Israeli military, security forces on alert for anti-US Palestinian and Israeli-Arab riots

DEBKAfile Special Report

In the wake of the anti-US Islamist turbulence sweeping Arab capitals, Israel has posted additional military, police and security forces in the West Bank, opposite the Gaza Strip and among Israeli Arab communities following information received that all three are preparing to stage big anti-American protests Friday, Sept. 14, which could easily spill over into Israel.

debkafile: The Palestinian Authority hopes to re-direct West Bank and East Jerusalem anger against PA leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayad into an anti-US channel, while Hamas is under orders from the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo to fill the streets of Gaza with protesters against the alleged anti-Muslim film produced in the US in sync with a big Brotherhood demonstration in Cairo Friday.

Several scores of Israeli Arabs, members of the extremist Northern Section of the Islamic Movement, demonstrated outside the US embassy in Tel Aviv Thursday, chanting anti-American slogans and praise for the Prophet Muhammad.

Israeli authorities are bracing for this small demonstration to swell in numbers after Friday prayers at the mosques and send large numbers of Palestinians and Israeli Muslims out on the streets to replicate the riots against the US spreading Thursday through Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Morocco and Bangladesh since the deaths of US ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his staff in a premeditated Al Qaeda attack in Benghazi Tuesday, Sept. 11.

debkafile’s Washington sources report that the anti-US ferment sweeping Arab capitals in the last three days finds Obama administration policy-makers in two minds about how it fits into the bigger picture of the Arab Spring and its aftermath. According to one interpretation, the tumult has a domestic motive, and was stirred up or exploited to weaken the new rulers thrown up by the Arab Spring while at the same time dimming US influence in the region.

This view holds that radical Islamists, ranging from Salafites to groups associated with Al Qaeda, are fanning the flames to start a process that will lead to the overthrow of the overly “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood, which is the bedrock of the relationship President Obama is striving to build between the United States and the post-revolution Arab world.

The advocates of this approach say America must maintain the flow of economic and political assistance to Brotherhood-led regimes, notably President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, to help them stay on their feet against the violent buffeting of radical Islamists.

The other Washington camp takes the opposite line, arguing that “moderate” Islamic rulers like Morsi are in no danger at all and are in fact riding the anger of the masses over the film deriding Islam to solidify their grip on power at the expense of America’s unpopularity among Muslims.
To prove this point, they offer three examples:

1. Since becoming president, Morsi has never retracted statements he made denying al Qaeda’s responsibility for the 9/11 attacks in America. Brotherhood Secretary General Mahmoud Hussein pinned the attacks on "one of the intelligence services in America, or the Jews." The Brotherhood still stands by the conspiracy theory that the US staged the atrocity to villify Islam.

2.   Morsi, who has been invited to the White House at the end of this month, refrained from condemning the murder of four US diplomats in Libya or offering the Egyptian people’s condolences to the US for its loss. He also waited 24 hours before issuing a tepid statement against the militants who stormed the US embassy in Cairo. he made no mention of the black al Qaeda flags hoisted above the US embassy in Cairo after the Stars and Stripes was torn down. Instead, the Egyptian president instructed his embassy in Washington to prepare a suit against the film’s director. That was before he turned out embarrassingly to be an Egyptian Copt.

3. Thursday, Brotherhood websites aired divergent messages on their English and Arabic sites:  In English, protesters were exhorted to exercise restraint. There were also words of self-congratulation that the US embassy gates were not broken down and no Americans harmed. In Arabic, the Egyptian masses were called out to demonstrate en masse Friday against the made-in-the-USA film.

That demonstration will be carefully watched to see whether it is quiet or veers into violence and anti-American outbursts. That will be the test of Morsi’s bone fides in American eyes. However, its main importance as he sees it is as a demonstration that the Brotherhood has regained control of the streets of Cairo.

It was to show the Egyptian president that he is still on trial in Washington, that President Obama said Thursday that the US would no longer consider the Egyptian government an ally, “but we don’t consider them an enemy. …I think we are going to have to see how they respond to this incident, to see how they respond to maintaining the peace treaty with Israel.” he said.

