All Things News

Straight from the Debka File: “German intelligence reports that Iranian scientists have successfully simulated the detonation of a nuclear warhead in laboratory conditions, in an effort to sidestep an underground nuclear test like the one that brought the world down on North Korea’s head earlier this year. DEBKAfile’s Iranian and intelligence sources report that this development is alarming because detonation is one of the most difficult technological challenges in the development of a nuclear weapon. Mastering it carries Iran past one of the last major obstacles confronting its program for the manufacture of a nuclear warhead.

After this breakthrough, the German BND intelligence believes it will take Tehran no more than a year to perfect its expertise and stock enough highly-enriched uranium to make the last leap toward building the first Iranian nuclear bomb or warhead. DEBKAfile’s military sources confirm that simulated detonation of a warhead takes Iran to the highest level of weapons development.

Using the example of Israel and other nations, Western nuclear arms experts have claimed in recent years that since the emergence of simulated detonation technique, nuclear tests are no longer necessary.

With this hurdle overcome, Tehran has set about restructuring its defense ministry for the coming task of actually making a weapon.

The new Department for Expanded Technology Applications – FEDAT was set up to speed up the military nuclear program. It is divided into sub-departments for uranium mining (to increase the output of the Yazd mines), enrichment (to guarantee the quantity of high-grade uranium needed for weapons), metallurgy, neutrons, highly explosive material and fuel supply.

Wednesday, Dec. 2, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: “The Iranian nation will by itself make the 20 percent (nuclear) fuel (enriched uranium) and whatever it needs.”

President Barack Obama has reminded Tehran that it has until the end of the year for a negotiated accommodation on its nuclear program that will uphold its international obligations. However, tor Iran’s leaders, progress toward a nuclear weapon is now unstoppable by any diplomatic means.”

Ahmadinejad Taunts

Straight from the Debka File: “Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday, Dec. 2, that Iran will enrich uranium to 20 percent. His latest show of defiance, focusing on the US and Israel, follows Tehran’s announcement of plans to build another 10 enrichment plants capable of producing 300 tons of enriched uranium a year in response to the UN nuclear watchdog’s censure of its second enrichment plant near Qom.

The building of two new plants will begin in two months.

Deliberately taunting Israel, he said in a speech from Isfahan broadcast live by state television: “The Zionist regime is nothing. Even its masters cannot do a damn thing.” For Tehran the nuclear issue is “over.” The Islamic republic will “not back down from its rights.”

On his visit to Isfahan, site of a nuclear fuel plant, Ahmadinejad said: “The Iranian nation will by itself make the 20 percent (nuclear) fuel (enriched uranium) and whatever it needs,” after threatening: “Any finger which is about to pull the trigger will be cut off.”

The western powers would not be able to isolate Iran, he said, and dismissed the possibility of a military attack.

Tehran has turned down the international offer for Russia to convert 70 percent of Iran’s low-grade enriched uranium into fuel for medical research; France was to have neutralized its possible conversion into weapons-grade material. Now, Ahmadinejad accused the Western powers and Israel of using against Tehran what he called an Iranian proposal to trade its low-enriched uranium in return for 20 percent enriched material.

Tension between Tehran and the world powers has heightened over this controversy.

DEBKAfile adds: The centrifuge technology that increases the concentration of U-235 isotopes up to the 5-20 percent level can also be used to increase it to nuclear-weapons grade. It is a question of intent.”

Straight from the Debka File: “Tehran may well break off cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency-IAEA and withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty after the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors Friday, Nov. 27 approved a resolution voicing serious concern about its failure to comply with international obligations and referring the issue to the UN Security Council. The resolution carried by 25:3 called on Iran to halt the construction of its second enrichment site at Fordo near Qom and declare its other covert nuclear sites. All five UN Security Council permanent members supported the censure, including Russia and China.

The White House commented that time is running out for Iran. A US official spoke of a “package of consequences” if Iran’s non-compliance continues.

Capping his 12-year tenure, the retiring IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei was forced to admit Thursday, Nov. 26 that his efforts to work with Iran had reached “a dead end.” He told the agency’s board of governors: “There has been no movement on remaining issues of concern which need to be clarified for the agency to verify the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.”

Therefore, DEBKAfile’s sources report, by entering into negotiations with the big powers this summer – which led nowhere, then signaling its acceptance in principle of his proposal to send 70 pc of its enriched uranium overseas to be reprocessed for medical research – then backing off, Iran gained most of 2009 for developing its nuclear weapon program in peace and quiet.

Tehran will most likely make its response typically ambivalent. But by quitting the NPT, Iran would free itself of international obligations with regard to its nuclear activities. Our sources note that this will not change much. Anyway, while holding talks on its program with six world powers and throwing an occasional bone to IAEA inspectors, Tehran does as it pleases and conceals most of its nuclear activities heedless of world censure.

In his parting words to the IAEA governors, ElBaradei said that in his view, “the proposed agreement (for overseas enrichment) presented a unique opportunity after many years of animosity and hostility to… create a space for negotiation. This opportunity should be seized,” he said in a last appeal to Tehran, “and it would be highly regrettable if it was missed.”

This was his final admission that the agency had failed in all its efforts to open up the Iranian program to controls and inspection, just as it failed to prevent North Korea from building its nuclear arsenal. Nonetheless, the United States and most other world powers connived with Dr. ElBaradei to blind the world to the true state of Iran’s rogue program. They even gave up clamoring for a halt in uranium enrichment as a precondition for negotiations.

For weeks now, they played along with director’s obfuscation tactics and insisted Iran had accepted the enrichment proposal, the sole outcome of the latest rounds of talks with Iran in Geneva and Vienna – even after Tehran deliberately missed the Oct. 23 deadline for its acceptance.

