All Things News

"Let me be clear! My ultimate goal is to enslave the entire Arab world!"

Straight from Fox News: “Al Qaeda’s deputy leader on Monday accused President Barack Obama of deceiving the Arab world and failing to advance Middle East peace talks, and said the militants’ struggle against the United States and its allies is “a war between Muslims and infidels.”

In a new message posted on the Internet, Ayman Al-Zawahiri claimed Obama has brought the region nothing but “blockade and siege” despite efforts to reach out to Arabs.

“Obama’s plan, though wrapped in smiles and calls for respect and understanding, aims only to support Israel,” al-Zawahiri said in a 26-minute audio message.

Usama bin Laden’s deputy has been critical of Obama since his election, even releasing a message that referred to the U.S. president as a “house negro,” a slur for a black subservient to whites.

“Obama’s policy is nothing but another cycle in the Crusader and Zionist campaign to enslave and humiliate us, and to occupy our land and steal our wealth,” al-Zawahiri said.

The authenticity of the statement could not be independently verified, but it was posted on a Web site commonly used for militant messaging.

In it, al-Zawahiri also scoffed at key American allies in the region — the Egyptian president and the Jordanian and the Saudi kings — for supporting peace with Israel.

He urged Muslims and Palestinians to wage holy war, or jihad, not only in Israel and the Palestinian territories but also beyond those areas, saying there are “ample opportunities elsewhere.”

He praised Muslim militants fighting in Pakistan, saying the conflict there was a “war of Muslim dignity and pride” and warned the Palestinians against any negotiations with Israel.

“We should continue jihad to liberate Palestinian land and establish an Islamic state there. We should wage jihad against Jews and all those who support them, whether they are Americans or Westerners,” he said.

The terror network’s No. 2 said the group “will not forget” its members held in American prisons.

He specifically mentioned Ramzi Youssef, convicted and now serving a life sentence for the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, and also Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Al Qaeda’s mastermind of the September 11 bombings.

Mohammed and four others, held for years at the military base in Guantanamo Bay, are due to stand trial on charges they plotted the September 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.”

Dr. Josef Mengele

Straight from The Age: “HEART specialists have saved the life of an Israeli man who refused to visit a doctor for 64 years – and learnt the terrible secret of his mistrust of the medical profession. When Yitzchak Ganon, 85, awoke from the anaesthetic at a hospital near Tel Aviv, he was informed he had only one kidney.

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.”

Straight from the USA Today: “The United Nations says Iran is preparing to start up a uranium-enrichment site that was revealed only recently and which scientists suggest is too small for nuclear power purposes but suitable for making nuclear bombs.

In a report Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the site hidden in a mountainside in Qom appeared designed to produce about a ton of enriched uranium a year.

A senior international official familiar with the IAEA’s work in Iran said that amount would be too little to fuel a nuclear power plant. The official spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the information he was citing was confidential.

Others agreed.

“It won’t (even) be able to produce a reactor’s worth of fuel in 90 years, but it will be able to produce one bomb a year,” said Ivan Oelrich, vice president of the Strategic Security Program of the Federation of American Scientists.

Iranian construction of the secret site is at an advanced stage, with high-tech equipment already in place at the fortified facility ahead of its 2011 start-up, according to the IAEA report.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the report “underscores that Iran still refuses to comply fully with its international nuclear obligations.”

The IAEA has accused Iran of possibly violating an international treaty it signed regarding nuclear programs by not telling the U.N. of the site in Qom.

Iran has another nuclear program in Natanz, where it has been enriching uranium with centrifuges under IAEA monitoring. Centrifuge machines can convert uranium gas into fuel for reactors for electricity or into fissile material for nuclear weapons.

The report stated that enrichment at Natanz had stagnated. The official suggested that experts previously working at Natanz could be preoccupied with putting the finishing touches on the Qom site, known as Fordo.

The restricted document, which was obtained by the Associated Press, also noted that “for well over a year,” Iran had stonewalled IAEA efforts to investigate allegations that it actively worked on a nuclear weapons program.

Unless Tehran has a change of heart, the agency “will not be in a position to provide credible assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities,” the report said.”

More Troops? Barack is takin' this shit into his own hands!

Straight from Fox News: “President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

That stance comes in the midst of forceful reservations about a possible troop buildup from the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official.

In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Obama is still close to announcing his revamped war strategy — most likely shortly after he returns from a trip to Asia that ends on Nov. 19.

But the president raised questions at a war council meeting Wednesday that could alter the dynamic of both how many additional troops are sent to Afghanistan and what the timeline would be for their presence in the war zone, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Obama’s thinking.

Military officials said Obama has asked for a rewrite before and resisted what one official called a one-way highway toward war commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recommendations for more troops. The sense that he was being rushed and railroaded has stiffened Obama’s resolve to seek information and options beyond military planning, officials said, though a substantial troop increase is still likely.

