So who did bomb the Iranian arms trucks in Sudan?

from DEBKAfile Special Report
March 29, 2009

The only solid fact emerging from the fanciful "reports" traded between Western and Middle East media over the bombing of an Iranian arms convoy bound for Hamas in January is that Tehran's arms shipments to Hamas via Sinai and the Gaza tunnels continue at full spate.

Somehow, as the "reporting" unfolded, the US attacker morphed into the Israeli Air Force.
Western imagination outdid itself Sunday, March 28, when the London Sunday Times claimed that Israeli intelligence used drones to bomb the convoy in Sudan, possibly even Eitan UAVs, whose wing span is like that of a Boeing airliner, and that missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv were the target.

If this claim and reports in other Western media - asserting glibly that Israeli drones or warplanes had sunk an Iranian ship in the Red Sea - are correct, they would signify:

1. That Israel and Iran are at war;

2. That Tehran has decided to take Israeli attacks on the chin and not respond. Does this sound like the Iranian leaders we know?

3. Israel has declared war on Sudan with two attacks.

4. And, most importantly, Israel's armed forces have failed to stem the flow of Iranian arms to Gaza.

In the original disclosure which started the hare, an Egyptian newspaper Al-Shurooq Tuesday March 24, reported that in January, a US Air Force AC 130H taking off from Djibouti destroyed an Iranian arms convoy of 17 trucks in North Sudan on its way to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, killing 39 passengers.

The Egyptian paper ran the story the day before Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir arrived in Cairo. It stressed that the Sudanese authorities had conducted "a full blown dossier'" on the attack, consisting of "images, forensics as well as remains of weapons and satellite phones."
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Three Israeli Airstrikes Against Sudan!

March 27, 2009
from ABC News

ABC News' Luis Martinez reports:

Israel has conducted three military strikes against targets in Sudan since January in an effort to prevent what were believed to be Iranian weapons shipments from reaching Hamas in the Gaza Strip, ABC News has learned.

Earlier this week, CBSNews.com was the first to report that Israel had conducted an airstrike in January against a convoy carrying weapons north into Egypt to be smuggled into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

But actually, since January, Israel has conducted a total of three military strikes against smugglers transporting what were believed to be Iranian weapons shipments destined for Gaza, a U.S. official told ABC News.

The information matches recent reports from Sudanese officials of two airstrikes in the desert of eastern Sudan and the sinking of a ship in the Red Sea carrying weapons.

Jonathan Peled, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, would only say, "No comment," when contacted by ABC News on the matter.

Sudanese officials initially said this week that 39 people riding in 17 trucks were killed in a mid-January airstrike conducted by an unidentified aircraft in a desert area north of the Red Sea port of Port Sudan.

Today, a Sudanese Foreign Ministry representative said there were two separate bombing raids against smugglers in January and February. The Sudanese minister for highways was more specific, saying the airstrikes took place Jan. 27 and Feb. 11.

Arabic broadcaster Al-Jazeera also reported today a Sudanese official's claim that Israel had sunk a ship carrying weapons.

Israeli officials continue to refuse to confirm or deny the reports of airstrikes, but Thursday Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, “Israel hits every place it can in order to stop terror, near and far."
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U.S. Air Force C-130 Bombers destroy 17 Truck Weapons Convoy in Sudan

DEBKAfile Special Report
March 26, 2009

DEBKAfile's military sources: Sudanese and Egyptian security officials reported Tuesday, March 24, the day Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir arrived in Cairo, that in January, US Air Force C-130 bombers taking off from bases in Djibouti destroyed a 17-truck clandestine convoy carrying smuggled arms as it travelled through Sudan to the Egyptian border. All 39 passengers were killed, said those officials. Wednesday night, CBS TV News quoted unidentified US Pentagon officials as claiming the attack was not carried out by American but Israeli aircraft.

No official comment has come from Israel.

Our military sources report that Iran's main arms smuggling route to Hamas in Gaza runs through Sudan. The weapons are quietly unloaded from Iranian merchant vessels to convoys of trucks or camels at Port Sudan on the Red Sea. After crossing into Egypt, the supplies make their way to the Gulf of Suez where local smugglers' boats move the arms freight across Sinai.
The size of the convoy targeted for air attack, 17 trucks and 39 passengers, is the first tangible eye-opener to Iran's vast weapons-smuggling program for Palestinian terrorists in Gaza. The hardware transits Sinai and reaches its destination through their tunnel network on the Egyptian-Gaza border.

According to DEBKAfile's intelligence sources, the arms trucks have been plying the Sudan-Sinai route at the rate of two or three large convoys per month, tracked by US and Israeli spy satellites.

The supplies continue since the convoy was destroyed two months ago, only the smugglers are more careful, using various devices to evade satellite detection. For instance, the trucks no longer travel in convoys, but separately, or else they transfer the arms to different kinds of vehicles such as camels and small boats which hug the Sudanese and Egyptian coasts.

Last January, the US and Israel signed an agreement calling for an international effort to stem the flow of weaponry and explosives from Iran to Gaza. It covered intelligence coordination, maritime efforts to identify ships carrying the hardware, and the sharing of US and European technologies to detect and block weapons-smuggling tunnels between Sinai and Gaza.

One Cypriot-flagged Iranian arms ship was diverted in the Gulf of Aden, forced through the Suez Canal and finally had its illicit freight confiscated at Larnaca.

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