Message #26246

[Psalm 51:17]

http://debka.com/article/22394/

Fordo sabotage enabled Netanyahu to move Iran red line to spring 2013
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report September 29, 2012

The sabotage of the Fordo uranium enrichment facility’s power lines on Aug. 17 gave Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu extra leeway to move his original red line for Iran from late September 2012 – now – to the spring or early summer of 2013. The disruption of the underground enrichment plant's power supply caused several of the advanced IR-1 and IR-4 centrifuges producing the 20-percent grade uranium to burst into flames. Work was temporarily halted and the accumulation of 240 kilos for Iran’s first nuclear bomb slowed down by at least six months, debkafile’s intelligence sources report.

Hence Netanyahu’s new red line timeline of “late spring, early summer” - before which preventive action is imperative - in his speech to the UN General Assembly Thursday, Sept. 27.

Our military sources report that the advantage gained is already proving short-lived. Iran has pounced back fast with two aggressive counter-moves on Israel’s doorstep:

1. Thousands of elite Al Qods Brigades officers and men are being airlifted into Lebanon and Syria and deployed opposite Israeli borders (as debkafile has reported);

2. Shortly before the Israeli Prime Minister rose to speak in New York, Syrian President Bashar Assad again removed chemical weapons out of storage. Some were almost certainly passed to the incoming Iranian units. The weapons’ movements were accounted for as a precaution for “greater security,” but in practice they will be ready for use against Israel when the order is handed down from Tehran.

Friday, Sept. 28, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was specifically asked by a reporter if it was believed that “Iran’s Revolutionary Guards or Syrian rebels had been able to get possession of any of the chemical weapons” which the secretary had just disclosed were on the move. He left the door open, saying only that he had “no firm information to confirm this.” That sort of question never comes out of thin air.

It was also the second time in three weeks that the defense secretary mentioned the movements of Syrian chemical weapons out of storage. This time, he said, ‘‘There has been intelligence that there have been some moves that have taken place. Where exactly that’s taken place, we don’t know.” But he did not rule out the possibility that they were being made ready for use.

more