The president was considering options that include adding 30,000 or more U.S. forces to take on the Taliban in key areas of Afghanistan and to buy time for the Afghan government’s small and ill-equipped fighting forces to take over. The other three options on the table Wednesday were ranges of troop increases, from a relatively small addition of forces to the roughly 40,000 that the top U.S. general in Afghanistan prefers, according to military and other officials.

The key sticking points appear to be timelines and mounting questions about the credibility of the Afghan government.

Administration officials said Wednesday that Obama wants to make it clear that the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan is not open-ended. The war is now in its ninth year and is claiming U.S. lives at a record pace as military leaders say the Taliban has the upper hand in many parts of the country.

Eikenberry, the top U.S. envoy to Kabul, is a prominent voice among those advising Obama, and his sharp dissent is sure to affect the equation. He retired from the Army this year to become one of the few generals in American history to switch directly from soldier to diplomat, and he himself is a recent, former commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Eikenberry’s cables raise deep concern about the viability of the Karzai government, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with them who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the classified documents. Other administration officials raised the same misgivings in describing Obama’s hesitancy to accept any of the options before him in their current form.

The options presented to Obama by his war council will now be amended.

Military officials say one approach is a compromise battle plan that would add 30,000 or more U.S. forces atop a record 68,000 in the country now. They described it as “half and half,” meaning half fighting and half training and holding ground so the Afghans can regroup.

The White House says Obama has not made a final choice, though military and other officials have said he appears near to approving a slightly smaller increase than McChrystal wants at the outset.

Among the options for Obama would be ways to phase in additional troops, perhaps eventually equaling McChrystal’s full request, based on security or other conditions in Afghanistan and in response to pending decisions on troops levels by some U.S. allies fighting in Afghanistan.

The White House has chafed under criticism from Republicans and some outside critics that Obama is dragging his feet to make a decision.

Obama’s top military advisers have said they are comfortable with the pace of the process, and senior military officials have pointed out that the president still has time since no additional forces could begin flowing into Afghanistan until early next year.

Under the scenario featuring about 30,000 more troops, that number most likely would be assembled from three Army brigades and a Marine Corps contingent, plus a new headquarters operation that would be staffed by 7,000 or more troops, a senior military official said. There would be a heavy emphasis on the training of Afghan forces, and the reinforcements Obama sends could include thousands of U.S. military trainers.

Another official stressed that Obama is considering a range of possibilities for the military expansion and that his eventual decision will cover changes in U.S. approach beyond the addition of troops. The stepped-up training and partnership operation with Afghan forces would be part of that effort, the official said, although expansion of a better-trained Afghan force long has been part of the U.S objective and the key to an eventual U.S. and allied exit from the country.

With the Taliban-led insurgency expanding in size and ability, U.S. military strategy already has shifted to focus on heading off the fighters and protecting Afghan civilians. The evolving U.S. policy, already remapped early in Obama’s tenure, increasingly acknowledges that the insurgency can be blunted but not defeated outright by force.”

South Korean Navy patrol boats

Straight from Yahoo News: “SEOUL, South Korea – A badly damaged North Korean patrol ship retreated in flames Tuesday after a skirmish with a South Korean naval vessel along their disputed western coast, South Korean officials said.

The first naval clash between the two sides in seven years broke out just a week before President Barack Obama is due to visit Seoul, raising suspicions the North’s communist regime is trying to rachet up tensions to gain a negotiating advantage.

There were no South Korean casualties, the country’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. South Korea’s YTN television reported that one North Korean officer was killed and three other sailors were wounded, citing an unidentified government source. The JCS said it could not confirm the YTN report.

Each side blamed the other for violating the sea border.

The exchange of fire occurred as U.S. officials said Obama has decided to send a special envoy to Pyongyang for rare direct talks on the communist country’s nuclear weapons program. No date has been set, but the talks would be the first one-on-one negotiations since Obama took office in January.

“It was an intentional provocation by North Korea to draw attention ahead of Obama’s trip,” said Shin Yul, a political science professor at Seoul’s Myongji University.

He also said the North was sending a message to Obama that it wants to replace the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953 with a permanent peace treaty while keeping its nuclear weapons.

Washington has consistently said that Pyongyang must abandon its nuclear arsenal for any peace treaty to be concluded. North Korea has conducted two underground nuclear tests since 2006 and is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for half a dozen atomic weapons.

“We are sternly protesting to North Korea and urging it to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents,” South Korean Rear Adm. Lee Ki-sik told reporters in Seoul.

North Korea’s military issued a statement blaming South Korea for the “grave armed provocation,” saying its ships had crossed into North Korean territory.

