Barack Obama gave himself a B+ for performance in his first 11 months in office.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's team would award him a C+ - and that's more for effort than for skill.

On Sunday, December 13, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote an appraisal of President Barak Obama's foreign policy in Foreign Affairs, in which he said: “To his credit, Obama has undertaken a truly ambitious effort to redefine the United States' view of the world and to reconnect the United States with the emerging historical context of the twenty-first century.

"He has done this remarkably well. In less than a year, he has comprehensively re-conceptualized U.S. foreign policy with respect to several centrally important geopolitical issues.”

Brzezinski counted 14 fields in which he believes Barack Obama has registered great success.

The first four important points, in the opinion of Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser and one of the architects of Obama's current foreign policy, are as follows:

• Islam is not an enemy, and the "global war on terror" does not define the United States' current role in the world;

• The United States will be a fair-minded and assertive mediator when it comes to attaining lasting peace between Israel and Palestine;

• The United States ought to pursue serious negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, as well as other issues;

• The counterinsurgency campaign in the Taliban-controlled parts of Afghanistan should be part of a larger political undertaking, rather than a predominantly military one.

If all these judgments were borne out by real facts, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports, Obama would not have to rely on the passage of his health care reform bill to deserve the B+ he awarded himself in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.

But they are not, as DEBKA-Net-Weekly's experts demonstrate.

Almost 10 years later, Muslims hate America more - not less

Obama's reconciliation speech on June 4 at Cairo University did nothing to improve the Muslim world's attitude towards the US. His knowledge that this was so was evident in the tenor of his Oslo address seven months later on Dec. 10, when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. As his main motif, he acknowledged the "hard truth" that "We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes."

He went on to stress that an American president "cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people." What he was saying was that, nearly 10 years after 9/11, the Muslim threat to the US is as powerful as ever.

President Obama went on to say:

"As a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone (Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr)" and "A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies…

Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace."

These sentiments would not have been applauded by Arabs or Muslims anywhere had they been articulated in Cairo; not surprisingly, they scarcely resonated in their media.

"Like holding water or sand in your hands”

Regarding the Middle East conflict, the Palestinians themselves would take issue with Brzezinski's rating of Obama as a "fair-minded and assertive" mediator. The most damning judgment of Obama's year-long bid to bring Israelis and Palestinians together for peace talks came from Riyadh.

"Peace [between Israel and the Palestinians] until now has been like holding water or sand in your hands," said Saudi foreign minister Saud bin Faisal to the New York Times Wednesday, Dec. 16. "You see the amount of water, you think you can hold some in your hand, but it falls away. Sand is the same thing. So unless there is something to hold in your hand and point to as a success and an achievement, then you have done nothing."

And no one any longer contests the sorry outcome of Obama's sincere effort to initiate a serious dialogue with Iran.

His own Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conceded Monday, Dec. 14 that the White House has little to show for nearly a year of diplomatic engagement with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. “I don't think anyone can doubt that our outreach has produced very little in terms of any kind of a positive response from the Iranians”, she said.

Likewise, American strategy in Afghanistan, up to and including the US president's announcement on Dec. 1 of his decision to dispatch another 30 thousand US troops, is not making that conflict become "part of a larger political undertaking, rather than a predominantly military one”. Just the reverse (as we reported in last week's issue #425 of Dec. 11), as 2009 edges into 2010, military action against the Taliban in Afghanistan is spilling over into Pakistan, while the flames of the al Qaeda menace are burning high in the Horn of Africa and Yemen with tongues reaching into Europe.

The DEBKA-Net-Weekly team marks the end of 2009 by choosing the Syrian President Bashar Assad as the Middle East winner.

He impressed the team by the way he has gone from strength to strength, propelled by sheer brass.

Assad managed to get away with recovering his godfather status in Lebanon, hobnobbing with Tehran and patronizing extremist and terrorist groups, while fostering illusions in the West that he is on the point of mending his ways and therefore worth their while to cultivate.

Week after week, in the last month or two, Assad has entertained a procession of European foreign ministers and US congressmen coming to thank him for not meddling in the Lebanese elections.

Had they bothered to check the intelligence reports on their desks, they would not have made the journey, because Assad shamelessly employed bribes and intimidation to secure the election of enough pro-Syrian lawmakers to keep Beirut in his pocket.

Furthermore, while welcoming US congressmen through the front portico of his palace, he let Iranian, Hizballah and Hamas officials quietly out through the back door, after they hatched plots for pulling the wool over the eyes of his Western visitors.

Assad reserves his red carpet for eminent Iranians, such as Saeed Jalili, Chairman of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, who arrived on Dec. 3 with a large delegation of Iranian nuclear experts.