The way ahead is unclear for Washington as well as Jerusalem. The anti-US ferment in Arab capitals may just be starting. Its next directions and duration are still imponderable. Israel prepares to celebrate the New Year next week surrounded by extreme volatility among its neighbors.

Iran can build an N-bomb by Oct. 1. Cairo coup hampers Israeli action

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

At its present rate of enrichment, Iran will have 250 kilograms of 20-percent grade uranium, exactly enough to build its first nuclear bomb, in roughly six weeks, and two-to- four bombs by early 2013, debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report. Hence the leak by an unnamed Israeli security source Sunday, Aug. 12, disclosing Iran’s progress in developing the detonator and fuses for a nuclear warhead which can be fitted onto Shehab-3 ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel.

Since 20 percent refined uranium is a short jump to weapons grade fuel, Iran will have the capability and materials for building an operational nuclear bomb by approximately October 1.

This knowledge is not news to US President Barack Obama, Saudi King Abdullah, Syrian ruler Bashar Assad, or Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu - and certainly not to Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  Netanyahu’s comment at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday: “All threats against the home front are dwarfed by one – Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear arms!” – was prompted by that deadline.

Ex-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did not have that information when he “assured” Tel Aviv students Sunday, “Iran’s nuclear program has not reached the threshold necessitating Israeli action now or in the near future.” He further claimed that Israel’s “defense leaders” don’t subscribe to the view that “action now is unavoidable.” Olmert, who stepped down under a cloud of suspected corruption in 2009, has not since then had access to regular intelligence briefings on Iran. So either he spoke out of ignorance or willfully joined an opposition chorus of voices speaking out against Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

The fact is that when Olmert approved the Israeli strike for destroying a nuclear reactor under construction by Iran and North Korea in northern Syria in September 2007,  Iran was years away from accumulating enough enriched uranium and the capability to build nuclear warheads.
Both are now within Tehran’s grasp in weeks.

Leading an opposition campaign to bring down the incumbent government is legitimate. Discrediting belated Israeli action to pre-empt a nuclear Iran as fodder for that campaign is not.  If what Olmert and Barack (the same defense minister as today) did in 2007 was necessary then, action now for delaying Iran’s imminent “breakout” to a bomb is many times more necessary and far more urgent.
However Netanyahu and Barak have put themselves in a straitjacket by two lapses:

1.  By foot-dragging on their decision for two years, they have led their opponents at home and in Washington – and Khamenei’s office too – to believe that, by turning on the heat, they can hold Israel back from military action against Iran’s nuclear program until it is too late. The time has been used not just for Iranian nuclear progress, but to enlist ex-politicians and retired generals at home and add them to the voices, especially in the White House, which believe Israel can learn to live with a nuclear-armed Iran.

2.  Netanyahu and Barak have behaved as though a decision on Iran is in their exclusive province, insulated from the turmoil and change swirling through Israel’s Arab neighbors in the past two years.
But the Middle East has a way of catching up with and rushing past slow-moving politicians:
Sunday, at 10:00 a.m. Netanyahu warned his ministers that no threat was worse than a nuclear Iran. At 17:55 p.m., Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi dropped a bombshell in Cairo. In one fell swoop, he smashed the Egyptian military clique ruling the country for decades, sacked the Supreme Military Council running Egypt since March 2011 and cut the generals off from their business empire by appropriating the defense ministry and military industry.

That fateful eight hours-less-five-minutes have forced Israel’s leaders to take a second look at their plans for Iran.

Morsi’s lightning decisions were the finishing touches that proved the Islamist Bedouin terror attacks in Sinai of Aug. 5 fitted neatly into a secret master plan hatched by Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to seize full control of rule in Cairo – a plan debkafile first revealed exclusively last Friday, Aug. 10.

Netanyahu now faces one of the hardest dilemmas of his political career - whether to go forward with the Iran operation, which calls for mustering all Israel’s military and defense capabilities – especially for the repercussions, after being suddenly confronted with unforeseen security challenges on its southwestern border, for thirty years a frontier of peace.

The exceptional talents of Netanyahu and Barak to put off strategic decisions until they are overtaken by events has landed Israel in an especially perilous plight, surrounded now by a soon-to-be nuclear-armed Iran from the east;  threatened Syrian chemical warfare from the north and the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt to its south.