The North claimed that a group of South Korean warships opened fire but fled after the North Korean patrol boat dealt “a prompt retaliatory blow.” The statement, carried on the official Korean Central News Agency, said the South should apologize.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who convened an emergency security meeting, ordered the South’s defense minister to strengthen military readiness.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that a North Korean patrol boat crossed the disputed western sea border about 11:27 a.m. (0227 GMT), drawing warning shots from a South Korean navy vessel. The North Korean boat then opened fire and the South’s ship returned fire before the North’s vessel sailed back toward its waters, the statement said.

The clash occurred near the South Korean-held island of Daecheong, about 120 nautical miles (220 kilometers) off the port city of Incheon, west of Seoul, the statement said.

The North Korean ship was seriously damaged in the skirmish, a Joint Chiefs of Staff officer said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy. Prime Minister Chung Un-chan told lawmakers the ship was on fire when it fled north.

Lee, the rear admiral, said the shooting lasted for about two minutes, during which the North Korean ship fired about 50 rounds at the South Korean vessel, about two miles (3.2 kilometers) away. He said the South Korean ship was lightly damaged.

He said several Chinese fishing boats were operating in the area at the time of clash, but they were undamaged. Chung, the prime minister, described the clash as “accidental,” telling lawmakers that two North Korean ships had crossed into South Korean waters in an attempt to clamp down on Chinese fishing.

Lee, however, said the South Korean military was investigating if the North’s alleged violation was deliberate.

The Koreas regularly accuse each other of straying into their respective territories. South Korea’s military said that North Korean ships have already violated the sea border 22 times this year.

The two sides fought deadly skirmishes along the western sea border in 1999 and 2002.

No South Koreans were killed in 1999, but six South Korean sailors died in 2002, according to the South Korean navy. It said exact North Korean causalities remain unclear.

Baek Seung-joo, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, said Tuesday’s clash would not have a big impact on inter-Korean relations.

He said the Koreas held a landmark summit in 2000 and the North sent a cheering squad to the South for the Asian Games in 2002. Both events took place after the separate clashes in 1999 and 2002.

Baek, like fellow analyst Shin, said that North Korea caused the incident but that Pyongyang appears to want to create tensions and use them for domestic political consumption.

The two Koreas have yet to agree on their sea border more than 50 years after the end of their 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice and not a peace treaty. Instead, they rely on a line that the then-commander of U.N. forces, which fought for the South, drew unilaterally at the end of the conflict.

North Korea last month accused South Korean warships of broaching its territory in waters off the west coast and warned of a clash in the zone, which is a rich crab fishing area.

The latest conflict comes after North Korea has reached out to Seoul and Washington following months of tension over its nuclear and missile programs.

North Korea launched a long-range rocket in April and carried out its second underground nuclear test in May. But it subsequently released South Korean and U.S. detainees, agreed to resume joint projects with South Korea and offered direct talks with Washington.

Two administration officials said Monday in Washington that Obama has decided, after months of deliberation, to send a special envoy to Pyongyang for direct talks on nuclear issues.

Obama will send envoy Stephen Bosworth, although no date for his trip has been set, the officials said. The officials discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been publicly announced.

Hundreds of thousands of combat-ready troops on both sides face across the 155-mile-long (248-kilometers-long) land border that is also strewn with land mines and tank traps and laced with barbed wire. About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea to deter a potential North Korean aggression.”

Iranian sword stabs Star of David and US flag

Straight from Fox News: “The U.N. nuclear watchdog has asked Tehran to explain evidence suggesting that Iranian scientists have experimented with an advanced secret nuclear warhead design, according to a report published Friday.

Citing what it calls “previously unpublished documentation” from an International Atomic Energy Agency compiled report, Britain’s The Guardian newspaper said Iranian scientists may have tested high-explosive components of a “two-point implosion” device.

The report said that even the existence of two-point implosion nuclear warhead technology is officially secret in both the U.S. and Britain. The technology allows for the production of smaller and simpler warheads, making it easier to put a warhead on a missile, the newspaper said.

The IAEA said in September it has no proof Iran has or once had a covert atomic bomb program.

The U.N. watchdog’s statements followed reports from the Associated Press quoting what it called a classified IAEA document saying agency experts agreed Iran now had the means to build atomic bombs and was heading towards developing a missile system able to carry a nuclear warhead.

Extracts of the report have been published before, but it was not known the document included information on such a sophisticated warhead, the newspaper said.

A nuclear site, which Iran revealed in September three years after diplomats said Western spies first discovered it, added to fears of secret Iranian efforts to develop nuclear bombs. Iran claims it is enriching uranium only for peaceful electricity use.

The Vienna-based IAEA, Iran’s Foreign Ministry and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran were unavailable for comment when contacted by Reuters.”

