In this issue:

Israeli Source Confirms: Brits Were Fully in on Hamas Hit

Anglo-Israeli 'Doomsday' War Scheme Advances

Dubai Police Chief Calls for Arrest of Mossad Head

'Sykes-Picot'-Model Assassination in Dubai

Britain Was Informed in Advance of Israeli Hit

Israeli Source Confirms: Brits Were Fully in on Hamas Hit

Feb. 20 (EIRNS)—A senior Israeli source, closely tied to the Netanyahu government, has confirmed that the British were complicit in the Mossad assassination of a prominent Hamas official in Dubai on Jan. 20. According to the source, the British intelligence services provided the Mossad with all of the passports used, to conceal the identities of the hit squad members. "Not only were the British passports given to the Mossad. The Brits provided the German and Irish passports as well," the source said. "They were fully witting before the fact."

According to the source, the modus operandi of the assassination was similar to the murder, in 1990, of weapons designer Gerald Bull, outside his apartment in Brussels. He explained that the friction between the British and the Israelis after the killing of the Hamas official, was due to the fact that the Israelis obtained a large number of documents from the murdered man's briefcase, and have so far refused to share the contents with the British.

Anglo-Israeli 'Doomsday' War Scheme Advances

Feb. 20 (EIRNS)—Sources close to the Israeli government have warned EIR that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's inner cabinet is close to making a decision to launch a preventive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. Such a decision could come as early as tomorrow, when the cabinet convenes.

According to the source, a fierce debate is raging within the military, over whether Israel has the capacity to successfully strike Iran's nuclear facilities at Natanz or elsewhere. Recently, former Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Dan Halutz told Israeli media that the IDF does not have the ability to seriously damage the Iranian program. But, according to an Israeli source close to the inner cabinet, several options are being reviewed for just such an attack.

According to the source, in recent visits to Russia, both Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman pressed Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for permission to stage attacks against Iranian targets from sites inside Russia. Putin reportedly strongly rejected that option. Similar approaches have been made to the government of Kazakhstan, according to the Israeli source. The source added that the preferred option, being promoted by factions in the IDF, is to launch attacks from Israeli submarines, equipped with cruise missiles. The source noted that the accuracy of such submarine-launched cruise missiles is unreliable, and most of the Iranian sites on the Israeli target list are in urban areas.

The source confirmed that the Obama Administration's national security team has delivered a series of strongly worded messages, warning Israel against any unilateral attacks on Iran. U.S. military leaders, as well as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen, National Security Advisor Gen. Jim Jones (ret.), and Vice President Joe Biden, all recognize that a military strike against Iran is the worst-case, last option, and that they are not even close to the point of having to make that decision. It is widely believed, including among Israeli planners, that Iran has a retaliatory asymmetric capability that would involve crippling the Persian Gulf oil flow, blowing out the world economy, if attacked.

Lyndon LaRouche warned that circles in London, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair, are the real potential architects of this "doomsday" scheme. It is those in London, who are desperate over the collapse of the entire British System, who may be contemplating an Israeli "breakaway ally" attack on Iran, which would bring on a planetary dark age. Testifying before the Chilcot Commission, Blair taunted the commissioners with the need to take military action against Iran today, just as he lied the U.S. and Britain into the 2003 invasion of Iraq. These people would have to be totally desperate, to be contemplating such a doomsday act, and I am afraid that they are, LaRouche warned.

Dubai Police Chief Calls for Arrest of Mossad Head

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)—Dubai's police chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, today called for Interpol to issue a red notice, requesting that the suspects be arrested pending extradition, against the head of the Mossad as a killer, if the Mossad is proved to be behind the murder of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was killed in a Dubai hotel in January.

Tamim told the English-language Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National that Interpol had issued red notices for 11 suspects wanted in the killing of al-Mabhouh.

'Sykes-Picot'-Model Assassination in Dubai

Feb. 18 (EIRNS)—There are mounting indications that the January assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, was nothing less than a "Sykes-Picot" assassination—a collusion among European powers to destroy Southwest Asia, as in the Franco-British Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1918. Dubai officials have identified between 11 and 18 suspects whose pictures were seen on bogus passports from Britain, France, Ireland, and Germany, but the British, French, and Irish foreign offices have summoned the Israeli ambassadors for an explanation.

On Feb. 18, Robert Fisk, the London Independent's veteran Beirut-based correspondent, wrote that the real story is the collusion between Israel, the British, and other Europeans. He writes that the United Arab Emirates "suspect—only suspect, mark you—that Europe's 'security collaboration' with Israel has crossed a line into illegality, where British passports (and those of other EU nations) can now be used to send Israeli agents into the Gulf to kill Israel's enemies."

Fisk reports that he received a call from an "impeccable" Abu Dhabi source, who told him "the British passports are real. They are hologram pictures with the biometric stamp. They are not forged or fake. The names were really there. If you can fake a hologram or biometric stamp, what does this mean?" The source went on, "There are 18 people involved in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Besides the 11 already named, there are two Palestinians who are being interrogated and five others, including a woman. She was part of the team that staked out the hotel lobby."

The source sent a later message saying, "The command room of the operation was in Austria ... meaning the suspects when here did not talk to each other but thru the command room on separate lines to avoid detection ... but it was detected and identified OK?"

The source went on, "We have sent out details of the 11 named people to Interpol. Interpol has circulated them to 188 countries—but why hasn't Britain warned foreign nations that these people are using passports in these names? ... We have identified five credit cards belonging to these people, all issued in the United States."

While the EU countries and Britain are cooperating, the source said he found it very strange that "not one of the countries we have been speaking to has notified Interpol of the passports used in their name. Why not?"

He concludes on a very interesting note: "Collusion is a word the Arabs understand. It speaks of the 1956 Suez War, when Britain and France cooperated with Israel to invade Egypt. Both London and Paris denied the plot. They were lying. But for an Arab Gulf country which suspects its former masters (the U.K., by name) may have connived in the murder of a visiting Hamas official, this is apparently now too much."

Britain Was Informed in Advance of Israeli Hit

Feb. 19 (EIRNS)—Britain's Daily Mail today reported that Israel had informed the British intelligence services before it carried out the assassination of an Hamas operative in Dubai last month, and that it had used British and other European passports.

The Mail cites an unnamed "British security source," who met the Mossad agent, who informed him. "This is a serving member of Israeli intelligence. He says the British government was told very, very briefly before the operation was going to happen. There was no British involvement and they didn't know the name of the target. But they were told these people were traveling on U.K. passports. This was not a request for permission to use the passports but a 'courtesy call'.... The Mossad agent said that they understood the British authorities will have to 'slap them on the wrist" and added: "The British government has to be seen to be going though the motions."

The Mail adds that the scandal will not hurt British-Israeli relations, because Israel was supplying information on the U.K. Muslim community.