Conniving to ease Iran's diplomatic woes

Hidden among them, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources reveal, was Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Chairman of Fedat - the Field for the Expansion of Deployment of Advance Technology, which Western intelligence identifies as the latest cover name for the organization running Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

A physics professor and ex-officer of the elite Revolutionary Guards Corps, Fakhrizadeh ought to have been barred from traveling out of the country by UN Security Council sanctions resolutions which also ordered his assets frozen. But Jalili had no difficulty in sneaking him out - any more than Assad had trouble welcoming him in Damascus.

They needed him to work out the strategy for countering the Obama administration's next campaign on the nuclear front, which hinges on exposing incriminating information about the unfinished Syrian plutonium reactor bombed by Israel in September 2007 and the clandestine nuclear partnership between Syria, Iran and North Korea.

Iran's defense minister Brig. Gen. Muhammad Vahidi landed in Damascus six days later.

He too headed a large delegation, this one made up of military and intelligence high-ups.

Friday, Dec. 11, after three days of haggling, in which President Assad took an active part, Vahidi and his Syrian opposite number, Lt. Gen. Ali Mohammed Habib, signed a treaty covering broad military cooperation "against the common enemy."

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Iranian sources report that Iran undertook to supply or finance the purchase of weapons systems needed by the Syrian military for attacking Israel and for supporting its Iranian ally in the event of an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities.

Syria is the source of smuggling into Lebanon and Iraq

The red carpet did not end there.

The Syrian president gave the Lebanese Shiite Hizballah permission to send a delegation to Damascus, headed by its secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, to confer with the visiting Iranian defense minister on ways and means for Lebanon (and not just Hizballah) to assist Iran if attacked, by striking out against the US and Israel.

This conference took place Thursday, Dec. 10, exactly two days before Lebanese president Michel Suleiman flew to Washington to meet President Barack Obama.

When they met at the White House Monday, Dec. 14, the US president voiced his concern “about the extensive arms that are smuggled into Lebanon that potentially serve as a threat to Israel.” He went on to warn his Lebanese visitor: “It is in the interests I think of all parties concerned to make sure that enforcement is exerted with respect to such smuggling.”

Obama is fully aware that the two smugglers-in-chief are Syria and Iran. He also knows that there is nothing the Lebanese president can do to stop them. No one but President Assad can. But as recently as early November, the Syrian military completed the transfer of roughly one-third of the Syria's own missile armory (eight hundred surface-to-surface missiles of various types) to Hizballah, shifting the onus for attacking Israel in case of war from Damascus to the Lebanese terrorist organization.

The Lebanese president was not consulted by Damascus or the Hizballah on this handover, despite the danger it brings to his country. He therefore had no answer for his US host.

Updated on the moves taking place in Damascus, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, head of Israel's Military Intelligence, opened a lecture at the National Research Institute in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, December 15, with the dramatic words: “The place where we sit now is within direct range of three missile forces: Iran, Syria and the Hizballah.”

Homage from here, there and around the region

President Assad is just as oblivious to entreaties from Washington and Baghdad to stop the flow of al-Qaeda terrorists and Sunni insurgents into Iraq, where they continue to create bloody havoc.

Monday, December 14, Gen. David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, reported he had appealed to Damascus (for the umpteenth time) to control its border. While mentioning a drop in the rate of infiltrations, he noted it was not due to Syrian efforts but to al Qaeda's limitations.

Petraeus stressed that Damascus had arranged safe hideouts for members of the ousted Saddam Hussein regime, including Izzat al-Douri, former vice president of Saddam's revolutionary Baath council.

He had tried to encourage Syria to rein in the Iraqi Baath ahead of parliamentary elections in March, because the campaign of violence they have loosed aims to destabilize the government in Baghdad and regain power.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Washington sources report that none of Assad's disruptive actions has had the effect of delaying Obama administration preparations to post a US ambassador in Damascus for the first time in four years.

The candidates short-listed are Jacob Walles, former Consul-General in Jerusalem, and Nabil Khury, an American diplomat of Lebanese extraction.

Assad pulled off four additional diplomatic feats in 2009:

1. After he jumped into the saddle in Beirut, the international community forgot to remember the ongoing UN inquiry into the suspected role of high Syrian officials in the assassination of Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri, in February 2005.

The Syrian ruler believes he has escaped the dark cloud of suspicion hovering around his head over the murder which rocked the Middle East nearly five years ago. For insurance, he leaned hard on Saudi leaders to order Hariri's son, Lebanon's new prime minister Saad Hariri, to visit Damascus for the first time since his father's murder. Hariri's acceptance of the invitation was taken as a guarantee that the hatchet was buried and the Lebanese government in Assad's control.

The bitter murmuring in Christian-Lebanese circles this week that “the son has gone over to his father's murderer” received no play in the Middle East.

The only ruler immune to the Iranian nuclear threat

2.  On October 7, Assad registered an even more momentous feat with the arrival in Damascus of another cowed adversary, Saudi King Abdullah, for a three-day royal visit.

After haughtily cold-shouldering the Syrian president for three years, the oil kingdom's ruler bowed to the realization that no headway in any Middle East business, including the Iran problem, is possible without Syria. Assad and his following can now bask in Riyadh's recognition of Damascus' primacy and the vindication of their policies.