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 Slashdot: “The New York Times reports in this week’s Science section that hardware and software trojan kill switches in military devices are an increasing concern, and may have already been used. ‘A 2007 Israeli Air Force attack on a suspected, partly-constructed Syrian nuclear reactor led to speculation about why the Syrian air defense system did not respond to the Israeli aircraft. Accounts of the event initially indicated that sophisticated jamming technology was used to blind the radars. Last December, however, a report in an American technical publication, IEEE Spectrum, cited a European industry source in raising the possibility that the Israelis might have used a built-in kill switch to shut down the radars. Separately, an American semiconductor industry executive said in an interview that he had direct knowledge of the operation and that the technology for disabling the radars was supplied by Americans to the Israeli electronic intelligence agency, Unit 8200.’”

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.”

Straight from the Washington Times: “Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis.

Among the 778 such projects, known as earmarks, packed into the bill: $25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.

While earmarks are hardly new in Washington, “in 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year,” said Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate staffer who worked on defense funding and oversight for both Republicans and Democrats. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information, an independent research organization.

Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, called the transfer of funds from Pentagon operations and maintenance “a disgrace.”

“The Senate is putting favorable headlines back home above our men and women fighting on the front lines,” he said in a statement.”

Run free! Run free!

Straight from Fox News: “Suspected enemy combatants held at the Guantanamo Bay prison can now be transferred to U.S. soil for trial.

Handing President Obama a partial victory in his effort to close the military prison, House Democrats on Thursday repelled a Republican effort to block transfer of any of the detainees to the U.S.

Instead, by a 224-193 vote, the House stood by a Democratic plan to allow suspected enemy combatants held at the controversial Guantanamo facility to be shipped to U.S. soil — but only to be prosecuted for their suspected crimes.

The Guantanamo restrictions were attached by House-Senate negotiators on a $42.8 billion homeland security appropriations bill.

Obama has ordered the closure of the prison but congressional Democrats have refused to spend any money on the project until the president assembles a plan to shut down the facility and move the prisoners.

The top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, charged that Democrats have “turned a blind eye to the dangers that these prisoners of war pose to the American people.”

He went on to call the detainees “enemies of the state.”

Democratic leaders had to push hard to win the vote because many Democrats two weeks ago had cast a nonbinding but politically safe vote against any Guantanamo detainee transfers. But several Democrats from swing districts said they saw little political risk on Thursday’s vote.

“It’s a non-issue. Inside the beltway stuff,” said first-term Rep. Dan Maffai, D-N.Y. “People care about jobs, the economy, health care.”

“I haven’t had one person ask me about Guantanamo,” said Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind. He added that he does “not in the least” fear it as an issue in next year’s elections.

Permitting Guantanamo prisoners to be transferred to U.S. soil to stand trial had been a bipartisan compromise earlier. It mostly tracks current restrictions put in place in June and is similar to a version backed by Republicans earlier in the year. In fact, Republicans such as Lewis helped fashion the compromise.

But in the absence of a plan from the administration for closing the facility, Lewis has toughened his talk, calling the administration’s plan misguided and potentially dangerous.

“Terrorists should not be treated like common criminals in federal court,” Lewis said. “These detainees are enemies of the state, and should be treated as such by being held and brought to justice right where they are — in Guantanamo Bay.”

Democrats say that Republicans are simply seeking a political opening.

Still, the public is mixed at best on the idea of closing Guantanamo and transferring some of its prisoners to the U.S. Respondents to an AP/Gfk poll in June found Americans evenly divided on whether they support Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo. A Gallup poll taken around the same time — but with the question worded differently — found that respondents opposed closing Guantanamo by a 2-1 margin and rejected the idea of moving detainees to their states by a 4-1 margin.

Several of the fiscal 2010 funding bills contain varying restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees, reflecting widespread opposition among voters. The Senate-passed defense appropriations bill, for example, contains an outright ban on releasing Guantanamo detainees into the U.S., including for trial or incarceration.

The underlying spending bill also backs the Obama administration’s refusal to release new photos showing U.S. personnel abusing detainees held overseas. The measure supports Obama’s decision to allow the secretary of defense to bar the release of detainee photos for three years.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit to obtain unreleased photos of detainee abuse under the Freedom of Information Act and won two rounds in federal court. The measure would essentially trump the ACLU’s case.

In response, the administration has appealed to the Supreme Court and Obama has said he would use every available means to block release of additional detainee abuse photos because they could whip up anti-American sentiment overseas and endanger U.S. troops. His powers include issuing an order to classify the photos, thus blocking their release.

But the detainee photos provision earned a sharp rebuke from Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., normally a leadership loyalist from her perch as chairwoman of the powerful Rules Committee. She said that “the people’s right to know is more important than the government’s desire to keep things secret.”"

Straight from CBS News: “The Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam has begun airing the only known video of the teenage diarist on a channel dedicated to her on YouTube.

The channel also features clips of others, including her late father Otto and Nelson Mandela, talking about Anne, museum spokeswoman Annemarie Bekker said Friday.

“It is really a great platform to show all the different kinds of films and documentaries about Anne Frank,” Bekker added.

The channel shows footage taken during a neighbor’s wedding on July 22, 1941. It briefly shows Anne before she and her family were forced into hiding to avoid the Nazis during their World War II occupation of the Netherlands.

