US and Israel fear Iran may be capable of a nuclear test this year
DEBKAfile
Shahram Amiri’s heroes’ welcome raised suspicions
Shahram Amiri’s voluntary repatriation to Iran and a second close look at the nuclear data he passed to the CIA are raising grave doubts about its value, debkafile’s intelligence sources report. There is mounting suspicion in Washington and Jerusalem that Tehran employed the scientist to strew red herrings in their path, namely, out-of-date material for concealing and misdirecting their attention from the rapid progress taking place secretly in Iran’s nuclear program.
A high-ranking intelligence source in Washington remarked Monday, July 19, that he would not be surprised “if we woke up one morning to find the Iranians had conducted an underground nuclear test.” This was not to say Iran had a bomb or nuclear warhead ready packed for delivery, he said, “Only that it was a lot closer to this option than the Americans and Israelis had been led to believe.”
Report: Hizbullah Deploys Thousands of Terrorists Near Border
A Lebanese and Shi’ite website have quoted an unconfirmed report that Hizbullah has deployed 5,000 terrorist fighters near Israel’s northern border. Although the original report in the American-based World Tribune was based on anonymous sources, its publication in the Arab world may further escalate the tension that has resulted in Israel, Syria and Hizbullah exchanging charges of saber rattling.
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Half the Public Wants to See Holy Temple Rebuilt
Half the Israeli public wants the Holy Temple (Beit HaMikdash) to be rebuilt. This is the main finding of a poll commissioned by the Knesset Television Channel and carried out by the Panels Institute.
The poll was taken in advance of this Tuesday’s national day of mourning, known as Tisha B’Av, on which the two Holy Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed, 2,000 and 2,500 years ago, respectively.
Forty nine percent said they want the rebuilding of the Holy Temple, while 23% said they do not. The remainder said they were unsure.
Abbas says Israel must accept foreign border force
RAMALLAH, West Bank – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he’ll resume direct peace talks if Israel accepts its 1967 frontier as a baseline for the borders of a Palestinian state and agrees to the deployment of an international force to guard them.
Abbas is under growing pressure from the United States to resume negotiations, and met Saturday with President Barack Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell.
Jewish masses lay claim to the Temple Mount
More than 10,000 Israeli Jews gathered at the foot of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount on Monday night to remind their own government and the international community that the biblical holy site belongs to them.
Israel National News reports that those gathered recited a “pledge of allegiance ” to a Jewish Temple Mount where one day a temple to the God of Israel will again stand.
Libya’s Qaddafi latest to challenge Israel’s Gaza blockade
Backed by a charity headed by the son of Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi, the ship Amalthea will challenge Israel’s Gaza blockade by attempting to deliver 2,000 tons of food, medicine, and relief to the Palestinian territory…
Political provocation?
The boat’s mission is considered by Israel to be a political provocation made even more suspicious because it is sponsored by the Gaddafi International Foundation for Charity Associations, which is headed by Saif Qaddafi.
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‘Hatred of Israel is growing’
Outgoing Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gabriela Shalev on Sunday warned that hatred of Israel in the halls of the United Nations is reaching a peak.
Hizballah advances 20,000 troops to Israeli border
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu keeps on vowing that Iran will not be allowed to establish an outpost on Israel’s borders, but he has not lifted a finger to stop this menace ensconcing itself in the north. He cannot realistically expect feeble UN reprimands and the puny French contingent of UNIFIL to blow away the 20,000 Hizballah troops dug in in 160 new positions in South Lebanon, backed by a vast rocket arsenal – even though this is a gross violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701.
Iran’s proxy has therefore won the first round of its drive to recover the forward positions lost in the 2006 war and stands ready for the next. Israel has reinforced its border defenses against this massed Hizballah strength just a few hundreds meters away.
How could Jerusalem let this to happen?
The answer is by a misguided policy of misdirected reliance on international players and diplomacy, as though the military menace existed only in documentary form, instead of real armies led by single-minded terrorists with utter contempt for the rules of international diplomacy.