3.  The Syrian ruler also acquired the staunch friendship of his neighbor, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan, who arrives in Damascus Monday, December 22 for his third visit this year. The fact that Erdogan is leaning on Assad to demonstrate the justice of his new Middle East strategy is confirmation enough of Assad's rise in the region's stakes.

4. Whereas Tehran is in a wrestling match with six world powers over its uranium enrichment operations and the future of its nuclear program, Assad has eluded sanctions and international censure for his own nuclear breaches, even after International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors found in Syria traces of 90% enriched, military grade plutonium, which not even Iran possesses.

With both President Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy working hard to coax him into dumping his pact with Iran and opting for détente with Washington and Paris, Bashar ends 2009 sitting pretty and holding all the strategic cards for staying on top.

While Israel and most Arab governments feel threatened by the looming Iranian nuclear threat, with no clear idea how to cope with it, the Syrian president alone is courted by Washington, Paris, Moscow, Ankara and Tehran, while Riyadh, Cairo and Jerusalem can only watch and gnash their teeth.

The DEBKA-Net-Weekly team picks Israel and its political and military leaders as the losers in the Middle East of 2009.

For most of 2009, Israel was ruled by a duo, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Their style of leadership high-handedly cuts almost all of the 30 ministers in the government coalition out of real decision-making, including even the outspoken foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman.

In theory, the two partners should have formed a strong core of governance leading Israel to high achievement, like the two-consul regime in ancient Rome, or the power-sharing arrangement in the Kremlin between President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

But in practice, Netanyahu and Barak have presided over a decline in Israel's military and diplomatic rating in the Middle East.

Most analysts attribute this weakness to their personal shortcomings. The prime minister is seen as folding under pressure, pandering to public opinion, refusing to grasp nettles and idle, while the defense minister, a gifted general, is deaf to advice and clings obsessively to bad decisions governed by poor timing.

In his first nine months in office, Netanyahu backed down on four matters of principle - not out of conviction, but as pragmatic gestures for building ties with the incoming US president Barack Obama.

Netanyahu never put his foot down on Iran

1. In June, Netanyahu yielded on his fundamental opposition to a Palestinian state and came around to supporting a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine to live side by side, thereby breaking the promise which got his Likud elected in February 2009.

2. Five months later, on November 9, at his second White House meeting with President Obama, Netanyahu gave ground to Obama on action against a nuclear-armed Iran.

After giving the US up to year's end to achieve diplomatic progress on Iran's nuclear program, he now gave Obama another six months to get painful sanctions in motion, including an embargo on gasoline and other refined petroleum products. During that time, Israel undertook not to attack Iran.

Obama wanted the extra time for a chance to get sanctions passed by the UN Security Council, failing which he promised to impose them unilaterally.

Tuesday, December 15, US Congress approved legislation to impose sanctions on foreign companies that help supply gasoline to Iran. The bill, which won overwhelming 412-12 endorsement, authorized the president to levy sanctions on energy firms directly selling gasoline to Iran. With no Senate action on the legislation scheduled in the near term, the House vote was more cautionary than practical.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly sources in Washington report that Obama also promised Netanyahu not to take American and Israeli military options off the table during that period of grace.

US lobby against military action burgeons

However, by giving the US president until May-June 2010 for his non-war plan of action, the Israeli prime minister also awarded Iran the gift of six months for progress toward nuclear armament and preparations for war with Israel.

In this Netanyahu was solidly backed by the defense minister.

On Monday, December 14, Barak paid a surprise visit to International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna to meet the nuclear watchdog's new director Yukia Amano and the inspection team leaders dealing with Iran and Syria. He handed them an updated Israeli intelligence dossier along with his briefing.

But later, he lightened the sense of urgency he brought to Vienna by telling reporters attached to the IAEA: "There is still time for diplomatic action to stop Iran.”

He was not representing the real facts of Iran's progress (as outlined in a separate article in this issue), but helping Netanyahu keep up his end of the bargain with Obama.

Israel's irresolute handling of the Iranian menace, often described as an existential threat to the Jewish state, is nourishing a burgeoning lobby in Washington for contesting any military operation against Iran, whether American or Israeli. Netanyahu and Barak present the repeated postponements as necessary for securing American support for an eventual attack. But the truth is, none of Netanyahu's concessions to the US president has bought Obama's support thus far. Any residual sympathy in the White House is likely to have waned still further by the time the six-month grace-period is up in mid-2010.

Israel will have lost a war by not fighting it.

Netanyahu's policy yields negative results militarily and diplomatically

3. From the White House, where he met the US president on November 9, the prime minister informed the nation that he had surrendered to his host and a ten-month freeze on construction in West Bank settlements would go into effect shortly. He pledged its enforcement by every means at his disposal.

