Bibi's Mystery Tour

UPDATED: It sounds like they've figured out who's going to take the fall for the whole affair.

For the past few days a controversy has been building in Israel over a mysterious trip Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to have made on Monday, when he disappeared for more than 12 hours (some accounts say 14) with his military advisor and National Security Advisor apparently being the only ones to know where he was.

By most accounts he was in Moscow. After a few stray reports that he had gone to some Arab country to talk about Iran, the story coalesced around a secret, and short, trip to Moscow. Now the secrecy imposed by the PM's office, and the fact that even the senior Cabinet apparently didn't know where he was, is still raising hackles with the media. Here's a Haaretz report, and a Los Angeles Times blog post.

Although Vladimir Putin's office sort of issued a denial that he had seen Netanyahu, a "senior Kremlin official" supposedly confirmed the trip, saying that "this kind of development could only be related to new and threatening information on Iran's nuclear program."

Other speculation has been that it involved an Israeli warning of a possible attack on Iran, or was linked to Iran's acquisition of Russian S-300 surface-to-air missiles (which would be a real deterrent to an attack on nuclear sites), or even to the recent curious incident of the "hijacked" cargo ship Arctic Sea, which remains shrouded in mystery but which has provoked rumors that it was carrying S-300s or other sensitive equipment to Iran or another rogue state.

Whatever the reason for the mysterious trip, Israel and the Russians have both seen their efforts at secrecy blown out of the water, as the whole thing has turned into a controversy in Israel and reinforced a perception that Netanyahu's Prime Ministerial office is divided and disorganized.

Unless, of course, he made a secret trip somewhere other than Russia. If that's the case the diversion is working cleverly.