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The latest International Atomic Energy Agency report was greeted with ennui by the Israeli media, deemed not especially exciting compared to the twists and turns of coalition talks or the tongue-lashing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad. But the political and security echelons' attitude to the report, which states that Iran has managed to accumulate a ton of enriched uranium and is heading quickly toward a nuclear bomb, is a different story. The report confirms the assumption, shared for some time by the intelligence services of Israel, the United States and Europe, that Iran is closer to the bomb, with mid-2010 as the likely date it will reach its goal. Iran was a major topic of conversation between Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, and U.S. senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman on their recent visits to Israel. From Israel's perspective, President Barack Obama is a key player in the Iranian dr...

The cousin of alleged 9/11 hijacker Ziad al-Jarrah has been exposed as a long standing Israeli spy in yet another startling intelligence connection between the Zionist state and the attacks on New York and Washington. A New York Times report details how Ali al-Jarrah was a highly valued spy for Israel for no less than 25 years, sending reports and taking clandestine photographs of Palestinian groups and Hezbollah since 1983. According to the article , "From his home in this Bekaa Valley village, Mr. Jarrah, 50, traveled often to Syria and to south Lebanon, where he photographed roads and convoys that might have been used to transport weapons to Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group, investigators say. He spoke with his handlers by satellite phone, receiving "dead drops" of money, cameras and listening devices. Occasionally, on the pretext of a business trip, he traveled to Belgium and Italy, received an Israeli passport, and flew to Israel, where he was debriefed at lengt...

Israel ' s Next War: Today the Gaza Strip, Tomorrow Lebanon? by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya In the Middle East, it is widely believed that the war against Gaza is an extension of the 2006 war against Lebanon. Without question, the war in the Gaza Strip is a part of the same conflict. Moreover, since the Israeli defeat in 2006, Tel Aviv and Washington have not abandoned their design to turn Lebanon into a client state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, in so many words, during his visit to Tel Aviv in early January that today Israel was attacking Hamas in the Gaza Strip and that tomorrow it would be fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon .[1] Ehud Olmert and Nicolas Sarkozy Lebanon is still in the cross-hairs. Israel is searching for a justification or a pretext to launch another war against Lebanon. Washington and Tel Aviv had initially hoped to control Beirut through client political forces in the March 14 Alliance . When it became apparent that thes...

" We are all Hamas, " screamed a scrawny Mauritanian, repeatedly, as he determinedly drew his face closer to a TV camera. Behind him, thousands more tunefully chanted similar words, chants that were heard in different Arabic dialects, in fact in many different languages all across the globe. Yet, Israel, somehow is claiming victory in the media war, which it calculatedly unleashed weeks before its most violent attack on Gaza yet. Thousands have been reportedly killed and wounded in little more than a week, starting Dec. 27, in the tiny stretch of land (roughly 140 square miles), yet densely populated Gaza Strip of 1.5 million people. " Whenever Israel is bombing, it is hard to explain our position to the world," said Avi Pazner, former Israeli ambassador to Italy and France and "one of the officials drafted in to present Israel's case to the world media," according to The Jewish Chronicle. "But at least this time everything was ready and in...