On November 25, Netanyahu ordered the moratorium to go into effect after its endorsement by the security cabinet. His critics, including at least half a dozen of his ministers, accused him of going back on one of his most fundamental principle, never to make one-sided concessions to the Palestinians or Arab governments without concrete returns. They reminded him that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has consistently refused to join him at the negotiating table in ways that were insulting.

A favorite Netanyahu' phrase in public speeches is this: "One thing Israel will never compromise on, and that is security."

It is in the very field of security that Israel has fallen back sharply since Netanyahu entered the prime minister's office in Jerusalem.

Not only has Iran been permitted to take big strides towards its nuclear objectives but it has been given time to draw a girdle spiked with missiles around Israel's borders, to be fired as Tehran's first response to an Israeli attack.

The missiles and rockets filling Hizballah and Hamas arsenals can reach almost every corner of Israel. They are amplified by anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, delivered to both for the first time this year.

The Netanyahu-Barak duo has not raised a finger to stem the massive influx of Iranian weaponry and its deployment around Israel's borders. For the first time, Israel is menaced on four fronts from Iran, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas, with Tehran's finger on the master switch for activating them separately or in concert.

In the course of 2009, the Netanyahu government has let Israel sink militarily to the level of Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf states and Egypt, seeming to share their inability to stand up to a belligerent Iran.

The extremist, Iran-backed Hamas, scenting the way the wind is blowing, plays ducks and drakes with Israel over the almost-done deal for swapping the Israeli soldier Gilead Shalit for nearly 1,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists.

Not too long ago, moderate Arab states trusted Israel as a potent power with the only fighting force in the region capable of contesting Iran's expansionist drive. Now they are not so sure.

Over-pragmatism for no diplomatic dividends

Has Netanyahu's submissiveness made Israel more popular internationally or won diplomatic respect?

Not really.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised the Netanyahu administration more than once for concessions to the Palestinians never made by any other Israeli government. But the world's diplomats just shrugged; they were not impressed. In fact, they use every tool to hand to point the finger at Israel, whether the one-sided Goldstone Report accusing Israel of war crimes in the Gaza operation, or the arrest warrant a London court issued for Israel's opposition leader, the former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, on the same alleged grounds.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and foreign secretary David Miliband hurried to apologize and voice outrage over the incident, which caused Livni to cancel her visit to London, but are unlikely to do much to repair this legal peculiarity. By potentially targeting half of Israel's cabinet ministers and all its generals if they ever step on British soil, this law makes the United Kingdom the first western nation to implement the anti-Israel Goldstone Report.

Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyep Recip Erdogan has trashed a long strategic friendship with the Jewish state, openly avowing his new alliances with Tehran and Damascus. Sweden is trying to drag the European Union into supporting the Palestinian and Muslim claim to historic Jerusalem, Israel's capital. Anti-Israel campaigners are gaining ground in Western universities.

Losing foreign friends but doing very nicely at home

In general, although the diplomatic dice is weighted more heavily that ever in favor of anti-Israel elements and Western democratic powers are increasingly gravitating toward extremists, Netanyahu has contributed to this trend by his lack of diplomatic initiative, including his failure to bring the Palestinians to the negotiating table and forge relations with the Arab world.

Concessions do not necessarily equal statecraft.

Conversely, Binyamin Netanyahu is doing very nicely at home, illustrating once again Henry Kissinger's old aphorism: "Israel has no foreign policy only a domestic political system." In an opinion poll published Thursday, Dec. 17, the prime minister's approval rating stood at 61 percent compared with his defense minister's 54 percent. This result may reflect appreciation for an economy which has recovered in Israel faster than in most countries and, although disturbed by the hostile vibes from Iran and its allies, the average Israel appears to prefer a measure of stability to another war.

Interestingly, Netanyahu also won the support of 60 percent of the opposition Kadima party, only 36 percent of which were satisfied with their leader Tzipi Livni.

Netanyahu and Barak are rumored to have struck a pact to form a new centrist party to run in the next election. The former would have to distance himself further from the right and the latter abandon his left-leaning Labor for the chance of swallowing up Kadima and other moderate factions.

The last two weeks have seen a flood of media reports describing landmarks in Iran's progress toward building a nuclear weapon. Far from being random, they were carefully orchestrated.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources have sourced most of them variously to the American Central Intelligence Agency, the German BND intelligence agency and the Israeli Mossad. They were all carrying out the directives of their respective masters to drop particles of the data in their possession onto the pages of respected publications.

The object of this gambit is obviously to set the scene for tougher sanctions against Iran for failing to comply with international rules. It is equally obvious that the data leaked is fragmentary and some of the particulars doctored both to obscure sources and keep Iranian security agencies guessing while Western agencies deepen their penetration.

A typical example of this tactic appeared in a story run by the London Sunday Telegraph of December 13, which claimed that an Iranian scientist who disappeared six months ago had betrayed his country's nuclear secrets to international inspectors. According to this paper, the scientist, Shahram Amiri, at a clandestine meeting at Frankfurt airport on Oct. 24, briefed UN nuclear monitors, just hours before they flew to Iran to inspect a hidden uranium enrichment plant. French intelligence sources were quoted.