The IAEA director’s “dead end” statement applies equally to the six powers’ bid to engage Iran in negotiations on its nuclear program and the wholesale concealment of its activities. Israeli leaders, including president Shimon Peres, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, defense minister Ehud Barak, presented an equally false face when they reiterated that Iran’s nuclear aspirations are the business of the international community rather than Israel. They knew all the time that world powers were spending more time fabricating a false picture of Iran’s nuclear attainments the facts than dealing with them. The IAEA director has finally come clean for them all.”

Ahmadinejad is full of love

Straight from the Debka File: “Reduced Iranian cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency is the least of the troubles Tehran has in store for the West. The Iranians are incandescent over the nuclear watchdog’s rebuke Friday, Nov. 27 for its cover-up of the uranium enrichment plant at Fordo and demand to halt its construction.

Its latest gesture of defiance was the approval late Sunday, Nov. 29 of 10 new uranium enrichment installations, with construction on five starting immediately.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report that earlier Sunday, Tehran moved toward a military confrontation with the United Sates and Britain when its parliament earmarked $20 million to support “progressive currents which resist US and UK illegal activities.” The motion also ordered an investigation of alleged “US and British plots against the Islamic Republic.”

Our Iranian and counter-terror sources report that Tehran is acting to broaden its support of terrorist movements by bringing additional armed Islamist and insurgent groups into its support cycle as a means of forcing Washington and London to ease the pressure on its uranium enrichment projects and nuclear bomb program. Tehran classifies the groups combating the West in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia as “progressive.” The West may therefore be faced with newly-empowered armed groups in those places including possibly Taliban and al Qaeda allies.

The US and UK are specifically targeted by the new measure, which is separate from Iran’s sponsorship of Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad Islam and their armed confrontation against Israel.

Until now, Washington acted on the assumption that Iran would resort to military action only in reprisal for an attack on its nuclear installations. The main argument against an Israeli strike centered on it exposing US interests to the danger of Iranian retaliation.

The Iranian parliamentary motion is therefore an eye-opener because it means that Tehran is not waiting idly to be attacked but is already on the move to pre-empt international pressure on its nuclear activities by setting in motion covert and subversion operations against its foremost adversaries.

The new law authorizes clandestine Iranian agents to funnel funds directly to “progressive” armed groups willing to directly confront the US and Britain.

The bill also taps funds to “confront plots and unjust restrictions” by the Washington and London against Tehran and to disclose “human rights abuses by the two countries.”

DEBKAfile’s sources quote Iranian sources as claiming they have evidence that the American CIA and British MI6 are secretly backing the subversive operations carried out against the regime in Tehran by Iranian opposition and ethnic movements, including the Baluchistani Gundallah, the Arabic Khuzestan Liberation movement and the Iranian Kurdish PAJK separatists.

The new legislation and allocations are therefore a signal from Tehran to Washington and London that as long as they conduct covert subversive operations against the Islamic Republic, Iran will retaliate in kind in their arenas.

Our intelligence sources report that the Revolutionary Guards terrorist arm, the al Qods Brigades, is well prepared for this covert campaign having in the past year established Arab, Baluchi, Kurdish, Turkmen and Azeri fighting units for infiltrating those arenas and joining forces with indigenous anti-West militias.”

Russian S-300 Missile System - Not yours Iran!

Straight from the Debka File: “Iran launches its huge Modafean-e (Defenders) Aseman-e-Velayat air defense exercise Sunday, Nov. 22, to protect its nuclear sites, after failing to persuade Russia to deliver the linchpin of its air defenses, S-300 missiles. For two weeks, high-ranking Iranian politicians and generals bombarded Moscow to make good on its contract to supply the key weapon, to no avail. Saturday, Nov. 21, Iran’s air force commander Brig. Gen. Ahmad Mighani spoke at length about the highly sophisticated S-300, without which, DEBKAfile’s military sources say, Iran has no real defense against US and Israeli aerial or missile strikes against its nuclear installations.

Iran will hold its war games in the western and southern regions, which Iran estimates will be selected by the Americans and Israelis for attack, and cover an area of 600,000 sq. km. Iranian warplanes will simulate enemy jets zooming in to strike.

Our sources report that, aside from the Russian-made Tor-M 1 short-range interceptor, Iran’s air defense systems are outdated and pretty useless against US stealth bombers or the Israeli air force’s electronic jamming instruments. Syria likewise lacked the weapons for stopping Israel attack its North-Korean-made nuclear reactor two years ago. The Iranian air force has nowhere near the capacity to take on US or Israeli air might.

Lacking the crucial S-300, a senior Revolutionary Guards officer was reduced to threatening: “If Israel attacks Iran, Iranian missiles will explode in the heart of Tel Aviv!”

Iranian strategists are trying to make do with four devices:

1. As many nuclear installations as possible are being moved to secret subterranean sites – among them most of the research laboratories working on the development of nuclear weapons and missiles.

2. Bogus installations have been planted not far from genuine plants to mislead assailants.

3. Tehran’s most powerful defense is the deterrent strength of its ballistic missiles and the missiles distributed to its Middle East allies, Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas. Therefore, Iran’s first response to attack will not be to attack Israeli population centers as the Revolutionary Guards officer threatened, but to strike the home bases of its air force, missile and radar as well as the Israel-based US military facilities, so that Israeli warplanes will have no facilities to come back to and its missiles are knocked off their launch pads.

