US surrender has awarded Tehran the legitimacy for retaining its "nuclear right." Then, too, the Geneva conference became the platform for the world powers to agree to hold up sanctions if Iran transferred three-quarters of its low-enriched uranium (1,179,4 tons out of 1,451,4) to a Russian plant for further enrichment. The deal for Israel to receive a recent video-tape of the kidnapped Israel soldier Gilead Shalit from a secret Hamas prison in return for 20 female Palestinian prisoners cost Hamas nothing. In fact it gave the Islamists' tarnished terrorist image a badly-needed lift after more than three years of denying his human rights as their captive.
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Israeli military stigmatized to block strike against Iran's nuclear facilities

October 17, 2009, 4:13 PM (GMT+02:00)

With friends like these...

The Netanyahu government's slow-moving, lackadaisical handling of the Goldstone commission mandated for accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza, played into the hands of a coalition formed to strip the Israeli military of legitimacy as a defensive strike force against Iran's fast-moving nuclear weapons program and its Middle East allies' missile arsenals. Those missiles are poised to strike Israel's population centers if Iran is attacked. Israel had - and still has - plenty of moral, diplomatic and strategic tools for defending itself. They were not applied and so this hostile coalition was allowed to strike Israel on three fronts in the last fortnight: Turkish prime minister Tayyep Recip Erdogan's unleashed an unbridled assault on the Jewish state; Muslim riots suddenly flared on Temple Mount; and the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas changed his mind and pushed for a special UN Human Rights Commission session Friday, Oct. 16, to endorse the Goldstone report, after first accepting its postponement to March
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First Expose of Iran's Seven Hellhole Prisons

October 14, 2009, 9:28 AM (GMT+02:00)

Doors which conceal horrors in Iran's political prisons

Until the defeated Iranian presidential contender Mehdi Karroubi broke the wall of silence surrounding the Islamic Republic's prisons to demand an investigation into allegations of rape, little attention was paid to the abuses meted out to protestors who dared to claim that the June 12 election was rigged. These abuses are inflicted routinely and systematically in seven secret prisons where political detainees are held at the behest of the revolutionary Islamic regime. Those prisons are described DEBKAfile's Iranian sources as inhuman hellholes: Kahrizak This is the jail which supreme leader Ayatallah Ali Khamenei wanted razed to the ground to conceal the outrages committed there against scores of reform-seeking protesters who had the cruel fortune to be dumped there. Kahrizak on the southern outskirts of Tehran was notorious as the penal facility for Iran's most violent thugs and gangsters. Those inmates were let loose on the political prisoners who were incarcerated in cells ten meters square. An unknown number suffered rape and bloody beatings, which not all survived.
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Too late to stop Tehran, Obama aims to stifle an Israeli attack

October 14, 2009, 9:27 AM (GMT+02:00)

Sound and fury signifying what?

Maestro Barack Obama's histrionics in New York and Pittsburgh Thursday and Friday, Sept. 24-25 - and his threat of "confrontation" for Iran's concealment of its nuclear capabilities - were water off a duck's back for Tehran, whose nuclear weapons program has gone too far to stop by words or even sanctions. The Islamic regime only responded with more defiance, announcing that its second uranium enrichment plant near Qom would become operational soon. He also understands that Iran is now unstoppable except by force. His performance was therefore directed at another target: Israel, whom he is determined to dissuade from resorting to military action against Iran's nuclear installations. Defense secretary Robert Gates hit the nail on the head when he said Friday: "The reality is there is no military option that does anything more than buy time. The estimates are one to three years or so." Therefore, according to Gates, diplomacy remained the only viable option, which means Israel like the rest of the world must learn to live with a nuclear-armed Iran.
In full

Turkey's second slap: A war game with Syria

October 14, 2009, 9:27 AM (GMT+02:00)

Turkish-Syrian strategic cooperation

Tuesday, Oct.13, Syrian defense minister Gen. Ali Habib made the triumphant announcement: We held our first joint land military exercise (with Turkey) last spring. And today we have agreed to do a more comprehensive, a bigger one. He spoke at a ceremony declaring a free trade zone between the two countries and opening their borders for the passage of their citizens without visas. Present were the two foreign ministers, Ahmed Davutoglu and Walid Mualem. The next day, Today's Zaman provided Ankara's explanation for its last-minute decision to cancel Israeli participation in the annual multiple air maneuver with NATO under the caption: Delay in delivery of Herons behind drill crisis, not politics. DEBKAfile's Ankara sources stress that foreign minister Davutoglu is steering the Turkish government and army toward a broad new horizon after persuading Erdogan that the way to restoring Turkey to the regional primacy enjoyed by the Ottoman empire depended on its assuming leadership and mediation roles in the Middle East and Muslim world. Erdogan is not deterred by every single Turkish mediation effort running aground, a fact which his hostility to Israel is designed to mask.
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Yemen War: Where US and Iran Jockey for Regional Primacy

October 3, 2009, 3:02 PM (GMT+02:00)

Embattled northern Yemen town of Saada

The latest paroxysm of Yemen's five-year war with the rebel Houthis has left more than 2,000 dead in less than a month and up to 150,000 homeless. Yemeni government troops are battling around 15,000 Iranian-armed and trained Houthi rebels dug into the northern Sadaa mountains on the Saudi Arabian border. Saudi air force bombers are pounding the rebels and the Egyptian air force and navy are ferrying ammunition to the Yemen army with US encouragement and funding. This is the second war in less than a year in which US allies are pitted against Iran-backed forces. The first was Israel's three-week campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which ended last January. This strategically-located, poor Red Sea country, for years a critical stage for the war on Islamist extremists, has now become a key arena where the United States and Iran jockey for regional primacy.
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Obama's anti-Iran missile defense overhaul is fraught with danger

October 3, 2009, 3:01 PM (GMT+02:00)

The day US president Barack Obama announced he was abandoning plans for a missile shield and radar position in Poland and the Czech Republic Thursday, Sept. 17, Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak was quoted as saying in a press interview: "Iran does not constitute an existential threat against Israel" and "I am not among those who believe Iran is an existential issue for Israel." Responding to a question about Iran's nuclear program, he went on to say: "Israel is strong, I don't see anyone who could pose an existential threat," although he did view Iran as a challenge to the whole world. Asked in private what he meant, Barak shifted slightly by explaining: At this minute, Iran does not threaten Israel's survival." Are we to understand from these statements that the Iranian menace has suddenly gone away? Hardly, when Friday, Sept. 18, the Israeli minister's reply came from the horse's mouth: Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again termed the Holocaust "a lie" and declared "Israel has no future."
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