DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Iran Asks Interpol to Arrest Five Argentines (Reuters)
    Iran has made a request to Interpol for the arrest of five Argentines, the official Iranian IRNA news agency said on Tuesday.
    Last week the world police body's annual general assembly voted to seek the extradition of five Iranians and one Lebanese national in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires in which 85 people were killed.
    Prosecutor General Qorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi ordered the arrest via Interpol of five Argentines, including a former judge and a former interior minister, on charges including making accusations against Iran "based on baseless and faked information" and bribery.

Ex-FBI Employee's Case Raises New Security Concerns - Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen (Washington Post)
    A Lebanese national who fraudulently gained U.S. citizenship through a sham marriage managed to obtain sensitive jobs at both the FBI and CIA, and at one point used her security clearance to access restricted files about the terrorist group Hizbullah, according to court documents filed Tuesday.
    U.S. officials say there is no evidence that Nada Nadim Prouty, 37, passed secrets to Hizbullah, but Prouty's ability to conceal her past from two of the nation's top anti-terrorism agencies raised new concerns about their vulnerability to infiltration.
    See also Suspected Hizbullah Mole Pleads Guilty to FBI File Snooping - James Gordon Meek (New York Daily News)
   

Busted Los Angeles Drug Ring Had Ties to Hizbullah - James Gordon Meek (New York Daily News)
    A seemingly small-time drug ring busted this week in Los Angeles was actually targeted for funding the Lebanese terror group Hizbullah.
    "This was a classic case of terrorism financing, and it was pretty sophisticated how they did it," a source close to the operation said.
    The defendants crammed $123,000 in money orders into a stuffed animal flown to Lebanon, an indictment alleged.

New Jersey Department of Homeland In-Security - Steven Emerson and Stephen M. Flatow (New York Post)
    The New Jersey Department of Homeland Security held a counterterrorism conference last month.
    Recommendation No. 5 from the final post-conference report claimed that we should avoid the use of the terms "Islam" or "Muslim" when discussing the current threat: "Because militant Islamist recruiters try to convince followers that Islam is under attack, we must be careful not to inadvertently feed that idea through the language we use."
    Yet burying our head in the sand or refusing to name our enemies are no longer viable options. Al-Qaeda, Hizbullah, and Hamas justify the use of suicide bombers as a divine, religious rite.
    Americans have a right to know and discuss the belief system driving Islamic terrorists.

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Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):

Observations:

Rice: Will a Palestinian State Fight Terrorism? (State Department)

Secretary of State Rice told the United Jewish Communities General Assembly in Nashville on Tuesday:

• "As you know, I was just in the Middle East, and whenever I visit Israel I am reminded of the awesome living achievement that is the Jewish state. I look out upon a nation that has made the desert bloom. I think of how a people with ancient traditions have built a prosperous, modern democracy, and how inspiring that could be for the rest of the Middle East....But most of all, ladies and gentlemen, whenever I visit Israel, I am reminded of how precious the idea of Israel is and how essential it is to defend it."
• "The traditional idea had focused largely on negotiating the contours of a Palestinian state, its borders, along with solutions to questions of refugees and Jerusalem - all essential for peace, but I would submit to you not sufficient for peace. What also needed to be addressed was the character of the Palestinian state. Would it fight terrorism? Would it govern justly? Would it create opportunity for its people? In our view, the security of the democratic Jewish state required the creation of a responsible Palestinian state."
• "Some think that this focus on democracy backfired with the election of Hamas. I disagree with that conclusion. Hamas always had power. What it never had was responsibility for power. And that is what democracy gave Hamas: a fundamental choice. You can be a political party or a terrorist group, but you cannot be both. The leaders of Hamas have made their choice. They have chosen violence. And the international community has remained united, isolating Hamas until it is ready to choose peace."
• "If our Arab friends of long standing truly desire peace, then they need to demonstrate to their people and to the world that they believe that Israel has a permanent home in the Middle East."
• "We intend to hold a serious and substantive meeting in Annapolis. Our current course is not meant to replace the roadmap, nor to supplant direct negotiations between the parties, but to take this new opportunity and to pursue peace and to protect ourselves against those with far darker designs....In Hamas' coup in Gaza, in Hizbullah's war in Lebanon, and in the rise of an aggressive Iranian regime, we see that violent extremism is evolving in new and dangerous ways."

      See also Rice: Focus on the Day After Annapolis
  Secretary of State Rice told the JTA in Nashville on Tuesday: "They're not going to create the Palestinian state at Annapolis. They're not going to create it four days after Annapolis. That is work that has to be done in detailed, ongoing, continuous negotiations....Now, there was an earlier time when there was a question about whether their joint document was going to try to have the basics of the deal. I think it's not surprising that when people recognize that there's going to be a day after, they start to focus on the day after, not the day of." (State Department)