4. Iran’s means its air defense war game as a rejoinder for the joint US-Israel Juniper Cobra 10 anti-ballistic exercise which took place for two weeks earlier this month. Iran’s leaders had to make good on their vow not to leave any American or Israeli military step in the region unanswered, although the anti-air exercise will expose the big hole in their defenses. Even if every last anti-air measure and device they possess is deployed, Iran’s nuclear facilities will still be susceptible to attack, be they the uranium enrichment center at Natanz, the Isfahan fuel plants in Isfahan, the facilities in northern Tehran, or the reactors going up in Arak opposite the Straits of Hormuz.”

The Iranian Air Force

Straight from the Debka File: “From the word go on Sunday, Nov. 22, Iran’s five-day drill demonstrated that its air force and air defense units were unequal to their mission of keeping the skies over its nuclear sites clear of incoming strike aircraft, DEBKAfile’s military and Iranian sources report.

This was quickly borne in on Gen. Ahmad Mighani, air force chief and commander of five-day air defense exercise and the officers at the Khatam ol-Anbia air force base, headquarters of the exercise in the southern province of Khuzestan.

The first stage of the three-part war game Sunday and Monday was devoted to preventing hostile bombers from reaching nuclear installations. Iranian Mirage F-1 fighters acted as strike craft while F-5 fighters – old American models and local products – were assigned defensive roles. However, the Mirages broke through Iranian radar systems, overwhelmed the defending craft in dogfights and seized command of the air space over the nuclear sites. In conditions of real war, therefore, Iran’s atomic installations would be destroyed in the first hours of an attack.

To raise the morale of the Iranian units who witnessed the debacle, Gen. Moghani gave them a pep talk before Monday’s drills began. He assured them that even if enemy aircraft were able to knock out the installations, while they were bombing Iran, their own bases would be destroyed.

His words confirmed DEBKAfile’s report Saturday, Nov. 20, that in the early stages of a war Tehran would focus on destroying Israeli air force, missile and radar facilities at home as well as the US military bases in Israel, rather than its cities.”

Straight from the Debka File: “DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the UN inspectors’ October visit to Iran turned up dual-track progress in support of its nuclear weapons program: Feverish activity was registered in the production of plutonium at Isfahan as an alternative to the Fordo enriched uranium plant near Qom which starts up in 2011.

The IAEA experts discovered 30 metric tons-IS of heavy water hidden in 600 tanks, each holding 13 gallons, according to the report they handed in last week to agency headquarters in Vienna.

From the shape of the tanks and other indications, the experts concluded that this stock had not come from the heavy water plant at Arak but was imported.

Metric tons-IS measure the amount of energy a given quantity can release. The force and types of nuclear bombs are gauged in kilotons or megatons. The American nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II was equal to 20 kilotons of TNT. By this standard, the amount of heavy water discovered at Isfahan would be enough to make at least one plutonium bomb when the plutonium reactor under construction near the Arak heavy water facility is finished.

Other than its civilian uses, heavy water may be used to produce tritium, which intensifies the explosive force of nuclear warheads. The discovery of quantities of heavy water at Isfahan confirms the suspicions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program in three respects.

1. The long concealment of the Fordo site suggested to the UN inspectors that Iran has more hole-in the-corner nuclear facilities in the country. The discovery of a stock of heavy water further confirmed that Tehran is working hard to attain a nuclear weapon capacity on more than one track and at additional covert sites.

2. The IAEA wants to know who is selling Iran heavy water in violation of Security Council resolutions banning the sale or export of nuclear materials to Iran.

The very fact that some government or outside entity is willing to flout UN resolutions demonstrates that any further international sanctions would be ineffective for halting Iran’s nuclear drive, even assuming that President Barack Obama gained Russian and Chinese backing for such penalties. This backing has so far been withheld.

DEBKAfile’s sources report from Vienna that on November 10, IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei sent a request to the Iranian Nuclear Energy Committee asking it to confirm the presence of the heavy water and document its origin with a full explanation. Tehran has yet to reply.

3. The presence of the heavy water tanks at Isfahan is additional proof that the reactor at Arak is designed for military purposes, not a peaceful installation as Tehran claims.”

Straight from the Debka File: “Tuesday, Nov. 18, Egypt’s special forces and engineering units suddenly shut down operation against the smuggling tunnels to Gaza without warning to Washington or Jerusalem, DEBKAfile’s military sources report. US and Israeli requests for clarifications from Cairo, which must have ordered the stoppage, were not answered. So the Obama administration signaled Egypt that if it continues to violate the international accords governing the status of the Egyptian-Gazan border, there will be consequences.

Washington is put out particularly because Cairo did not bother to notify the American engineering corps officers and men working with Egyptian troops in Sinai since early 2009 in a concerted effort to eradicate the tunnels that their mission was cut short.

DEBKAfile’s Washington sources report that the congressional subcommittees responsible for approving US economic and military aid appropriations to Egypt have been informed of the Egyptian violation.

Our military sources report that the stoppage is pretty comprehensive:

1. Egyptian forces have been pulled out of northern Sinai and Rafah, the town split down the middle between Egyptian Sinai and the Gaza Strip and under which most of the smuggling tunnels run. The trucks carrying heavy weapons for the Palestinians in Gaza can now unload directly into the tunnel openings without interference.

2. The network of sensors and security cameras installed with the help of American military engineers in northern Sinai and along the Philadelphi border corridor were all deactivated as of last Tuesday.

3. The Egyptians discontinued a major project for driving huge iron beams 16 meters deep into the tunnels as an obstruction to traffic. Some of the shafts caved in.

4. Those beams were effective for disabling the 200-250 tunnels used to smuggle mostly civilian merchandise into the Gaza Strip because they are no more than 10-15 meters deep.

However, the roughly 50-60 “strategic tunnels” for the transportation of military hardware including heavy guns and missiles run 50-60 meters underground and are outside the range of the iron beams. They are moreover strong structures with reinforced concrete walls and ceilings, electric wiring, ventilation and safety hatches. Since the Egyptian troops’ unexplained pullback from their border positions, hardware has been passing through those conduits freely and straight into the hands of Palestinian terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip.”