The fleeting moving images of Anne already are on display at the museum and on its Web site in slightly shorter versions.

Bekker said the YouTube channel also has a video about the making of a 3-D virtual version of the secret annex concealed in an Amsterdam canalside house where the Frank family hid for 25 months until they were betrayed and deported.

The virtual version of the secret annex is due to be formally launched next year to help mark the 50th anniversary of the museum’s founding.

Anne died aged 15 of typhus in the German concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, seven months after her arrest and just two weeks before British and Canadian troops liberated the camp. Her posthumously published diary has made her a symbol of all Jews killed in World War II.”

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Unknown to most, Anne Frank wrote two diaries…

Straight from Reuters, the bastion of truth: “Insurgents stormed remote outposts in eastern Afghanistan killing eight Americans in the deadliest battle in more than a year near the border with Pakistan, the U.S. military said Sunday.

Afghan provincial authorities said they had lost contact with scores of Afghan policemen after the day-long attack on Saturday and did not know whether they were dead or alive. NATO said at least two Afghan soldiers were killed.

The fighting took place in Nuristan province’s Kamdesh district in high mountains along the eastern border with Pakistan. U.S. forces had already announced plans to withdraw from the area as part of commander General Stanley McChrystal’s strategy to focus his forces on population centers.

Militia from a local mosque and a nearby village launched the attacks on two joint NATO and Afghan outposts, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said. The NATO troops in the area are American.

“My heart goes out to the families of those we have lost and to their fellow soldiers who remained to finish the fight,” Colonel Randy George, commander of the U.S. force in the eastern mountain area bordering Pakistan, said in the statement.

“This was a complex attack in a difficult area. Both the U.S. and Afghan soldiers fought bravely together. I am extremely proud of their professionalism and bravery.”

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the movement was behind the attack. He claimed that dozens of Afghan soldiers and police were killed along with Western troops.

Fighters captured 35 police during the battle and their fate would be decided by the movement’s provincial council, he added.

The province’s deputy police chief Mohammad Farooq said the fate of an entire 90-strong police force in the Kamdesh district was unknown.

NATO said its troops had inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers, but did not say how many.

Mujahid said seven Taliban were killed as a result of an air attack summoned by foreign troops during the 13 hours of battle. He said the Taliban attack included several suicide bombers, explosions and fighters storming the posts.

NEW STRATEGY

The NATO statement said “coalition forces’ previously announced plans to depart the area as part of a broader realignment to protect larger populations remains unchanged.”

The attack was the deadliest for U.S. forces since nine were killed in a July 2008 battle in nearby Kunar province, which the U.S. military is investigating as a debacle that will teach its forces how to understand the demands of combat in Afghanistan.

U.S. forces have suffered some of their worst casualties in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, where they have been trying to control remote passes used by Taliban fighters as infiltration routes from Pakistan.

Under McChrystal’s new counter-insurgency strategy they are supposed to move into more heavily populated areas to protect the population and reduce the influence of insurgents, while abandoning efforts to defend remote locations.

The war in Afghanistan has reached its most violent phase this year, eight years after the Taliban were ousted, with attacks by fighters spreading from traditional strongholds in the south and east to once-peaceful western and northern regions.

McChrystal, who now commands more than 100,000 troops, two thirds of them American, has requested tens of thousands more to implement his new strategy, warning that without them, the eight-year-old war will probably be lost.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who already ordered 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan this year, is re-evaluating his strategy for the region before considering whether to send more troops.

Some in his administration are advocating the opposite strategy — reducing force levels and switching to a counter-terrorism strategy limited to strikes on bases of al Qaeda fighters blamed for attacks on the West.”

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.”

Straight from Yahoo News: “Iran tested its most advanced missiles Monday to cap two days of war games, raising more international concern and stronger pressure to quickly come clean on the newly revealed nuclear site Tehran was secretly constructing.

State television said the powerful Revolutionary Guard, which controls Iran’s missile program, successfully tested upgraded versions of the medium-range Shahab-3 and Sajjil missiles. Both can carry warheads and reach up to 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers), putting Israel, U.S. military bases in the Middle East, and parts of Europe within striking distance.

The missile tests were meant to flex Iran’s military might and show readiness for any military threat.

“Iranian missiles are able to target any place that threatens Iran,” said Abdollah Araqi, a top Revolutionary Guard commander, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

Iran conducted three rounds of missile tests in drills that began Sunday, two days after the U.S. and its allies disclosed the country had been secretly developing an underground uranium enrichment facility. The Western powers warned Iran it must open the site to international inspection or face harsher international sanctions.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hasan Qashqavi said the missile tests had nothing to do with the tension over the site, saying it was part of routine, long-planned military exercises.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he was concerned about the missile tests. He said Iran must immediately resolve issues surrounding its second nuclear enrichment facility with the U.N.’s nuclear agency.