Morsi's anti-terror ploy to root out pro-US influence in Cairo, cut Israel from Sinai

DEBKAfile Exclusive  

Israel willingly acceded to Cairo’s request for permission to deploy fighter planes and armored troop carriers in Sinai, which was ruled a demilitarized buffer zone under their 1979 peace treaty. It shared an interest in President Mohamed Morsi’s counter-terror offensive against lawless Islamist bands.

But when sensational reports started coming in from Cairo about non-existent Egyptian victories in which an improbable “60 gunmen killed,” they realized the “offensive” was largely bogus.

According to debkafile’s intelligence sources, Washington and Jerusalem strongly suspect that they should be worried about what the Muslim Brotherhood president is really up, especially after the sweep he conducted Wednesday, Aug. 8 of pro-Western military officers and other moves.

1.  Until then, President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership were deemed two separate and competing power bases in Cairo, with the president ready to defy the Brotherhood by leaning on the supreme military council for support.

This perception broke down in the aftermath of the terrorist raid of Aug. 5 in which 17 Egyptian troops were murdered at their Mansoura base in northern Sinai. By his subsequent actions, Morsi put paid to the impression, which was supported by many high-ranking members of Israel’s security community, that the Egyptian president of two months had chosen an independent path and was ready to break ranks with the Brotherhood.

2.  Wednesday, Aug. 8, with considerable fanfare, Morsi sacked key military officials in an apparent purge of those responsible for the Sinai debacle.

Chief of intelligence Gen. Mourad Mowafi was sent into retirement and Maj. Gen. Mohamed Shahata given an interim appointment in his stead. The same bulletin announced that the head of the Supreme Military Council and defense minister, Field Marshal Tantawi, had fired the head of the military police, Maj. Gen. Hamdy Badeen.

Our sources disclose that Tantawi had no part in this or any other military dismissals, although they were his prerogative. Morsi quite simply seized the moment to appropriate the top military command’s authority for the first time by taking upon himself the firing and hiring of military officers.

The president furthermore sacked the head of the Republican Guard, the division responsible for safeguarding the president and members of his regime and replaced him with an officer loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood, Maj. Gen. Hamed Zaky.

Morsi’s highhanded actions, especially in the case of Gen. Mowafi, are seen in Washington and Jerusalem as the first steps in the Brotherhood’s takeover of the Egyptian army.

3.  Mowafi had to go because he stood in the way of Muslim Brotherhood objectives. It was he who raised the alarm for months about an impending terrorist attack on the Egyptian-Gaza-Israel border junction and urged the deployment of attack helicopters for preemptive missile attacks on their networks.

Instead of being commended, our sources report he was fired for two reasons: For what the MB thought of as his pro-western and pro-Israeli orientation; and for his efforts to broker a compromise deal for unifying the two Palestinian wings, the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah.

However, this not what the Brotherhood wants. Rather than Palestinian unity and compromise, the MB seeks a Hamas takeover of the Ramallah-based Fatah wing headed by Mahmoud Abbas.
Gen. Mowafi stood in the way of this goal.

At the same time, the new man, Gen. Shahata, had to be satisfied with an interim appointment as head of intelligence. The MB does not trust him to be loyal and regards him as pro-Western – albeit less well-connected than Mowafi. They will use him as a stopgap until they find an intelligence chief who understands where his allegiance belongs - and then drop him too.

In the “counter-terror offensive” charade, the MB assigned Hamas in Gaza a key role. According to the script, Cairo would give Hamas an ‘ultimatum” to surrender the Al Qaeda-linked Army of Islam operatives alleged to have carried out the raid on the Egyptian base. The Muslim Brotherhood regime in Cairo would then be able to close the books on the episode and avoid even the semblance of an offensive against Salafi terrorist networks in Sinai.

Israel’s diplomatic-security cabinet meeting in Jerusalem Friday, Aug. 10, freely approved the transfer of assault helicopters to Sinai “for a few days”- although it didn’t take a counter-terror expert to realize that there is no way a couple of helicopters could wipe out hidden terrorist networks in just days. But the ministers decided on advice from Washington to go along for now with the show Morsi and the Muslim Brothers were putting on, so as not to look obstructive.