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The Alpha-Omega Report's

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Middle East News Spotlight

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For 1/11/10

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Editor's Note: We've separated the late-breaking news about Iran from this page due to its potential significance. This includes stories about Iran suspending its nuclear enrichment program and a story about 2 US Senators predicting the days are numbered for the current Iranian government. See the special link below for our coverage.

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Iran Suspends Nuke Enrichment?

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US Senators: Iran Gov't On Ropes

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If Israel were to attack Hizbullah in Lebanon, Syria would respond and not sit idly by, the Qatari Al Watan newspaper quoted unnamed Syrian sources as saying in a report published Wednesday.

The sources reportedly added that Damascus considered any threat to Lebanon's security and stability as a threat to Syria's security.

The paper reported that Damascus was worriedly taking notice of "Israeli deployment and maneuvers along the northern border," and that Syrian leadership assessedIsrael was planning a military operation in Lebanon in May.


US officials have purportedly notified the Lebanese government that if it does not manage to disarm Hizbullah, "Israel plans to invade the country all the way to Beirut," the Syrian sources told the newspaper.

According to Al Watan, the sources said that "this is a message to both Syria and Lebanon." On Sunday, a senior Beirut-based Hamas official said that his group would work side-by-side with Hizbullah in the next war againstIsrael, Army Radio reported.

"Israel should know that if it decides to attack, we won't be able to sit on our hands, and we will assist our brothers against Israeli brutality," the official said. LINK HERE.

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Syrian sources said that Damascus will not sit idly if Israel attacks Hezbollah, because "any threat to Lebanon's security and stability is also a direct threat to that of Syria's," according to Qatar based newspaper Al Watan.

 
According to the report, the sources claimed Syria is closely monitoring IDF drills carried out along the northern border of Israel. LINK

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ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons. 

Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.

The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.

Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open “tunnels” into the targets. “Mini-nukes” would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.

“As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,” said one of the sources.

The plans, disclosed to The Sunday Times last week, have been prompted in part by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad’s assessment that Iran is on the verge of producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons within two years.

Israeli military commanders believe conventional strikes may no longer be enough to annihilate increasingly well-defended enrichment facilities. Several have been built beneath at least 70ft of concrete and rock. However, the nuclear-tipped bunker-busters would be used only if a conventional attack was ruled out and if the United States declined to intervene, senior sources said.

Israeli and American officials have met several times to consider military action. Military analysts said the disclosure of the plans could be intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt enrichment, cajole America into action or soften up world opinion in advance of an Israeli attack.  More Details, LINK HERE.

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Pentagon Top Man Says:

Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a rare public appearance to speak about America's challenges in the Middle East. For his venue, he chose the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the main thinktank in Washington for the Israel lobby. His audience was at least a couple of hundred strong, with a bank of at least ten television cameras.

During his appearance, his hosts -- in the form of Rob Satloff, the executive director of WINEP -- pressed him to lay down a marker on Iran, which is the chief preoccupation of the lobby. However, contrary to some news reports and blog accounts of Mullen's comments at WINEP, the admiral clearly backed away from anything that sounded like a military threat, and it was clear throughout his entire remarks that Mullen, and the US military, is exceedingly averse to an armed confrontation with Tehran.

That's not the take, for instance, from the Jerusalem Post which headlined its article breathlessly: "US preparing for possible Iran conflict." The JP decided to emphasize Mullen's mundane comment that the United States has a contingency plan to go to war with Iran, ignoring the obvious fact that the Pentagon has contingencies for many unlikely and even unthinkable actions, and the pape downplayed Mullen's repeated comments that the Pentagon is trying to do everything it can to avoid a conflict with Iran.

In his prepared remarks, Mullen compared Iran to Pakistan in an intelligent way, i.e., he noted that because of the overt hostility between the United States and Pakistan from 1990 to 2002, over its nuclear program, the two countries developed an animosity and lack of trust that he is working to overcome. Then he compared that to Iran, in regard to which the US has suffered from three decades of hostility, and he made it plain that the goal of the United States must be to work to overcome those bad feelings and suspicion, too. Here is the text:

    "And then when I come back to Iran, we haven't had a relationship with Iran since 1979. And so building that kind of relationship, and what does that mean -- and I speak to the difficulty of the other relationships and look at what thirty years potentially can do. So there's an awful lot of both concern, potential and, I think, focus, that needs to be sustained with respect to Iran and that part of the world. And we have great friends in that part of the world -- allies who've supported us and who are very anxious to continue to support us and to see stability there, particularly in the Gulf area, and not see it break out into any kind conflict."

When Satloff pressed him on Iran, Mullen added:

    "When asked about striking Iran, specifically, that ... has a very, very destabilizing outcome. ... That part of the world could become much more unstable, which is a dangerous global outcome, much less regional, for the world we're living in right now. ... That's why one of the things that I think it so important is that we continue internationally, diplomatically, politically -- not just we, the United States, but the international community -- continue to focus on this."

For more on this story, LINK HERE.

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The U.S. has a contingency plan for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program if diplomacy and sanctions fail, General David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in the region, said in an interview to be aired today on CNN.

“It would be almost literally irresponsible if Centcom were not to have been thinking about the various ‘what ifs’ and to make plans for a whole variety of different contingencies,” Petraeus said in comments posted on CNN’s Web Site. The general, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, is head of U.S. Central Command, or Centcom.

President Barack Obama’s administration launched last year a diplomatic drive to reach a deal with Iran that would allay suspicions its developing nuclear weapons. The U.S. is now considering fresh sanctions after Iran failed to accept a United Nations-brokered agreement on sending abroad most of its stockpile of low enriched uranium that would have paved the way for wider negotiations.

Petraeus declined to comment on the likelihood of a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities by Israel, which hasn’t ruled out such a step, CNN said. The U.S. commander said the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, now strengthened against attack with enhanced underground tunnels, wasn’t fully protected.

“Well, they certainly can be bombed,” CNN quoted Petraeus as saying. “The level of effect would vary with who it is that carries it out, what ordnance they have and what capability they can bring to bear.”

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Obama’s administration has maintained his predecessor George W. Bush’s policy of not ruling out a military strike on Iran. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Nov. 9 in Berlin that “every option is on the table.”

Iran has ignored UN demands that it suspend uranium enrichment, which the U.S. and many of its allies suspect is part of a weapons program. Highly-enriched uranium can be used to fuel power stations or to make a nuclear warhead.

Iran will have the technology to build a nuclear weapon by early next year, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Dec. 28. Barak told a parliamentary committee that once Iran had the technological ability it could decide whether to build a nuclear weapon, for which it would have to enrich large amounts of uranium.

There is still time for diplomacy, said Petraeus. “There’s a period of time, certainly, before all this might come to a head,” he said.

See the CNN article - LINK HERE.

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Iran and Syria plan to create a new world order, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last Thursday.

"Iran and Syria have a joint mission to create a new world order on the basis of justice, humanity and belief in God," Ahmadinejad told visiting Syrian Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Abrash.

For more on this story, LINK HERE.

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There is a fascinating article that speculates on why the US may invade Yemen. The problem with the author's premise is that the White House and the Pentagon simply does not have the military resources to take action in Yemen.

Regardless of the author's premise, prophecy watchers will be fascinated by what the author claims is the resting place of the original "Ark of the Covenant" near Marib in Yemen. The author's story is as riveting as it is fascinating concerning archaeological discoveries and ancient writings describing what happened to the Ark and where it is located and the prophecies concerning the future.

You can read the full, 2 page story at the LINK HERE.

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