An award-winning atomic physicist, Amiri had worked at the heavily-guarded underground site at Qom. In May, he disappeared while on a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, defecting in an elaborate international cloak-and-dagger operation coordinated by the CIA.

So says the Sunday Telegraph.

Credibility Ltd.

However, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources find it hardly credible that the American intelligence agency chose to bring Shahram Amiri, if he is indeed in their custody, to Frankfurt international airport, a place crawling with foreign agents, including Iranians. Neither do they believe he would have been allowed the exposure of a rendezvous with IAEA inspectors, whose Vienna headquarters has one of the densest populations of undercover and double agents of any place on earth.

Our intelligence experts rate three other reports in this category as more credible:

1. On December 2, the German Der Spiegel carried this disclosure: “Iranian scientists are believed to have successfully simulated the detonation of a nuclear warhead. Detonation is one of the most technologically challenging problems in the construction of this type of nuclear weapon.

"Experts believe that it could take Iran as little as a year to acquire the expertise and a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium to build a real nuclear warhead.”

Then, Monday, December 14, The Times of London reported the following: “Confidential intelligence documents obtained by The Times show that Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb.

"The notes, from Iran's most sensitive military nuclear project, describe a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion. …An Asian intelligence source last week confirmed to The Times that his country also believed that weapons work was being carried out as recently as 2007 - specifically, work on a neutron initiator.

"The technical document describes the use of a neutron source, uranium deuteride, which independent experts confirm has no possible civilian or military use other than in a nuclear weapon. Uranium deuteride is the material used in Pakistan's bomb, from where Iran obtained its blueprint."

An intelligence agency praises a leak?!

On Tuesday, December 15, Philip Crowley, the US State Department spokesman, said of the report: “It’s safe to say the United States Government will be investigating ... the revelations this week about nuclear triggers.”

He praised the report in The Times, calling it a “fine piece of journalism." (Has anyone every heard an American government official praise an intelligence leak to the media?)

On the same day, the Washington Post, under the headline Evidence of Iran's Nuclear Arms Expertise Mounts, published the following: “The internal (Iranian) documents (published by The Times in London), and expert analysis point to a growing Iranian mastery of disciplines including uranium metallurgy, heavy-water production and the high-precision explosives used to trigger a nuclear detonation…

"...U.S. intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged there have been 'serious concerns for some time about where Iran may be headed with its nuclear activities…'"

While these disclosures are intriguing, the next phrase in the Washington Post article is the most momentous:

"A recent IAEA report called on Iran to 'provide information on the origin' of the heavy water.

"'It was a complete surprise,' said a European diplomat who agreed to talk about the internal debate on the condition of anonymity. We assumed that the Iranians had purchased it from elsewhere, but no one really knew. No one believes they could have made it at the existing plant' - a small facility at Khonab that has been mostly idle since it opened three years ago."

Even the Bushehr reactor is not innocent after all

"In a closed-door session of the IAEA governing board on Thanksgiving, The WP reports, the head of one of the Northern European delegations asked the chief Iranian nuclear official, Ali Akbar Salehi, to explain how Iran had acquired such a quantity of heavy water.

"'We made it,' Salehi reportedly shot back." End of Washington Post quote.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly intelligence sources note that since Iran's heavy water reactor at Arak is still unfinished and inoperative, Salehi's admission means that a clandestine Iranian facility is churning out heavy water in large quantities at some unknown location.

This revelation has three new implications:

1. The emergence of yet another secret nuclear facility in Iran, in addition to the Fordor enrichment plant near Qom exposed in September, makes one wonder how many Iranian nuclear plants remain hidden and how many have Western intelligence services discovered.

2. Iran's possession of large stocks of heavy water indicates rapid progress for developing plutonium-based nuclear bombs, possibly even faster than its parallel enriched uranium nuclear weapon program.

3. It also sheds new light on the tasks awaiting the nuclear reactor at Bushehr, in southern Iran, and the reason why the Russians applied the brakes on its completion before it was fully operational.

Even intelligence circles took it for granted that Iran wanted the Bushehr reactor to provide electric power, accepting it as the single above-board Iranian nuclear project. But the presence of heavy water changes all that. By keeping back the nuclear rods supplied by Russia to power the reactor, Iran can use it to perform the separation process for yielding weapons-grade plutonium, once the plant is on line.

By lifting a corner of the veil concealing Iran's dual-track nuclear weapons programs, the intelligence agencies of at least three world powers are providing solid reasons to justify international action to stop Iran going all the way to a nuclear weapon - i.e. sanctions, at the very least.

Barring last-minute second thoughts, Israel's Chief of Staff Lt. Gen Gabi Ashkenazi has chosen Brig. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, 45, who lives on a Galilee moshav with his wife and three children, as the next Director of Military Intelligence (AMAN).