It's time... to get rebuked!

Straight from the Debka File: “Chinese president Hu Jintao said clearly after meeting US president Barack Obama in Beijing Tuesday, Nov. 17, that their governments disagree on tougher sanctions for Iran – or any other issue relating to the Islamic republic. DEBKAfile’s sources report that this rebuff has led Washington’s efforts to round up big power endorsement of harsh penalties for Iran’s continued intransigence on its nuclear program, such as an embargo on refined petrol products and gasoline, have come to a dead end. The efficacy of unilateral American sanctions, the only non-military option still left to Washington, is questionable.

Secretary of state Hillary Clinton made a last-ditch bid Wednesday, Nov. 18, to scale China’s negative wall, before the US president left for South Korea. She tried to talk the Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo into at least issuing a Beijing statement on Iran. He refused outright.

The Chinese rejection followed a rebuff from Moscow in the form of a comment by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov that it was premature to say that diplomatic efforts for defusing tensions over Iran’s nuclear program had failed. He said it was too soon to talk about stepping up sanctions on Iran, if at all, so contradicting the supportive message Obama received from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev when they met in Singapore last week and agreed that time was running out for Iran to respond to international efforts to meet it halfway.

Tuesday, before Beijing and Moscow knocked sanctions on the head, Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu said optimistically that the Iranian nuclear issue should be left for the world powers and international community to deal with. In a few short hours, that option had melted away.

In the last 24 hours, Israelis have been too busy discussing the expansion of the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem to notice that their former and current governments, headed respectively by Ehud Olmert and Binyamin Netanyahu, have just suffered one of their biggest foreign policy defeats. They are now confronted with a most unwelcome dilemma.”

Malik Nadal Hasan

Straight from Yahoo News: “FORT HOOD, Texas – The base commander at Fort Hood says soldiers who witnessed a shooting rampage that left 13 people dead reported that the gunman shouted “Allahu Akbar!” before opening fire at the Texas post.

Lt. Gen. Robert Cone told NBC’s “Today” show on Friday that suspected shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, made the comment, which is Arabic for “God is great!” before the rampage Thursday that also left 30 people wounded.

Military officials say they are still piecing together what may have pushed Hasan, an Army psychiatrist trained to help soldiers in distress, to turn on his comrades.

Cone says Hasan was not known to be a threat or risk.

Hasan was shot four times during the rampage. Cone says he is hospitalized in stable condition and that military officials will interrogate him as soon as possible.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) — Military officials were starting Friday to piece together what may have pushed an Army psychiatrist trained to help soldiers in distress to turn on his comrades in a shooting rampage that killed 13 people and wounded 30 in Texas.

The suspected shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, was on a ventilator and unconscious in a hospital after being shot four times during the shootings at the Army’s sprawling Fort Hood, post officials said. In the early chaos after the shootings, authorities believed they had killed him, only to discover later that he had survived.

In Washington, a senior U.S. official said authorities at Fort Hood initially thought one of the victims who had been shot and killed was the shooter. The mistake resulted in a delay of several hours in identifying Hasan as the alleged assailant.

Authorities have not ruled out that Hasan was acting on behalf of some unidentified radical group, the official said. He would not say whether any evidence had come to light to support that theory.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters that were under investigation.

Officials are not ruling out the possibility that some of the casualties may have been victims of “friendly fire,” that in the mayhem and confusion at the shooting scene some of the responding military officials may have shot some of the victims.

The gunfire broke out around 1:30 p.m. at the Soldier Readiness Center, where soldiers who are about to be deployed or who are returning undergo medical screening. Nearby, some soldiers were readying to head into a graduation ceremony for troops and families who had recently earned degrees.

Pastor Greg Schannep had just parked his car along the side of the theater and was about to head into the ceremony when a man in uniform approached him.

“Sir, they are opening fire over there!” the man told him. At first, he thought it was a training exercise — then heard three volleys and saw people running. As the man who warned him about the shots ran away, he could see the man’s back was bloodied from a wound.

Schannep said police and medical and other emergency personnel were on the scene in an instant, telling people to get inside the theater. The post went into lockdown while a search began for a suspect and emergency workers began trying to treat the wounded. Some soldiers rushed to treat their injured colleagues by ripping their uniforms into makeshift bandages to treat their wounds.

Fort Hood Lt. Gen. Bob Cone praised the soldiers for their quick reaction.

“God bless these soldiers,” Cone said. “As horrible as this was it could have been worse.”

Video from the scene showed police patrolling the area with handguns and rifles, ducking behind buildings for cover. Sirens could be heard wailing while a woman’s voice on a public-address system urged people to take cover. Schools on the base went into lockdown, and family members trying to find out what was happening inside found cell phone lines jammed or busy.

“I was confused and just shocked,” said Spc. Jerry Richard, 27, who works at the center but was not on duty during the shooting. “Overseas you are ready for it. But here you can’t even defend yourself.”

The wounded were dispersed among hospitals in central Texas, Cone said. Their identities and the identities of the dead were not immediately released.

The bodies of the victims would be taken to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for autopsies and forensic tests, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters that were under investigation.

There will also be a ceremony at the air base to honor the dead.

Jamie and Scotty Casteel stood outside the emergency room at the hospital in Temple waiting for news of their son-in-law Matthew Cooke, who was among the injured.

“He’s been shot in the abdomen and that’s all we know,” Jamie Casteel told The Associated Press. She said Cook, from New York state, had been home from Iraq for about a year.

