French fighter jets were first on the scene firing the first shots at Moammar Gadhafi’s troops on Saturday. The assault to support rebels is the broadest international military effort since the Iraq war, hopefully not to late for the Libyan uprising that had seemed on the verge of defeat. French warplanes destroyed several Libyan military vehicles and tanks.

“We have every reason to fear that left unchecked, Gadhafi would commit unspeakable atrocities.”
– Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Paris

Later Saturday about 2 PM ET, the United States fired at least 112 Tomahawk cruise missiles at more than 20 targets inside Libya. A British submarine also launched missiles. The attack targeted Libyan air defense missile sites.

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Two Iranian naval vessels entered the Suez Canal on Tuesday en route to Syria, officials said, the first time in three decades that Tehran has sent military ships through the strategic waterway.

Yesterday DEBKAfile reported that US Navy warships boxed in two Iranian of the 12th Flotilla, but today Suez Canal officials report taht two Iranian naval vessels have entered the Suez en route for the Mediterranean Sea, and FoxNews is reporting on the air at 10:40 CT that the ships have reached the Mediterranean Sea.

Canal officials report Iranian ships entered the canal early Tuesday morning and are expected to reach the Mediterranean later in the day.

Tuesday February 22, 2011 marks the first time in three decades that Iranian military ships have traveled the Suez Canal that links the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.

Israel, which has been repeatedly threatened by Iran with total destruction, has declared it views the passage as a provocation.

Iranian officials say the ships are headed to Syria, also an enemy of Israel, for a training mission.

Suez Canal officials say the ships are expected to pay a fee of $290,000 for the crossing.

Pundits say Iran is taking advantage of Egypt’s current weakness during its February 2011 revolution.

Kharg Island is a continental island in the Persian Gulf belonging to Iran. It is located 25 km (16 miles) off the coast of Iran and 483 km (300 miles) northwest of the Strait of Hormuz. Administered by the adjacent coastal Bushehr Province, Kharg Island provides a sea port for the export of oil and extends Iranian territorial sea claims into the Persian Gulf oil fields.

See also …

FoxNews.com Iranian Warships Complete Suez Canal Transit

FoxNews.com — Iran warships to begin Suez Canal passage Tuesday

DEBKAfile US warships box in Iranian flotilla, delay Suez passage

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The Suez Canal with Port Said and the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Great Bitter Lake near Ismailia at south-central, and the Gulf of Suez to the south.

The CIA has pulled its top spy out of Pakistan after terrorists threatened to kill him, current and former U.S. officials said, an unusual move for the U.S. and a complication on the front lines of the fight against al-Qaida.

An official of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s top spy organization, denied on Saturday that it was responsible for revealing the name of the Central Intelligence Agency’s top spy officer in Pakistan. “We absolutely deny this accusation, which is totally unsubstantiated and based on nothing but conjecture,” a senior ISI official said angrily in a background briefing at the headquarters of the spy organization in Islamabad.

The top C.I.A. officer in Pakistan was removed yesterday after American officials said the C.I.A. station chief had received a number of death threats since being publicly identified in a legal complaint sent to the Pakistani police this week by the family of victims of recent drone campaigns.

Could this be fallout from Wikileaks information? Did someone put two-and-two together?

International tensions and growing diplomacy are both evident in the crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

One week ago, North Korea shelled a South Korean island in a long-disputed sea border area. China is asking for talks, but South Korea has been cool to the proposal.

North Korea has threatened to be merciless if U.S.-South Korean exercises get two close to its territory.

Iran is reported to have told officials in Turkey that is agrees to talks with five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany in Turkey. The LA Times reports that Iran has agreed to talks with the United States and other world powers on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, provided negotiations take place in neighboring Turkey. The LA Times reports the offer probably was meant to put diplomatic pressure on the U.S. and its allies, but did not provide detailed information about the specific U.S. officials involved in the talks about what officials are skeptical about the negotiations.

Turkey’s semiofficial Anatolian news agency quoted Foreign Ministry officials as saying that “parties had agreed in principle to hold the talks in Turkey,” though no date or specific site has been set.