Promoted to the rank of major general, he steps into the shoes of Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, the first fighter pilot ever to command Israeli Military Intelligence, who retires after four years on the job.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly military sources report that Yadlin's retirement due earlier this year was postponed for the Jan. 2009 Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip and the expectation of an outbreak of hostilities with Iran and Hizballah. The changeover has been rescheduled for early spring 2010, provided no untoward changes occur in the region and based on estimates that no Israeli military action against Iran will take place before mid-2010 (for reasons outlined in a separate article in this issue).

Although he lacks previous intelligence experience, Brigadier Kochavi, current Director of Operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is reputed to be one of the IDF's finest tacticians. As head of intelligence, one of his regular duties will be to submit National Intelligence Estimates as the basis of government policy.

In the early months of his tenure, he will have to fill in gaps in his knowledge about Iran's nuclear program and vulnerabilities.

His lack of intelligence experience places Kochavi in the company of his most successful predecessors, two of whom minister of defense Ehud Barak and minister for strategic affairs Moshe Yaalon, came like him from tough combat units and nonetheless turned out brilliantly. Both went on to become chiefs of staff.

The incoming MI chief hails from the elite Paratroop Brigade, where he started out as commander of the distinguished Battalion 101, moving on to head the brigade's training school, then become its deputy commander and commander during the peak years of the second Palestinian uprising (2001-2003).

A textbook operation in counter-terror tactics

In Operation Defense Shield, which broke the back of the Palestinian uprising, Kochavi led his troops in the decisive battle for the capture of the West Bank town of Nablus, known then as "the capital of child suicide bombers." This operation appears in the text books of many military academies in the West as a model for vanquishing terrorist groups holding a large city.

From 2004 to the end of 2008, he commanded the Gaza Division. During that time, his troops took part in the 2005 evacuation of Jewish settlements from the Gaza Strip. A year later, in June 2006, Cpl Gilad Shalit was abducted by the Hamas in a cross-border incursion into the Israeli sector under his purview.

In late 2006, Kochavi was to have left for a course of study at the London College of Security.

Like other Israeli generals, he was advised to cancel his plans because pro-Palestinian groups were using British courts to have Israeli military officers arrested for alleged war crimes.

Kochavi has a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a master's degree from Harvard.

The post of Director of Military Intelligence is one of the most coveted in the high command of Israel's Defense Forces, often a springboard to the top position of Chief of Staff.

Our military sources disclose that the top officers in the running for the job included Gen. Gadi Eisencott, OC Northern Command on the Syrian-Hizballah front, Gen. Yoav Galant, OC Southern Command with responsibility for the Gaza front, and Brig. Gen. Yossi Baiditz, head of the research division at Military Intelligence.

For the time being, all these would-be candidates stay on in their present jobs.

December 12, 2009 Briefs

·        Mottaki: Iran is ready to trade 400 kgs of 3.5pc enriched uranium for same amount of 20pc grade. The swap could take place on Kish island if the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany agree. DEBKAfile: This deal would enhance Iran's stock of high-grade material - not reduce it.

·        Taiwan denies knowledge of new Iranian nuclear equipment smuggling network base in Seoul. Daily Telegraph reported sales of hundreds of European-made pressure transducers via Taiwanese firms. They are used to produce weapons-grade uranium.

·        Islamic conference condemns desecration of West Bank mosque at Kafr Yasuf. Peres urges swift inquiry and severe punishment for the vandals.

·        Iran and Syria sign a new military cooperation pact.

·        High-profile Al Qaeda operative killed by US drone in North Waziristan.

·        Gates expects significant new sanctions for Iran's nuclear program early next year.

·        US may soon have ambassador in Damascus after four years. Short-listed are Jacob Walles for US consul in Jerusalem, Nabul Khury, US diplomat of Lebanese descent.

·        Obama wishes Jews world wide a happy Hanukkah for Feast of Lights.

West Bank Cast into Ferment by Diplomatic-Security Vacuum

12 Dec. Whoever trashed a West Bank village mosque early Friday, Dec. 11, tossed a match onto dry fire wood. The Netanyahu government's construction moratorium on settlement construction has had an acutely polarizing effect on Israelis on both sides of the Green Line. Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin has called Mahmoud Abbas' boycott of Israel as a negotiation partner an ominous "diplomatic intifada," while three major Palestinian terrorist attacks were foiled in the last ten days.

The response of Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and defense minister Ehud Barak to Abbas' boycott is appeasement and concessions, such as the freeze on Jewish construction in the West Bank., an action which is seen as weakness to be exploited rather than a desire for peace. Palestinian extremists are seeking to use their leader's diplomatic intifada as the starting-point for the real thing, a campaign of terror.

The Obama administration and some European capitals are partly to blame for letting Mahmoud Abbas slip the reins and pursue his dangerous game of excluding Israel from diplomacy.

