DEBKA--
DEBKAfile Exclusive: Olmert sounds alarm: Iran has crossed red line for developing
a nuclear weapon. It’s too late for sanctions
October 22, 2007, 2:18 PM (GMT+02:00)
This is the message prime minister Ehud Olmert is carrying urgently to French President Nicolas Sarkozy
Monday and British premier Gordon Brown Tuesday, according to DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources.
Last week, Olmert placed the Israeli intelligence warning of an Iranian nuclear breakthrough before Russian
president Vladimir Putin, while Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak presented the updated intelligence on the advances
Iran has made towards its goal of a nuclear weapon to American officials in Washington, including President Bush.
Olmert will be telling Sarkozy and Brown that the moment for diplomacy or even tough sanctions has passed. Iran can only be stopped now from going all the way to its goal by direct, military action.
Information of the Iranian breakthrough prompted the latest spate of hard-hitting US statements. Sunday,
Oct. 21, US vice president Cheney said: "Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a
terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions.''
Friday, the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen said US forces
are capable of operations against Iran’s nuclear facilities or other targets. At his first news conference,
he said: “I don’t think we’re stretched in that regard.”
It is worth noting that whereas Olmert’s visits are officially tagged as part of Israel’s campaign
for harsher sanctions against Iran, his trips are devoted to preaching to the converted, leaders who advocate tough measures
including a military option; he has avoided government heads who need persuading, like German Chancellor Angela Merkel or
Italian prime minister Romano Prodi.
The Israeli prime minister hurried over to Moscow last Thursday after he was briefed on the hard
words exchanged between Putin and Iran’s supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran Tuesday, Oct. 16.
According to DEBKAfile’s sources, the Russian leader warned the ayatollah that
the latest development in Iran’s nuclear program prevented him from protecting Tehran from international penalties any
longer; the clerical regime’s options were now reduced, he said, to halting its clandestine nuclear activities or else
facing tough sanctions, or even military action.
The Russian ruler’s private tone of speech was in flat contrast to his public denial of knowledge
of Iranian work on a nuclear weapon. It convinced Olmert to include Moscow in his European itinerary.
Our sources in Iran and Moscow report that Putin’s dressing-down of Khamenei followed by
his three-hour conversation with the Israeli prime minister acted as catalysts for Iranian hardliners’s abrupt action
in sweeping aside senior nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani Saturday, Oct. 20 and the Revolutionary Guards General Mahmoud Chaharbaghi’s
threat to fire 11,000 rockets and mortars at enemy targets the minute after Iran comes under attack.
Our military sources say Tehran could not manage to shoot off this number of projectiles on its own. Iran
would have to co-opt allies and surrogates, Syria, Hizballah, Hamas and pro-Tehran militias in Iraq to the assault.
DEBKAfile’s US military sources disclosed previously that if, as widely reported, Syria
is in the process of building a small reactor capable of producing plutonium on the North Korean model, Iran must certainly
have acquired one of these reactors before Syria, and would then be in a more advanced stage of plutonium production at a
secret underground location.
Iraqi president says Turkish PKK rebels may declare a ceasefire in raids on Turkey later Monday
October 22, 2007, 5:44 PM (GMT+02:00)
Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq offer to lay down arms in an effort to stave off a Turkish
invasion to destroy their jumping-off bases demanded by thousands of demonstrators out on Turkish streets.
Ankara earlier confirmed the PKK took 8 Turkish soldiers hostage in their Sunday ambush and Turkish reprisal
which left 17 soldiers, 32 Kurdish rebels dead.
On a two-day visit to Britain, Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the London Times Turkey does not need permission
from anyone to defend itself. The latest clash Sunday was the most violent in a decade. Erdogan said he had
repeatedly asked the US and Iraqi governments to expel the Kurdish PKK separatists from northern Iraq, but they had done nothing.
Turkey’s patience is running out, he said, and it would do what was necessary.
Foreign firms, including Turkish and Israeli contractors, are removing their operations and employees
from Iraqi Kurdistan as Ankara reinforces the divisions massed for months on the Iraqi border following Sunday’s
Kurdish ambush with heavy weapons near the Turkish town of Kusekova.
DEBKAfile adds: the attacks and sweeping parliamentary approval for a military offensive
against Kurdish rebel hideouts in northern Iraq four days ago will make it hard for Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
to continue to hold the army back from a large-scale cross-border incursion. Iraqi Kurds vowed Sunday to fight off any Turkish
incursion.
On relations with the US, which is pressing Ankara for restraint, Erdogan said: “A serious
wave of anti-Americanism is sweeping Turkey.” He called America’s war in Iraq a failure and warned that
if Congress approves a bill accusing Ottoman Turks of WWI genocide against Armenians, “the US might lose a very important
friend.”
The Turkish prime minister is due to meet Israeli PM Ehud Olmert in London Tuesday.
Hamas gunmen injured in two Israeli air attacks in Gaza Sunday afternoon
October 22, 2007, 3:05 PM (GMT+02:00)
Earlier, Palestinians fired six Qassam missiles from Gaza at S. Ashkelon, Sderot and Erez. There were no
casualties.
Palestinian Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas said in Jakarta Sunday that no progress towards a peace settlement
was possible without Hamas which, despite its violent takeover of Gaza, remains a part of the Palestinian Authority.
DEBKAfile’s sources report that Abbas’ Fatah has for the past two weeks
been in secret dialogue with Hamas, which is internationally boycotted as a terrorist organization. Israel has declared
Hamas-ruled Gaza an enemy entity.
ARUTZ--