‘Hizbullah has target list ready’
BEIRUT — A senior official with Hizbullah stated on Sunday that the group has a list of military targets inside Israel to hit in any future war.
Hizbullah commander in South Lebanon, Sheik Nabil Kaouk, made his comments in response to last week’s release by Israel’s military of maps and aerial photographs of what it described as a network of Hizbullah weapons depots and command centers in South Lebanon.
Kaouk told the state news agency that Israel’s release of the information came on the anniversary of “Israel’s defeat” in the 2006 war in which Hizbullah battled Israel to a stalemate.
Israel is “preparing something” for Lebanon and Hizbullah is on high alert to prevent it, unnamed sources in the group were quoted by London-based newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat as saying Saturday.
Sending Hizbullah a message: Israel is ready
Intel on Hizbullah declassified this week makes clear: Israel can still destroy the group’s missiles should another war break out.
Four years ago, on the eve of the Second Lebanon War, the IDF had just a few hundred designated Hizbullah targets throughout Lebanon. About 90 of them were longrange missiles that had been stored in the homes of top Hizbullah operatives and these were destroyed by the air force within 36 minutes on the first night of the war.
While by the end of the war, the air force had bombed close to 8,000 targets, the fact that it knew about only a few hundred before the war partially led to the failure to stop the rocket fire and fatally hurt the guerrilla group.
On Wednesday, top IDF officers revealed that the air force today has thousands of designated targets it can bomb if war were to break out.
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Iranian turned US spy: Tehran will attack Israel
Former Revolutionary Guard member who relayed its secret operations to CIA for 10 years says Iran will commit ‘most horrendous suicide bombing in human history’ if not stopped.
Anatomy of a Palestinian ‘concession’
By MICHAEL FREUND
The Western Wall is ours by right and by history. We do not need Abbas to give us something we already possess.
Earlier this week, just in advance of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, a brief flurry of excitement took hold of the media, as word spread of what appeared to be a major conciliatory gesture by the Palestinians.
In a well-timed leak, the London-based Al-Hayat reported over the weekend that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had offered Israel the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City as part of a future peace agreement. The proposal, according to the paper, was among several ideas that Abbas had recently submitted in writing to US Mideast negotiator George Mitchell. The rest of eastern Jerusalem, he declared, would serve as the capital of a Palestinian state.
At first glance, Abbas’s offer would appear to herald a significant form of progress. After all, the thorny issue of control over Jerusalem and its holy sites has long confounded efforts to reach an accommodation between the two sides. By granting Israel a foothold in the heart of ancient Jerusalem, Abbas would appear to be conceding that the Jewish people can stake a legitimate claim to this very special place.
But a closer look reveals that this Palestinian “concession,” like so many others before it, is in fact little more than a hollow and ultimately inconsequential act. And it would be foolish for Israel and its supporters to be duped into thinking otherwise.
TO BEGIN with, how can Abbas offer Israel something we already have? Last time I checked, the Western Wall was safely and securely under our control. Indeed, it was 43 years ago this summer, during the Six Day War, that Israel liberated the site from Jordanian occupation in an act of self-defense.
Hezbollah ‘on high alert’ against IDF
Lebanese group says info published on its Al-Khiam stronghold suggests Israel ‘preparing something’
Report: Obama promised Abbas a Palestinian state within two years
U.S. President Barack Obama told Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that he was committed to seeing the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state within two years, an Egyptian official told the Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat on Thursday.
Amman worried about Iran nukes
Israeli delegations to Egypt, Jordan struck by new sense of urgency.
Egypt and Jordan are growingly concerned with Teheran’s nuclear program, a senior defense official said this week, noting an increase in anti-Iranian rhetoric in both Arab countries.
Top Israeli delegations recently traveled to Jordan and Egypt for high-level talks with the political and security echelons on a widerange of issues including the Iranian nuclear threat.