Meanwhile, early Sunday Senator Lindsey Graham (R. South Carolina), member of the Armed Services and Homeland Defense committees, said: “The US should consider sinking the Iranian navy, destroying its air force and delivering a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guards.” In an address to the Halifax International Security forum, he declared “They should neuter the regime, destroy its ability to fight back and hope Iranians will take the chance to take back their government.”

Turkey has recently opposed the latest round of United Nations sanctions on Iran — cutting a deal with Brazil and Iran to send about half of Iran’s nuclear fuel supply to Turkey in exchange for plates to power a malfunctioning Iranian medical reactor.

The Islamic Republic continues to enrich uranium — producing some fuel at 20% rates of purity.

See also …
LA Times Iran pushes for nuclear talks in Turkey

Wikpedia Special nuclear material

One of two mail bombs sent from Yemen last week was disarmed just 17 minutes before it was set to go off, according to a statement today by the French interior minister.

Security forces in the Dubai region claim that the description of the bomb that Fortefeux is describing do not match information known about the bomb that was detained in Dubai.

The packages were addressed to two Chicago-area synagogues, but the addresses were outdated and the names on the packages included references to the Crusades — the 200-year wars involving predominantly Christians vs. Muslims.

The French Interior Ministry, British authorities and U.S. authorities would not elaborate on Hortefeux’s comment.

When investigators pulled the Chicago-bound packages off cargo planes in England and the United Arab Emirates Friday, they found the bombs wired to cell phones and hidden in the toner cartridges of laser printers.

The cellphone communication cards had been removed, so the phones could not connect to a wireless tower or receive calls. Hence, the focus on the alarm or timer functions to detonate the bombs.

The bomb found at East Midlands airport in central England went unnoticed for several hours, because of an intricate design in the toner.

Intelligence officials in the U.S. said Wednesday that each bomb was attached to a syringe containing lead azide, a chemical initiator that would have detonated PETN explosives packed into each printer cartridge.

PETN and a syringe were used in the failed bombing last Christmas 2009 of a Detroit-bound airliner. Investigators are scrutinizing the Yemeni al-Qaida faction’s top bomb maker, who had previously designed the bomb that failed detonate properly on a crowded U.S.-bound passenger jetliner last Christmas.

Authorities believe that master bomb maker Ibrahim al-Asiri packed four times as much explosives into the bombs hidden last week on flights from Yemen. The two bombs contained 300 and 400 grams of the industrial explosive PETN, according to a German security official.

The underwear bomb on the Detroit-bound plane last Christmas contained about 80 grams.

One of the explosive devices found inside a shipped printer cartridge in Dubai had flown on two airlines before it was discovered., The cartridge flew on a Qatar Airways Airbus A320 jet to Doha and then on an unnamed flight from Doha to Dubai. The number of passengers on the two flights were unknown, but the first flight had a 144-seat capacity and the second would have been transported a variety of planes with seating capacities ranging from 144 to 335.

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France has been on heightened alert since mid-September and last month Hortefeux said that Saudi intelligence had advised of a heightened threat from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based al-Qaida affiliate, which was “doubtless active or envisioned being active” on the “European continent, notably France.”

Brice Hortefeux (born 11 May 1958) is a French politician and Minister of the Interior, Overseas Territories and Territorial collectivities. He was previously Minister for Labour, Labour Relations, the Family, Solidarity and Urban Affairs and Minister-Delegate for Local Government at the Ministry of the Interior and was a Member of the European Parliament.

Egyptian military sources report that the Israeli Navy and the US Fifth Fleet have been charting Persian Gulf waters and Iranian shorelines in preparation for attacks by Israeli naval and special operations forces.

The Egyptian report also claims IDF intelligence and special forces officers have been marking out routes for their air and ground forces to push into Iran and strike its nuclear installations.

Information was leaked to Shorouk, a publication which Egyptian intelligence often uses as an outlet for information believed to be credible.

Wikipedia: Shorouk | Shorouk Ibrahim El Moallem | Egypt | United States Fifth Fleet | Israel | IDF

SOURCE: DEBKAfile Egyptian sources: Israel prepares to strike Iran from Gulf and N. Iraq