But the Netanyahu-Barak duo and Abbas must bear most of the responsibility for the widening political, diplomatic and security vacuum by spending most of their first year in office ducking initiatives on any military or diplomatic front.

Israel's friends and enemies alike are asking what has happened to Israel's strong defense posture in the face of present and impending threats.

December 13, 2009 Briefs

·        Defense minister Barak expels West Bank Mt Bracha yeshiva from relationship with IDF. He acted after its head Rabbi Melamed spurned a summons to publicly repudiate servicemen's protests against settler eviction duties.

·        Cabinet approves Netanyahu's proposal for benefits to 2 million Israelis in national priority locations including 100,000 living on West Bank. Barak and his four Labor ministers voted against 21-strong majority.

·        Neighboring Jewish settlers, rabbis, bring new Qoran volumes to Kfar Yasuf village elders in place of books damaged by vandals. They denounced mosque attack, staged sulha, offered to repair building.

·        Iran's supreme leader accuses opposition of insulting regime founder Ayatollah Khomenei. Opposition says alleged incident shown on state TV was doctored.

·        Khaled Meshaal arrives in Tehran at head of Hamas delegation.

·        Palestinians fire two Qassam missiles at Sderot and Mefalsim early Sunday. Both exploded on open ground.

·        Young Israeli woman injured in Palestinian stabbing attack at Gush Etzion bus-stop Saturday night.

·        Two Palestinians detained in possession of explosives and stun grenade near Beit Fouriq.

·        Police detained Palestinian near Ashkelon on suspicion of plotting a terror attack.

New Israeli unmanned wonder boat deployed in Persian Gulf

13 Dec. The first unmanned stealth craft on the seas, designated Protector SV or Death Shark, is in high demand after its recent deployment in the Persian Gulf and successful performance with the Singapore Navy. DEBKAfile's military sources report that India and South Korea asked Israel's Rafael to build craft to their specifications when chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi visited their capitals earlier this month.

Western military naval experts rate the Protector as one of the most effective military and intelligence craft afloat today, able to take over many functions of big high-cost warships with large crews. It can easily cruise off the shores of Lebanon Syria and Iran undetected for long periods due to its tested stealth design.

India and South Korea find the wonder boat ideal for deployment on oceans, narrow waterways, rivers and ports. Among its other features, the craft is equipped for active interception of terrorist incursions by sea, like the one that held Mumbai to siege in Nov. 2008.

December 14, 2009 Briefs

·        Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians celebrate Hamas' 22nd anniversary in Gaza City. Their leaders vow never to recognize Israel and persist in "resistance" until it is destroyed.

·        Three US backpackers captured straying across border to go on trial in Iran for espionage. Clinton: The charge is unfounded.

·        Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni calls off UK visit because pro-Palestinian lawyers seek her arrest for "war crimes." She was to have spoken at Sunday's JNF conference and held talks with British PM Gordon Brown.

·        Free dental treatment for under-18s approved by Israeli ministers.

·        PM Netanyahu backs Barak on expulsion of Mt. Bracha yeshiva from conscription contract with IDF. He added he hopes dispute will be settled sensibly.

Al Qaeda's No. 2 condemns Obama's Mid East policy after terror ring smashed in Lebanon

14 Dec. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second top leader, denounced US president Barack Obama's Middle East policy as "nothing but a new stage in the Crusader and Zionist campaign to subjugate and humiliate us… and our religion" in a statement posted on an Islamist website Monday, Dec. 14.

He also slammed Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Saudi king Abdullah and Jordan's monarch as "Arab Zionists." By unusually listing them by name, Zawahiri is seen by DEBKAfile's terror experts as directly threatening those leaders whom he accuses of "implementing the orders of Obama… whose real plan is to support Israel…"

DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources report that Zawahiri's angry statement was no doubt influenced by the breakup of an important al Qaeda ring in Lebanon, which was controlled by one of his minions, Gemal Baioni, an Egyptian Islamic Jihad undercover agent based in Athens. It was rolled up by Lebanese military intelligence in time to foil attacks on US, UK, French and German embassies in Beirut and on UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, while Lebanese president Michel Suleiman was away in Washington.

Baioni also supervised the Katyusha rocket barrage against northern Israel on Nov. 27. Only one 207mm rocket was actually fired. Another four were found by UN peacekeepers ready for launching.

Israel's defense minister declares war on IDF-linked seminaries

14 Dec. As Israel wrestled with a fateful decision on Iran's nuclear issue and war tensions building up around its borders, defense minister Ehud Barak went to war on the military-yeshiva "Hesder" contract, under which seminary students are conscripted - most volunteering for combat units - along with their studies.

Raising the specter of mutiny in the armed forces, Barak Sunday, Dec. 13, expelled the West Bank Mt. Bracha yeshiva from the contract when its dean, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, refused a summons to a hearing with the minister to answer charges of inciting student-soldiers to refuse orders on conscientious grounds affecting the status of Jewish settlements.