Amber Bahr, 19, was shot in the stomach but was in stable condition, said her mother, Lisa Pfund of Random Lake, Wis.

“We know nothing, just that she was shot in the belly,” Pfund said. She couldn’t provide more details and only spoke with emergency personnel.

Ashley Saucedo told WOOD-TV in Michigan that her husband was shot in the arm, but she couldn’t discuss specifics. Saucedo said she and the couple’s two children weren’t permitted to leave their home at Fort Hood during the shootings.

The motive for the shooting wasn’t clear, but Hasan was apparently set to deploy soon, and had expressed some anger about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said generals at Fort Hood told her that Hasan was about to deploy overseas. Retired Col. Terry Lee, who said he had worked with Hasan, told Fox News he was being sent to Afghanistan.

Lee said Hasan had hoped Obama would pull troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq and got into frequent arguments with others in the military who supported the wars.

For six years before reporting for duty at Fort Hood, in July, the 39-year-old Army major worked at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center pursuing a career in psychiatry, as an intern, a resident and, last year, a fellow in disaster and preventive psychiatry. He received his medical degree from the military’s Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., in 2001.

But his record wasn’t sterling. At Walter Reed, he received a poor performance evaluation, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly. And while he was an intern, Hasan had some “difficulties” that required counseling and extra supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time.

At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.

Investigators had not determined for certain whether Hasan was the author of the posting, and a formal investigation had not been opened before the shooting, said law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the case.

The FBI, local police and other agencies searched Hasan’s apartment Thursday night after evacuating the complex in Killeen, said city spokeswoman Hilary Shine. She referred questions about what was found to the FBI. The FBI in Dallas referred questions to a spokesman who was not immediately available early Friday morning.”

Straight from the Debka File: “A US army major turns out to have acted solo in a shooting spree which left 12 US soldiers and a police officer dead and 31 injured at US Army Fort Hood base in Texas Thursday, Nov. 5. He was identified as Army Major Malik Nadal Hasan, first said to have been killed in the return fire, but later found wounded but alive. He is now in stable condition under military guard. Two other suspects of the shooting were cleared and released.

Major Hasan, age 39, is a military psychiatrist born in Virginia to Palestinian parents who immigrated to the US from Jordan. Until recently, he was posted at Walter Reid Hospital, Washington D.C.

Hasan embarked on his murderous shooting spree shortly after being informed he was to be deployed in Iraq.

Retired Army Col. Terry Lee, who said he worked with the major, told reporters that Hasan had hoped President Barack Obama would pull the army out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Lee said he often got into arguments with soldiers who supported the wars and had tried hard to get his pending deployment cancelled.

According to unnamed law enforcement officials, the major came to their attention six months ago on suspicion of posting Internet messages equating suicide bombers with soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades. No formal investigation had been opened before the shooting.

In a brief message, US president Barack Obama called on Americans to pray for the wounded men. He said it was hard enough for “our soldiers to die in action in Afghanistan and Iraq, but horrifying for them to come under fire at an army base on American soil.”"

Silkworm Missile

Straight from the Debka File: “Israel’s military intelligence chief Brig. Amos Yadlin revealed Tuesday, Nov. 3, that the Palestinian Hamas had successfully tested a new 60-km range Iranian shore-to-sea missile firing it west from the Gaza coast. When fired north overland the missile could reach Tel Aviv.

Brig. Yadlin’s report to the Knesset foreign affairs and security committee confirmed DEBKAfile’s Oct. 25 disclosure of intensive Iranian efforts to arm Hizballan and Hamas with extended-range missiles and rockets capable of reaching Israel’s strategic heartland. He revealed that Iranian arms were reaching Hizballah and Hamas through Syria and, for the first, time via Turkey.

The intelligence chief did not specify the source of the missiles delivered to Hamas or disclose who their instructors were. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the Hizballah on orders from Tehran apparently took charge of smuggling the new missiles to their Palestinian allies and its officers instructed them in their use.

Our military sources identify the new missile in Hamas’ arsenal as a C-802 of the Silkworm series (of Chinese origin), of the type Hizballah fired to cripple the Israeli missile ship Hanit on July 15 2006 during the second Lebanon war.

Tehran has since showered thousands of these missiles on Hizballah. They are positioned along the Lebanese Mediterranean in closer formation than almost any coastal defense array in the world.

Hamas’ successful test indicates that Iran is intent on building up its Palestinian proxy’s capability for breaking the Israeli Mediterranean naval blockade on the Gaza Strip and restricting the freedom of Israeli warships cruising opposite its southern shores.

Silkworms deployed in the Gaza Strip are a menace to Israel’s southern naval bases, especially in Ashdod port. They are also precise enough to target land-based strategic facilities like power stations and fuel depots. In 1987, Tehran used an earlier version of the Silkworm to strike Kuwait’s oil installations.

On Oct. 25, DEBKAfile also reported that the al Qods external terror branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards was in the throes of a major effort to smuggle Fajr-5 surface rockets into the Gaza Strip. These rockets whose range is 75 km can also reach Tel Aviv and its southern satellite cities from Gaza. Our military sources report that the huge missiles are transported by sea to Hamas training camps in Sudan in 8-10 segments, smuggled from there north to the Egyptian shores of the Suez Canal, then offloaded in Sinai for covert transportation to the Gaza Strip.

On Oct. 31, our military sources revealed that North Korea had sold Iran and Syria EM52 midget submarines designed to drop small commando raider units on targeted shores and sow mines in enemy harbors.

Tehran is thus immersed in an operation for turning the Mediterranean into another hostile front against Israel in the event of a regional war.

While aware of the Iranian marine noose closing in on Israel, the government led by prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and defense minister Ehud Barak do not seem to be doing much in the way of preventive action.”

