Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the driving force behind Iran's nuclear program and most vocal of Israel's enemies, is on his last legs as president. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stripped him of most of his powers and shut the door against his allies running for the Majlis (parliament) in March 2012.  debkafile's Iranian sources: The coming men in the presidential stakes of 2013 are Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, a former nuclear negotiator with the West, and ex-foreign minister Ali Akhbar Veliyati. Both are hardliners.

Helped by highly sophisticated contraband weapons smuggled out of Libya, Iran and Hizballah are getting the Palestinian Hamas equipped for another round of hostilities with Israel. debkafile's military sources report that Sunday, Sept. 25, Egyptian security forces homed in near Ismailia on a large half-empty cache of advanced Libyan SA-24 anti-air infrared missiles (a version of the US Stinger). They grant Hamas high-, medium- and low-altitude capabilities. Many of the empty crates had also contained sea mines.  

Friday, Sept. 23 , the day Mahmoud Abbas applied for UN recognition of a Palestinian state, an Israeli called Asher Palmer, 25, and his one-year old son Jonathan were killed by a novel Palestinian method of murder while driving home on the Hebron road: They waylaid his oncoming car in their own vehicle and hurled a rock the size of a football at his windscreen. The Israeli police then deceived the public by calling the attack a road accident.

Amid spiraling Pakistani-US tensions, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani Sunday, Sept. 25, recalled Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar from New York shortly after she warned the US against "hot pursuit" of terrorists on Pakistani soil. Pakistan's army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani held a "special" meeting of top commanders "to review the security situation" – exacerbating the sense of crisis. debkafile: Pakistan appears to be steeling itself for a possible military clash with US soldiers after being accused of harboring and running terrorists.

Muammar Qaddafi and his sons have raised a new army of 12,000 soldiers - all fighters of loyal Touareg tribes of the Sahara, debkafile’s military sources report.

Saturday, Sept. 24, Libyan rebel troops reportedly clashed with his diehards after entering the town of Sirte from the west. Two thousand kilometers to the south, in Niger, the ousted Libyan ruler won a guarantee of protection and alliance from the Touareg tribal council and their declaration of war on his enemies.

In their speeches to the UN General Assembly Friday, Sept. 23, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas agreed only on the importance of reviving peace talks. Otherwise they were daggers drawn.  Yet the Middle East Quartet later issued a call for both to start peace talks in a month to end within a year. First, the Palestinian leader handed UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon a formal request for Palestinian membership.

Israel has mobilized 22,000 police alongside thousands of soldiers, declaring the country on the highest level of preparedness for violent riots Friday, Sept. 23, when the Palestinians hold prayers and rallies in support of their application for UN membership. Radical groups are planning to break into settlements and Israeli city residential areas.  The Palestinian Religious Affairs Minister has ordered all mosques, especially al Aqsa, to keep on shouting Allah is Great through loudspeakers turned up to maximum volume.

The US National Intelligence Director James Clapper began a surprise visit to Ankara Sunday Sept. 18, prompted by Turkish saber-rattling against key US interests: Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the information gathered by the US radar system planned for Turkey as part of the NATO missile-shield must not be shared with Israel; Monday, US Noble Energy began drilling gas off Cyprus in defiance of Turkey; and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, egged on by Ankara, headed for the UN to bid for membership.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas announced Friday, Sept. 16, in Ramallah that he would ask the UN Security Council next week to recognize a Palestinian state. Once they have a state and a flag and recognition, the Palestinians would leave all other issues open for negotiation with Israel, he said. While citing the 1967 borders for a future Palestinian state in reference to his UN application, Abbas stressed that the real Palestinian borders were laid down by the UN in 1947.

In first new disclosures on the siege of Israel's Cairo embassy of Friday night, Sept. 9, debkafile reveals the mob was led by Jama'a al-Islamiya, the Egyptian founding branch of Al Qaeda, and two other radical Islamist groups. The February 1993 car bombing of the World Trade Center of New York was an early Jamaa operation under the al Qaeda label. Friday night, when the mob sacked the embassy, the Egyptian police stood by – until the rioters rifled the gunroom of a nearby police HQ.

Iran's 20 percent enriched uranium production exceeds its needs. debkafile' reports that this disclosure by Iran's atomic energy agency head Fereydoon Abbas enables the program to move into the production of 60 percent grade fuel, one step before weapons grade. This progress plus the relocation to an underground location near Qom of accelerated enrichment brings forward to the spring of 2012 the potential completion of between two and four bombs and Tehran's ability to conduct a nuclear test.