Ideological and political divides on land-for-peace moves run deep in Israel - and not just among the 350,000 Jews living on the West Bank. Barak is head of the minority Labor party which strongly advocates these moves, while prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu leads the majority Likud party which is formally committed to a Land of Israel ideology.

By his showdown with the yeshiva principal, Barak stands accused of exacerbating popular divisions. Right-wing circles ask why he does not send the army in against university professors who encourage students to dodge compulsory military services altogether.

December 15 Briefs

·        UK foreign secretary Miliband phoned Israeli FM Lieberman and Livni Tuesday night. He was shocked by arrest warrant against Livni and stressed importance of UK-Israel relations.

·        MI Chief Yadlin: Iran has accumulated enough materials to build a nuclear bomb. "The technological clock has almost finished turning."

·        Three Israeli police and 3 young settlers injured in five-hour struggle over enforcement of government building freeze at Tsofit, northern West Bank.

·        Hamas leader Meshaal pledges to "unite" with Iran if it is attacked by Israel.

·        British ambassador rapped at Israeli foreign ministry for UK court warrant against opposition leader Tzipi Livni.

·        Big explosion rips through Dera Ghazi Khan market in Pakistani Punjab town, killing at least 33 people

·        A suicide car explosion outside a hotel in Kabul early Tuesday kills 13 people, injures forty.

·        At least 4 killed, 15 injured in series of car bombings outside Iranian embassy, foreign ministry in Baghdad.

·        Mil. Intel. Chief Yadlin starts speech by saying: This hall (in Tel Aviv district) is under direct threat from three quarters: Iran, Hizballah, Syria.

Israel-UK relations strained over Livni arrest warrant

15 Dec. The British court practice of issuing war crimes warrants against Israeli official visitors - and no other world leaders, however tyrannical, has catapulted UK-Israel relations to the brink of a crisis. Tuesday, Dec. 15, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned" "We will never countenance a circumstance which puts Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni in the dock" or allows Israeli soldiers and commanders "who fought heroically and morally for their country" to be accused of war crimes in London courts, on the private initiative of pro-Palestinian groups or individuals. "This is totally absurd," he said.

Netanyahu's national security adviser Uzi Arad put British ambassador Tom Phillips on the carpet and informed him that the UK was expected to put an end to the immoral abuse of its courts. He was warned that if Israeli officials were prevented from visiting London, the UK's role in Middle East peacemaking would be forfeit.

In Jerusalem, the British ambassador also heard a long list of unresolved Israeli grievances that included his government's support for the Swedish proposal for the European Union to recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, the biased Goldstone Report and the various British boycotts of Israel - academic and commercial, including the Brown government's directive to chain stores to blacklist Israeli products manufactured on the West Bank.

December 16 Briefs

·        Two Qassam missiles from the Gaza Strip exploded harmlessly on open ground on the Israeli side of the border Wednesday night. They were heard in Ashkelon where OC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant awarded orders of merit to eight officers and men who took part in Operation Cast Lead.

·        Supreme Court upholds government's settlement construction freeze but advises payment of damages.

·        British PM Gordon Brown phones Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni to voice regret for the London court order for her arrest.

·        PM Netanyahu summons select ministers, defense chiefs for urgent 'security" consultation Wednesday. It took place shortly after Iran's successful launch of improved long-range Sejil 2 missile.

·        US Congress approves 412:12 sanctions on foreign companies helping to supply gasoline to Iran. President Obama also authorized to levy sanctions on energy companies selling gasoline to Iran.

New Hamas commanders set to revive anti-Israel terror from West Bank

16 Dec. Since early 2007, Hamas has refrained from orchestrating terrorist activity against Israel from the West Bank, focusing mainly on its missile barrage against southwestern Israel from the Gaza Strip. Now, our military sources report, the Palestinian extremists' military chief ,Muhammad Jabry has established a new regional West Bank command corps for embarking on a fresh terror campaign against Israel, including suicide attacks, from the territory controlled by the rival Fatah and Palestinian Authority.

France poised to launch spy satellite, helps tighten anti-Hamas blockade

17 Dec. A French spy satellite Helios 2B was due to be launched from French Guinea Thursday, Dec. 17. Liftoff was postponed at the last moment. The new satellite is equipped to map and relay images in real time from battle zones, rack threatening terrorist movements and hover over Lebanon and Iran to monitor events in bothplaces.

France is extending its Middle East commitments in more than one key arena. Our military sources caught up with the head of the French Directorate of Military Intelligence (DRM), General Benoit Boujis Tuesday, Dec. 15, as he watched giant Egyptian cranes lift armored iron plates 18 meters long and 50 cm thick and drive them into the ground along the Philadelphi border which divides the Gaza Strip from Egyptian Sinai.

French officers are working alongside Americans and Egyptians on the construction of Iron Blind, a perpendicular armored iron barrier, fitted with sensors, which ranks as the most ambitious military project ever attempted for obstructing tunnels carrying smuggled arms to a terrorist organization.