Straight from the Debka File: “The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafary, Monday, Oct. 19, threatened “crushing” retaliation against the US, UK and Pakistan including the invasion of its eastern neighbor. Tehran links all three to the suicide bombing attack in Sistan-Baluchistan Sunday, Oct. 18, which killed 42 people including seven senior Guards officers. One was Gen. Nur Ali Shoustari, Jafari’s deputy, who was identified by DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources as commander of the al Qods clandestine terror bases in Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

Jafary said: “Behind this scene are the American and British intelligence apparatus and there will have to be retaliatory measures to punish them.”

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources note that is the first time in Iran’s 30-year Islamic revolution that a military leader has gone to the extreme lengths of threatening to strike US and British military targets, a measure of the damage the regime and Guards suffered from the suicide attack, which has since been condemned and denied by Washington.

Jafari expanded on his charge by saying: “New evidence has been obtained proving the link between yesterday’s terror attack and the US, British and Pakistani intelligence services.” He spoke of evidence showing that all three supported the group. “A delegation would soon travel to Pakistan to present it,” he said.

A military official in Tehran then suggested Iran might launch a military thrust into Pakistan against the group blamed for the attack. Lawmaker Payman Forouzesh said: “There is even unanimity that these operations (could) take place in Pakistan territory.”

Tehran accuses the Sunni secessionist terrorist group Jundallah of Baluchistan, which is fighting for the predominantly Sunni province’s independence, of carrying out the suicide bombing in provincial town of Pisheen near the Pakistan and Afghanistan borders. In the past, Tehran has charged the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence agency and the CIA of supporting the group. It has carried out a string of terrorist attacks on regime and Shiite targets including in 2007 a failed assassination attempt on president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report that Tehran will have to make good on its threats without too much delay or lose face among the political and ethnic minority dissidents plaguing on the regime, especially those who rose up in protest against the tainted June 20 presidential election. Hesitation will be seen as weakness.

Past Iranian reprisals were usually carried against the US or Britain indirectly in the Persian Gulf or by local Islamic surrogates like Hizballah in Iraq. Jafari’s words point to a more direct showdown this time by the IRGC or its terrorist arm al Qods.”

Iranian sword stabs Star of David and US flag

Straight from the Debka File: “Iran has posted hundreds of agents in world ports to organize clandestine supplies through third countries of items subject to UN or US sanctions present or future. These items range from nuclear components to refined petroleum products. Dubai and the Ras al-Khaimah of the United Arab Emirates are two such ports. Malaysia, Hong Kong and Venezuela are willing helpers. So too is China. Canada has been targeted as a sanction-busting hub, albeit against its will. Customs officials in Ottawa told the Canadian National Post of Oct. 1 that they have seized everything from centrifuge parts to programmable logic controllers suspected of being en route for Iran although addressed to third parties. Microchips identified as “navigational chips” from the US, Denmark and Japan were marked for the UAE but believed to be destined for Iran.

Ras al-Khaiman is a useful address because its large port for container ships and big airport are controlled by Iran; the small emirate is situated opposite the big Iranian Gulf port of Bandar Abbas.

Tehran has pressed China, India, Malaysia, Venezuela and Syria into service for beating possible sanctions on gasoline and refined oils – even before the Obama administration has decided if a ban on these items is feasible.

Some of these countries are more than willing to oblige Tehran. On Sept. 24, Iran and Venezuela signed a contract for the construction of huge oil refineries in Syria to produce 140,000 barrels a day of refined oil products. Iran is short of refinery capacity. Venezuela holds 33 percent of the $1.5 bn project, Iran and Syria 26 percent each and Malaysia 15 percent.

China, which imports 17 percent of its crude from Iran, has increased its gasoline sales to the Islamic Republic. Beijing has instructed small, unknown Chinese firms to buy up large amounts of gasoline and related products on the Singapore market and ship the goods to Iran.

One such company is the government-owned Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp in southern China.

According to oil industry gossip, the two giant Swiss Vitol and Indian Reliance, once major Iran suppliers, are angling for ways to go back to selling Iran gasoline if the US manages to gain UN Security Council approval of sanctions, although China is now providing one-third of these imports.

These circles are highly skeptical about Washington’s ability to persuade world countries and Asian firms to go along with an embargo on gasoline.

The US justice department has prosecuted over 20 companies and individuals over the past year for sending a wide range of sensitive technology to Iran, including missile guidance systems, military aircraft parts and components for improvised explosive devices. But Russia has not given up Iran as a market for its weapons.”

Israeli Dolphin Class Sub

Straight from the Debka File: “DEBKAfile’s military sources report that at least one of two Dolphin-class U212 submarines on order for the Israeli Navy from the German HDW shipyards in Kiel was delivered this week, bringing the Navy’s total number of this type of sub to four. According to foreign military sources, the Dolphin is capable of carrying cruise missiles with nuclear warheads.

Israel has never officially confirmed possession of this type of nuclear-capable submarine. According to our military sources, Chancellor Angela Merkel was persuaded by the military tensions put forth by Iran to step in personally and raise the completion of Israel’s submarine order fitted out for cruise missiles to top priority. The work was finished a year before the date on the contract.

The delivery of at least one of the pair of Dolphins just before the Six Powers confront Iran on its nuclear program Thursday, Oct. 1, gives substance to Israel’s option to strike Iranian nuclear facilities.

In June, an Israeli Dolphin passed through the Suez Canal for the first time, escorted by Egyptian navy vessels, as a message to Tehran that Cairo would open the waterway to Israeli warships in the event of the controversy over Iran’s nuclear program getting out of hand.

DEBKAfile only confirms the arrival of one Dolphin.