The newly revealed nuclear site has given greater urgency to a key meeting on Thursday in Geneva between Iran and six major powers trying to stop its suspected nuclear weapons program. Solana said those talks are now taking place “in a new context.”

Britain said Monday’s test further illustrates why Europe and the U.S. have serious concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions.

“This sends the wrong signal to the international community at a time when Iran is due to meet” the six world powers, Britain’s Foreign Office said. The six nations are the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she doesn’t believe Iran can convince the U.S. and other world powers at the upcoming meeting that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, as Tehran has long claimed. That puts Tehran on a course for tougher economic penalties beyond the current “leaky sanctions,” she said.

The nuclear site is located in the arid mountains near the holy city of Qom and is believed to be inside a heavily guarded, underground facility belonging to the Revolutionary Guard, according to a document sent by President Barack Obama’s administration to lawmakers.

Qashqavi, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, identified the site as Fordo, a village located 110 miles (180 kilometers) south of the capital, Tehran. The site is 60 miles (100 kilometers) from Natanz, Iran’s known industrial-scale uranium enrichment plant.

After strong condemnations from the U.S. and its allies, Iran said Saturday it will allow U.N. nuclear inspectors to examine the site.

Israel has trumpeted the latest discoveries as proof of its long-held assertion that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.

By U.S. estimates, Iran is one to five years away from having nuclear weapons capability, although U.S. intelligence also believes that Iranian leaders have not yet made the decision to build a weapon.

Iran also is developing ballistic missiles that could carry a nuclear warhead, but the administration said last week that it believes that effort has been slowed. That assessment paved the way for Obama’s decision to shelve the Bush administration’s plan for a missile shield in Europe, which was aimed at defending against Iranian ballistic missiles.

The Sajjil-2 missile is Iran’s most advanced two-stage surface-to-surface missile and is powered entirely by solid-fuel while the older Shahab-3 uses a combination of solid and liquid fuel in its most advanced form, which is also known as the Qadr-F1.

Solid fuel is seen as a technological breakthrough for any missile program as solid fuel increases the accuracy of missiles in reaching targets.

Experts say Sajjil-2 is more accurate than Shahab missiles and its navigation system is more advanced.

State media reported tests overnight of the Shahab-1 and Shahab-2 missiles, with ranges of 185 miles (300 kilometers) and 435 miles (700 kilometers) respectively.

That followed tests early Sunday of the short range Fateh, Tondar and Zelzal missiles, which have a range of 120 miles (193 kilometers), 93 miles (150 kilometers) and 130 miles (200 kilometers) respectively.

Iran’s last known missile tests were in May when it fired its longest-range solid-fuel missile, Sajjil-2. Tehran said the two-stage surface-to-surface missile has a range of about 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) — capable of striking Israel, U.S. Mideast bases and southeastern Europe.”

Obama Means Business!

Straight from the Washington Post: “President Obama’s charge that Iran is constructing a secret nuclear fuel facility brought years of confrontation over the country’s alleged nuclear weapons program to a new crisis point Friday, as he joined with the leaders of Britain and France to warn that international patience is waning fast.

“Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow,” Obama said, condemning what he described as a “covert uranium enrichment facility” that Western intelligence discovered years ago and has since been covertly monitoring. He called for Iran to allow international inspectors to “immediately investigate” the facility, located beneath the mountains near the city of Qom.

In a hastily arranged appearance outside the Group of 20 conference in Pittsburgh, Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy outlined intelligence that Brown said would “shock and anger the whole international community, and it will harden our resolve” to force Iran to change its path.

Iran’s stubborn and charismatic president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, offered no contrition, asserting that the facility is a legal and proper attempt to provide nuclear energy for his people. “We have no fears,” he said at a New York news conference in which he welcomed inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In response to Obama’s description of the facility as designed to produce weapons-grade uranium, Ahmadinejad said, “I don’t think Mr. Obama is a nuclear expert.”

Friday’s announcement capped a week of behind-the-scenes action in which Iran and the United States each maneuvered to reveal the information on its own terms. U.S. intelligence officials briefing reporters in Washington declined to be precise, but they said they had learned about the facility by early 2007. They said it is not yet operational but may be capable in 2010 of producing enough material for at least one bomb per year.

The CIA, along with its British and French counterparts, spent the summer compiling a dossier of information that administration officials said they had not yet decided how and when to reveal. Their hand was forced, they said, by a letter the Iranian government sent to the IAEA in Vienna on Monday.

U.S. officials said they thought the letter came after the Iranians learned of the Western intelligence and decided to preempt disclosures about the site. The letter vaguely described construction of a “pilot” plant to enrich uranium up to 5 percent, enough for power production but far less than the 90 percent required for weapons material. “Further complementary information will be provided in an appropriate and due time,” the letter said.

