Rule One: Do not fuck with the Israelis

The New York Times has an article by Michael Gordon and Jeffery Gettlemen about the Israeli strike in the Sudan:

Israeli warplanes bombed a convoy of trucks in Sudan in January that was believed to be carrying arms to be smuggled into Gaza, according to American officials. Israeli officials refused to confirm or deny the attack, but intelligence analysts noted that the strike was consistent with other measures Israel had taken to secure its borders.
American officials said the airstrike took place as Israel sought to stop the flow of weapons to Gaza during the weeks it was fighting a war with Hamas there. Two American officials who are privy to classified intelligence assessments said that Iran had been involved in the effort to smuggle weapons to Gaza. They also noted that there had been intelligence reports that an operative with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had gone to Sudan to coordinate the effort. But one former official said that the exact provenance of the arms that were being smuggled via Sudan was unclear.
Although the airstrike was carried out two months ago, it was not publicized until Sudanese officials said Thursday that a convoy of trucks in the remote eastern part of Sudan was bombed by what they called 'American' fighters killing dozens. The strikes were first reported on several internet-based news sites.
The area where the Sudanese said the attack occurred, near Port Sudan on the Red Sea, is an isolated patch of eastern Sudan near the Egyptian border and a notorious smuggling route, populated mostly by nomads and known as one of the poorest, least developed parts of a very poor, underdeveloped country. The Sudanese said the reports emerged now because it took time to fully investigate the strike. But an accusation from one government official that the attack was an American act of genocide raised the possibility that the Sudanese were lashing out because the International Criminal Court had issued a warrant for the arrest of their president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on war-crimes charges in the conflict in Darfur.
The official, Rabie Atti, a government spokesman, also gave a death toll in the attack that was higher than the 39 reported in other secondhand accounts. Mr. Rabie said by telephone from Khartoum, the capital, that “more than one hundred people” had been killed in the air raid. He said the trucks that were bombed were not carrying weapons. “I’ve heard this allegation, but it’s not true,” he said. “It was a genocide, committed by US forces.” When asked how he knew the forces were American, Mr. Rabie said: “We don’t differentiate between the US and Israel. They are all one.”
Vince Crawley, a spokesman for the United States Africa Command, said American forces had not bombed Sudan. “The US military has not conducted any airstrikes, fired any missiles, or undertaken any combat operations in or around Sudan since October 2008, when U.S. Africa Command formally became responsible for military action in Africa,” he said.
The American officials who described the Israeli role declined to be identified because they were discussing classified information and were not authorized to speak for the Obama administration. One American military official said the January strike was one of a series of Israeli attacks against arms shipments bound for Gaza.
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, did not comment specifically on the reported bombing. But he said in a speech on Thursday in Israel that when it came to security, “we operate wherever it is possible to harm terror infrastructure, near and far.” Shlomo Brom, a retired general at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said it would be “very logical” to assume that Israel would have wanted to bomb a weapons convoy in Sudan. “It fits exactly with the pattern of how Israel operates,” he said.
Israeli officials say that most of the weapons smuggled to Gaza flow through a labyrinth of tunnels running beneath the Egypt-Gaza border. Israel has blamed Iran for supplying many of these weapons, especially the rockets that Hamas has fired at Israeli civilians. Israeli military analysts said that eastern Sudan could have been a little-watched backdoor for Iranian weapons to reach Gaza.
Hossam Zaki, a spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, said: “How do we know these are weapons to be smuggled and destined to go to Gaza through Egypt? These are only intelligence reports.” Asked if he had information about the strikes at the time the Sudanese said they had happened, he said, “We had our intelligence as well,” and refused to elaborate further.
Israel is no stranger to daring military operations when it concludes its security is threatened. It has a history of attacking enemies far from its territory. Israeli Air Force planes destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, and in 2007 they destroyed a site in Syria that Israeli and American intelligence analysts said was a partly constructed nuclear reactor. Israel never officially acknowledged that it was responsible for the Syrian strike.
Mr. Rabie, the Sudanese spokesman, implied that his government might have more to say on the episode. He said the government waited two months to go public because “we were doing investigations. We want to follow the case,” he said. “And the government is still collecting information.”

Rico asks can you say Entebbe? If the Iranians are supplying serious arms to the Palestinians through the Sudan, they better watch their ass. If Israel can find their boats (can you say US satellite imagery?), they're toast. But, given the hundreds of miles between the Sudanese border with Egypt and the Egyptian border with Gaza, you'd think the Egyptians were in on this deal somehow.
Rico says that that will piss off the Israelis, big time...
More on the story:
The Haaretz news service has some additional information:

Israel has carried out three air strikes since January against what was believed to be Iranian arms shipments passing through Sudan on their way to Gaza. Earlier this week Sudanese officials confirmed that in January, in the wake Israel's assault on Hamas-ruled Gaza, unidentified aircraft attacked a convoy of seventeen trucks heading north through eastern Sudan. CBS News reported that the Israeli Air Force was apparently behind the attack. A US official confirmed to ABC that there were actually three attacks in total. This information matches reports from Sudanese officials of two strikes on truck convoys on 27 January 27 and 11 February, and the sinking of a suspected arms ship in the Red Sea. According to the report, thirty-nine people riding in the seventeen-truck convoy were killed, while a number of civilians in the area were injured.
Israeli officials declined to confirm or deny whether Israel had been involved in an air strike in Sudan. However, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hinted on Thursday at Israel's suspected role in the reported air-strike. "We operate everywhere where we can hit terror infrastructure - in close places, in places further away, everywhere where we can hit terror infrastructure, we hit them and we hit them in a way that increases deterrence," said Olmert, speaking at a conference in Herzliya. "It was true in the north in a series of incidents and it was true in the south, in a series of incidents," he added. "There is no point in going into detail, and everybody can use their imagination. Those who need to know, know. And those who need to know, know that there is no place where Israel cannot operate. There is no such place."

Rico says he warned them...