The French and Italian news agencies, AFP and ANSA, reported Tuesday that Israel had taken delivery of not one but two German-made U212 submarines and now had a fleet of five. AFP quoted a military spokesman in Tel Aviv. An ANSA correspondent reported that military sources in Tel Aviv and Berlin had declined to comment on the report except for promising to check it. According to the Italian reporter, it is also possible that the subs were handed to an Israeli Navy crew by the shipyard and had not yet reached Israel.”

GBU-57A/B Massive Ordinance Penetrator

Straight from the Debka File: “The Pentagon has brought forward to December 2009 the target-date for producing the first 15-ton super bunker-buster bomb (GBU-57A/B) Massive Ordinance Penetrator, which can reach a depth of 60.09 meters underground before exploding. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that top defense agencies and air force units were also working against the clock to adapt the bay of a B2a Stealth bomber for carrying and delivering the bomb.

The Pentagon has ordered the number of bombs rolling off the production line increased from four to ten – a rush job triggered in May by the discovery that Iran was hiding a second uranium enrichment plant under a mountain near Qom – a discovery which prompted this week’s international outcry.

Congress has since quietly inserted the necessary funding in the 2009 budget.

All this urgency indicates that the Obama administration has been preparing military muscle to back up the international condemnation of Iran’s concealed nuclear bomb program, its sanctions threat and his willingness to join the negotiations with Iran opening on Oct. 1 in Geneva. Tehran may have to take into account a possible one-time surgical strike against its underground enrichment facility as a warning shot should its defiance continue. In particular, the world powers this week demanded that Iran open up all its nuclear facilities and programs to full and immediate international inspection. Failure to do so could bring forth further US military action.

According to our military sources, the earliest date for the accelerated Pentagon program to produce a super bunker buster bomb mounted on a stealth bomber is December 2009 or January 2010. This too is three years ahead of its original schedule.

Pressed into service are two US Air Force research centers for work on adapting the radar-evading stealth bomber to the giant bomb: the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base and the Munitions Directorate and Air Armament Center, both headquartered at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.

Last month, DEBKAfile quoted Air Force Lt. Gen. Mark Shackelford as disclosing that the Pentagon had decided to accelerate the production of 10-12 giant bunker buster bombs in response to intelligence received of Iranian and North Korean underground nuclear plants.”

Iran President Ahmadinejad

Straight from the Debka File: “The Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinjad’s excessive oratory, matched by the shuffle of Western delegations led by the US leaving the UN General Assembly chamber, have been a typical feature of every new UN General Assembly session in the last three years. This time, the Iranian president preceded his speech with press interviews in which he tried to sound more reasonable while refusing to answer questions on his denial of the Holocaust and Iran’s nuclear program.

But then, on the podium Wednesday, Sept. 23, he declared: “American power has reached the end of the road and is paralyzed. It is no longer possible to inject thousands of billions of dollars of unreal wealth into the world economy simply by printing worthless paper,” Ahmadinejad said, hinting at the ways in which the Obama administration is trying to solve the global economic crisis.

He went to say: “The engine of unbridled capitalism, with its unfair system of thought, has reached the end of the road and is unable to move,” he said, adding:

“The time has come for an end to those who define democracy and freedom and set standards while they themselves are the first who violate its fundamental principles. They can no longer be the judge and executioner.”

In a typical anti-Semitic diatribe, Ahmadinejad said: “Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner.”

Appropriating President Barack Obama’s campaign slogan, “Yes, we can”, Ahmadinejad attempted to differentiate between US policy and President Obama’s approach, when he said: “Most people, including the people of the United States, are waiting for real and profound changes.”

The Iranian president accused the US and Israel of killing thousands of innocent people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Referring to Israel directly, he said: “How can the crimes of the occupiers against defenseless women and children and destruction of their homes, farms, hospitals and schools be supported unconditionally by certain governments and at the same time the oppressed men and women be subjected to the heaviest economic blockade, which denies their basic needs: food, water and medicine, and leads to genocide?”

Shortly before Ahmadinejad’s speech US President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met on the sidelines of the UN session. Medvedev then repeated the new Russian position, which states that in principle “Russia’s position is clear: Sanctions rarely lead to productive results, but in some cases sanctions are inevitable.”

President Obama said that Iran been “violating too many of its international commitments.” He committed himself to negotiating with Iran on the issue, but said serious sanctions were a possibility if Iran failed to respond seriously.”

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu addresses the session later Thursday in a speech expected to focus on Iran.”

E-3A AWACS

Straight from the Debka File: “Up above a big military parade in Tehran on Tuesday, Sept. 22, as Iranian president declared Iran’s armed forces would “chop off the hands” of any power daring to attack his country, two air force jets collided in mid-air. One was Iran’s only airborne warning and control system (AWACS) for coordinating long-distance aerial operations, DEBKAfile’s military and Iranian sources disclose.

The proud military parade, which included a march-past, a line of Shehab-3 missiles and an air force fly-past, was planned to give Ahmadinejad a dazzling send-off for New York and add steel to his UN Assembly speech Wednesday.

Dubbed “Simorgh” (a flying creature of Iranian fable which performs wonders in mid-flight), the AWACS’ appearance, escorted by fighter jets, was to have been the climax for the Iranian Air force’s fly-past over the parade. Instead, it collided with one of escorting planes, a US-made F-5E, and both crashed to the ground in flames. All seven crewmen were killed.

Eye witnesses reported that the flaming planes landed on the mausoleum burial site of the Islamic revolution’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini, a national shrine. According to Western observers, no distress signals came from either cockpit indicating that the collision and explosions were sudden and fast.