The revelations came in the run-up to the first international talks about Iran’s nuclear program in more than a year. On Thursday, a senior Iranian diplomat is scheduled to meet in Geneva with counterparts from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, a group known as the P5-plus-one. U.S. officials described the upcoming meeting as a key moment in the long nuclear standoff, saying the Qom facility will be at the top of the agenda.

The U.S., British and French leaders apparently hope that new evidence of Iran’s deception will diminish reservations among the two other Security Council members — Russia and China — about tightening economic sanctions. Administration officials pointed with satisfaction at a sharply worded Russian statement Friday that Iran “must cooperate with this investigation.”

Obama’s words Friday were less dramatic than Brown’s or Sarkozy’s. “We have offered Iran a clear path toward greater international integration if it lives up to its obligations, and that offer stands,” the U.S. president said, “but the Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law.”

But Obama was stern-faced and grim, and the rapidly escalating confrontation provided him with a fresh opportunity to project toughness and success on the world stage.

Obama’s detractors have long called him naive for his willingness to engage diplomatically the nation’s adversaries, including Iran. Republicans say his decision to change the deployment of a missile shield for Eastern Europe demonstrates weakness, and critics have chastised him for taking time to weigh a decision on sending additional troops to Afghanistan.

The announcement also provided a boost for the CIA at a time when the agency is facing harsh attacks — and possible prosecution — for detainee interrogations. In a statement on the Iranian revelations, CIA Director Leon Panetta said, “We gave our government the information and insights it needed. . . . Most intelligence successes never become public.” He added: “This one has.”

Iran President Ahmadinejad

As Obama and Ahmadinejad continued to trade challenges and barbs in public appearances, senior administration and intelligence officials, authorized to speak only on the condition of anonymity, told a tale that mixed elements of high-stakes diplomacy and a spy novel.

It began in 2002 with revelations that Iran was building an underground enrichment facility in Natanz. The United States said the site was designed to provide fuel for nuclear weapons, which Iran denied. Years of sparring over IAEA inspections of the facility and Iran’s insistence that its output would be used only for nuclear power led finally to the establishment of international safeguards over the plant. The world’s established nuclear powers, with varying degrees of commitment, continued to push Iran to provide more access and information.

The United States, even as it acknowledged in a December 2007 intelligence estimate that Iran had stopped a separate program to build a nuclear device, insisted that Tehran was continuing efforts to produce highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium. According to intelligence officials who briefed reporters Friday, they finally found signs of additional enrichment efforts on a base belonging to the elite Revolutionary Guard Corp outside Qom, a city in north-central Iran and a center of Shiite Muslim scholarship and education.

As construction in deep tunnels continued, U.S. intelligence agencies began to exchange information with their French and British counterparts, and “we all became increasingly confident that the purpose of the facility was uranium enrichment,” one official said. The officials provided few details about how they gathered information, saying only that “we have excellent access and multiple, independent sources of information that allow us to corroborate.”

Their determination of its purpose was largely inductive, officials explained, based on what one called a “detailed understanding of the design of the facility,” and because its 3,000 centrifuges were too few to supply “regular fuel reloads” for a nuclear power plant. Iranian officials have pointed to the Natanz facility’s size — it is designed to accommodate 54,000 centrifuges — as evidence that the facility is intended to produce fuel for power generation.

Most significant, U.S. officials said, were Iranian efforts to conceal the site near Qom. “During the course of this year, the confidence of our team and the intelligence services increased with respect to the precise purposes of this site,” a senior administration official said.

By summer, they concluded that the facility would become operational in 2010. An offer by the P5-plus-one negotiators to discuss nuclear and other issues with Iran remained on the table, along with a threat to impose more severe economic sanctions. In July, Obama and other leaders agreed to “take stock” of the situation by the end of September. The United States, Britain and France did not share their information on the enrichment facility with Russia and China.

Against this backdrop, Obama directed intelligence officials to compile what they knew about the facility into a detailed briefing. “He had in mind the possibility that we would be talking to the Iranians,” a senior official said, “and it was important that the talks be real. In the context of negotiations, we would present it to them directly. If there were no negotiations . . . it would have further cemented” an international consensus to take stronger action against Iran.

Officials said they also thought that years of harsh rhetoric and charges against Iran by the Bush administration had lacked specificity and engendered doubts, particularly among allies in Europe. “We wanted to be in a position where we got it right,” an official said.

In early September, Iran suddenly announced its acceptance of the offer to negotiate, and the Oct. 1 meeting was set. Around the same time, U.S. officials learned that Iran was aware that its security had been breached. That knowledge, U.S. officials said, led directly to Iran’s Monday letter to the IAEA, accompanied by an Iranian assertion that it was complying with IAEA rules requiring notification six months before the plant becomes operational.

The administration received word of the letter on Tuesday in New York, along with the IAEA’s assurance that Iran’s notification had been due years earlier, before construction started.

In quick succession, senior intelligence officials were dispatched to Vienna to “fill in the blanks” for the IAEA between Iran’s missive and the evidence they had compiled, an official said. On Wednesday, Obama briefed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Detailed intelligence reports were delivered to the Russian and Chinese governments on Thursday, as administration officials in Washington briefed House and Senate leaders.”

It's time... to have some patience!

Straight from Fox News: “The White House on Monday tried to calm the controversy over a new report from the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan warning that the United States risks failure in the long-running war without more troops.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that while President Obama has read Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s assessment, he does not expect a formal request for more troops for a “little bit.” And he said the president is not yet focused on resource decisions.

“We’re going to conduct that strategic assessment and do that in a way that lays out the best path forward before we make resource decisions, rather than having this go the other way around where one makes resources decisions and then finds a strategy. That’s not what we’re doing,” Gibbs said.

While Republicans are pressing for more troops, the prospect of a greater U.S. presence in Afghanistan makes Democrats uneasy.

But McChrystal warned about the risk of ignoring the need for more troops in a five-page Commander’s Summary.

“Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it,” he wrote. His 66-page report, sent to Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Aug. 30, is now under review by Obama.

“Although considerable effort and sacrifice have resulted in some progress, many indicators suggest the overall effort is deteriorating,” McChrystal said of the war’s progress.

Geoff Morrell, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for communications issues, said in a statement the assessment “is a classified, pre-decisional document, intended to provide Obama and his national security team with the basis for a very important discussion about where we are now in Afghanistan and how best to get to where we want to be.”

While asserting that more troops are needed, McChrystal also pointed out an “urgent need” to significantly revise strategy. The U.S. needs to interact better with the Afghan people, McChrystal said, and better organize its efforts with NATO allies.

“We run the risk of strategic defeat by pursuing tactical wins that cause civilian casualties or unnecessary collateral damage. The insurgents cannot defeat us militarily; but we can defeat ourselves,” he wrote.

In his blunt assessment of the tenacious Taliban insurgency, McChrystal warned that unless the U.S. and its allies gain the initiative and reverse the momentum of the militants within the next year the U.S. “risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., said in a statement that he agrees with the call to revise strategy.

“General McChrystal is attempting to shift our focus toward adopting a revised strategy that will increase the prospects for success of our efforts in Afghanistan. Focusing on the resource question before we accomplish the strategic shift is a mistake General McChrystal is wisely avoiding,” he said. Levin seemed to ignore certain portions of the report that deal with the danger in “under-resourcing” — but he said that challenge should be addressed by expanding the size of the Afghan army and police.

The content of the report was first reported by The Washington Post, which said it withheld publication of portions of the document at the government’s request.

Morrell confirmed the report, but said the Pentagon would not release McChrystal’s assessment.

“While we would have much preferred none of this be made public at this time we appreciate the paper’s willingness to edit out those passages which would likely have endangered personnel and operations in Afghanistan,” Morrell said in an e-mail statement.

The Pentagon and the White House are awaiting a separate, more detailed request for additional troops and resources. Media reports Friday and Saturday said McChrystal has finished it but was told to pocket it, partly because of the charged politics surrounding the decision.

McChrystal’s senior spokesman, Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, told The Associated Press on Sunday the report is not complete.

Obama is re-evaluating whether the renewed focus on hunting Al Qaeda that he announced just months ago has become blurred and whether more forces will do any good.

“Are we doing the right thing?” he asked during one of a series of interviews broadcast Sunday. “Are we pursuing the right strategy?”

A spokesman for Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry said Sunday the Afghan government would not second-guess international military commanders on the need for more troops, but said that the greatest need is actually on the other side of the Afghan-Pakistan border.

“The focus should be on those points and areas where the insurgency is infiltrating Afghanistan,” he said, referring to the Pakistan border region where Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters hide and plan attacks.

In Congress, the war has taken on a highly partisan edge. Senate Republicans are demanding more forces to turn around a war that soon will enter its ninth year, while members of Obama’s own Democratic Party are trying to put on the brakes. Obama said in the Sunday interviews that he will not allow politics to govern his decision.

Nor has the president asked his top commander in Afghanistan to sit on a request for U.S. reinforcements in a backsliding war.

“No, no, no, no,” Obama responded when asked whether he or aides had directed McChrystal to temporarily withhold a request for additional U.S. forces and other resources.

But he gave no deadline for making a decision about whether to send more Americans into harm’s way.

“The only thing I’ve said to my folks is, ‘A, I want an unvarnished assessment, but, B, I don’t want to put the resource question before the strategy question,”‘ Obama said. “Because there is a natural inclination to say, ‘If I get more, then I can do more.”‘

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress last week he expected McChrystal’s request for additional forces and other resources “in the very near future.”

The White House has remained vague about how long it would take to receive the report and act on it.

Obama spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union,” ABC’s “This Week,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and CBS’ “Face the Nation.”"