DEBKAfile’s military sources say the disaster was a serious blow to the Iranian Air Force not long after its first and only AWACS went into service in April 2008. It was a renovated version of the Russian Ilyushin 76, part of Saddam Hussein’s air force before it was transferred to Iran in 1991 during the first Gulf War.

Tehran hired Russian technicians to carry out renovations and install up-to-date radar. At the launching ceremony of the upgraded AWACS, Air Force commander Brig. Gen. Ahmad Miqani boasted its new radar systems were made in Iran and able to spot any airplane or missile at a distance of 1,000 kilometers from Iran’s borders.

The loss of this airborne control system has left Iran’s air force and air and missile defenses without “electronic eyes” for surveillance of the skies around its borders.”

It's time... to remove your missile shield defense system! NO SHIELD FOR YOU!

Straight from the Debka File: “The Obama administration’s decision to shelve the plan to install US missile interceptors and radar systems in Poland and the Czech Republic is to be announced at a news conference later Thursday, Sept. 17 by defense secretary Robert Gates. In the face of strong Russian objections, the shield was promoted by the Bush administration to shield Europe from long-range Iranian ballistic missile attack.

DEBKAfile reports that Barack Obama’s decision prompted Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s surprise comment Monday, Sept. 14, that his government no longer rules out further sanctions against Iran – although the Kremlin has always denied its cooperation with the US on the Iranian nuclear issue was contingent on the removal of the US missile shield plan.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly in its coming issue (out Friday) will reveal how the shared US-Russian wish to avert an Israeli military strike against Iran produced Obama’s decision to ditch the missile shield in East Europe.

Our Washington sources report that the decision follows a 60-day assessment of the issue ordered by Obama. “The US will base its decision on a determination that Iran’s long-range missile program has not progressed as rapidly as previously estimated, reducing the threat to the continental US and major European capitals,” said unnamed current and former US officials.

On Aug. 29, DEBKAfile reported exclusively from East European sources that Washington was considering the transfer of its missile plan from Poland and the Czech Republic possibly to Israel and Turkey. Click HERE

This decision is an important foreign policy step for Obama; it is a prize for Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, who fought the US shield plan on Russia’s doorstep tooth and nail, and a major strategic reversal for Iran.

Moscow’s cooperation would remove a key obstacle on the road to harsh sanctions against Iran. Acting in concert with Moscow, Washington could dispense with Beijing’s endorsement.

Nonetheless, DEBKAfile’s Moscow sources stress, it is not entirely clear how far the Kremlin is willing to go in partnering the US drive against Iran. Russian leaders will take good care not to appear to the Muslim and Arab world as Iran’s enemy or a trading and diplomatic partner who reneges on its commitments.”

Iran President Ahmadinejad

Straight from the Debka File: “The first Western leader to expressly admit knowledge of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, French president Nicolas Sarkozy said: “It is a certainty to all of our secret services. Iran is working today on a nuclear (weapons) program.” He added: “We cannot let Iran acquire nuclear” weapons because it would also be a threat to Israel.” Sarkozy spoke during a meeting at the Elysee presidential palace with lawmakers from his UMP party Tuesday, Sept. 15.

The French president said he would not shake the hand (of Iran’s president at the UN General Assembly) of “someone who wants to wipe Israel off the map.”

DEBKAfile’s militlary sources add: French intelligence has thus gone further than US intelligence agencies which maintained in an assessment to leaked to the media on Sept. 10: “Iran has created enough nuclear fuel to make a rapid, if risky, spring for a nuclear weapon,” and “Iran has deliberately stopped short of the critical last steps to make a bomb.”

France is one of the five permanent UN Security Council members with veto powers. Together with Germany they have agreed to meet Iranian representatives on Oct. 1 for talks, although Tehran insists they will not cover its “inalienable nuclear rights.”"

Sejil Missile Launch

Straight from the Debka File: “Iran is slowing down the manufacture of the Shehab-3 surface missile in favor of mass production of the more accurate two-stage 2,000-kilometer range Sejil II ballistic missile powered with solid fuel, which was successfully tested on May 20, DEBKAfile’s military and Iranian sources report.

More than 1,000 new Sejil IIs are projected to come off production lines in five years, at the rate of 200 a year.

Western sources say the Iranians are over-ambitious and can deliver no more than 10-15 missiles a year at present, although with a huge multi-billion dollar investment they might raise output to 30.

Liquid-fuel missiles like the Shehab take hours to prepare for firing, during which time they are exposed to oversight by US and Israel spy satellites, whereas the Sejil because it is powered by solid fuel has the huge advantage of stealth. It can only be detected by military satellites and early warning radar systems like the American FBX-T posted in the Israeli Negev after it is airborne and winging towards target.

Iran has also recruited Chinese missile experts to assist in the production of mobile launchers for the Sejil II. The combination of the solid-fuel Sejil mounted on mobile vehicles will give an Iranian missile attack the advantage of surprise, because of the difficulty of tracking and targeting them from space or the air.

DEBKAfile’s military sources add that Iran is going all out to fill its arsenal with Sejil II missiles for outwitting Israel’s Arrow interceptors if and when they attack Israel. Western missile experts calculate that if Iran lets loose against Israel a simultaneous barrage of dozens of Shehab-3 and a handful of Sejil II, the Arrow will only intercept some of them; the rest will reach their targets.

Iran’s arms industry is driving forward at top speed to attain this capability. Israel has entered the arms race by stepping up production of the Arrow anti-missile systems.

At some point, Israel strategists had hoped the surge of unrest in Tehran sparked by the disputed June 12 presidential election would result in the regime pulling funds out of nuclear and missile industries and investing in projects for improving the lives of the disaffected populace. But the challenge to its authority has had the opposite effect. The Islamic rulers have opted for speeding up weapons production and maximizing their tools of war rather than home benefits.”