http://agonist.org/20070914/u_s_syria_on_nuclear_watch_list

http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1644/did-israel-strike-a-syrian-nuclear-facility

Sep 19, 2007 0:48 | Updated Sep 19, 2007 1:49
Syria voted co-chairman of UN watchdog
By HERB KEINON

Two weeks after Israel's alleged bombing raid in Syria, which some foreign reports said targeted North Korean nuclear material, the UN's nuclear watchdog elected Syria as deputy chairman of its General Conference on Monday.

The 51st session of the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) opened in Vienna on Monday and will run through Friday.

The Syrian news agency SANA proudly reported the election on Tuesday, adding that Syria was also successful in including "the Israeli nuclear arsenal as an item on the agenda of the conference."

The agenda for the meeting includes the item "Israeli nuclear capabilities and threat." While Iran will be a focus of the discussions, there is no item on the agenda referring to the Islamic Republic by name.

Israel's Foreign Ministry had "no public comment" on Syria's election.

But Gerald Steinberg, chairman of Bar-Ilan University's political science department and an authority on nonproliferation, said the election "reflects the absurdity of the political process inside the IAEA."

The deputy chairman has no real power and is merely a symbolic post, similar to a deputy president of the UN General Assembly or a deputy speaker of the Knesset, he said. However, Steinberg added, "this move shows how little these types of international frameworks can really do when some of the main players are also the main violators of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."

Steinberg said that both Iraq and Iran have held similar positions within the IAEA in the past. He also said there was no connection between the political level and the organization's technological branches under the directorship of Mohamed ElBaradei, which inspect nuclear facilities.

The General Conference, made up of some 144 countries, is the least important of the IAEA's three main bodies. The other two bodies are the Board of Governors and the Secretariat.

The General Conference meets annually to approve budgets and to discuss nuclear-related issues and IAEA policy.•

Peres says recent tensions with Syria 'over'

President tells foreign correspondents Israel 'clearly ready to negotiate directly with Syria for peace', expresses optimism about upcoming Mideast peace conference in Washington

Associated Press
Published: 09.18.07, 14:58 / Israel News

As for Syria, the president sought to calm tensions following a widely reported Israeli air attack there on Sept. 6. Israel has clamped a news blackout on the raid, which Syria announced and US officials have confirmed.

Foreign media reports have suggested Israel struck a nuclear facility in Syria built with North Korean technology, or Iranian arms destined for Lebanese Hizbullah guerrillas.

"The nervousness in relations between Syria and ourselves is over," Peres said. "We are clearly ready to negotiate directly with Syria for peace."

Peres' statement followed similarly conciliatory remarks on Monday by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who said has "a lot of respect for the Syrian leader and for Syrian behavior".

Sep 20, 2007

Neo-cons have Syria in their sights
By Khody Akhavi

WASHINGTON - Nearly two weeks have passed since Israeli warplanes reportedly conducted a mysterious raid against an as yet unidentified target in northeastern Syria. There are no official details of the incident, as both countries have remained tight-lipped.

In the absence of a clear picture of what happened in the early hours of September 6, speculation in the US mainstream media has grown as to what exactly the Israelis targeted, and why Syria

- assuming it was the target of an unprovoked attack - has been so muted in its response.

Was Israel's attack aimed at testing Syria's radar defenses? Did the air strike seek to disrupt arms shipments to Lebanon's Hezbollah? Was it a dress rehearsal for a possible future strike on Iranian nuclear facilities?

Feeding the speculation, a familiar clutch of hawks in the administration of US President George W Bush appear to be suggesting that Israel's apparent air strike targeted a joint North Korea-Syria nuclear venture.

Writing in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal more than a week before the incident, former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton asserted, "We know that both Iran and Syria have long cooperated with North Korea on ballistic-missile programs, and the prospect of cooperation on nuclear matters is not far-fetched.

"Whether and to what extent Iran, Syria or others might be 'safe havens' for North Korea's nuclear-weapons development, or may have already benefited from it, must be made clear," he wrote. Bolton resigned his position at the UN last year and currently serves as a senior fellow at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Comments made by a US State Department official last Friday fanned the flames and bolstered the neo-conservative argument. Andrew Semmel, acting deputy assistant secretary of state for nuclear non-proliferation policy, told the Associated Press that the US believes Syria has a number of "secret suppliers" to obtain nuclear equipment as part of a covert program.

The Bush administration has maintained a hardline policy stance on Syria. It has not had high-level diplomatic relations with the country since the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. The US has alleged that Syria played a role in the assassination.

Neo-conservatives appear to be re-igniting a political narrative that fits neatly with the infamous cast of the "axis of evil". While not explicitly mentioned, Syria has often been designated as a junior partner of Iran, Iraq and North Korea's "reign of terror" because of its support for Islamist opposition groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza.

"They [neo-cons] want to torpedo the North Korea deal, they have clung doggedly to making sure that there is no cooperation in Syria, and they're the same people who got us into this mess in the Middle East in the first place," said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and senior fellow at the Washington-based New America Foundation.

The focus on North Korea comes as the US prepares to implement the six-nation agreement to end Pyongyang's nuclear-weapons program, a diplomatic approach that has drawn the ire of policy hawks such as Bolton.

"Bolton represents the crowd that is very distressed that the US has declared defeat in North Korea by trusting the North Koreans. They would like to scuttle that agreement," wrote Syria expert Josh Landis on his widely read weblog Syriacomment.org.

"While doing it, anything they can drag in to boost the notion of weapons transfers between Korea and Syria and Iran will be icing on the cake. Israeli planes were trying to get the goods," he wrote.

Some US analysts have been very dubious of an actual Syrian nuclear threat, describing the speculation surrounding the incident as a manufactured stunt aimed at advancing the neo-conservative agenda.

Joseph Cirincione, director for nuclear policy at the Washington-based Center for American Progress, according to an interview with Foreign Policy, said, "This story is nonsense. The Washington Post story should have been headlined 'White House officials try to push North Korea-Syria connection'. This is a political story, not a threat story.

"Once again, this appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted 'intelligence' to key reporters in order to promote a pre-existing political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war in Iraq, it should. This time it appears aimed at derailing the US-North Korean agreement that administration hardliners think is appeasement. Some Israelis want to thwart any dialogue between the US and Syria," said Cirincione, who previously served as director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

more

Ilene R. Prusher | September 19 | Jerusalem

CSM - It's the event that everyone here – and no one – is talking about.

Israeli officials have neither confirmed nor denied the target of its Sept. 6 airstrike in Syria. Was it, as some media outlets reported, an attack on the run-of-the-mill munitions being transferred through Syria on their way to Hizbullah, or was it a strike on nuclear components supplied by North Korea?

Either way, Israel's chief of military intelligence announced that Israel's deterrence had "been restored."

But unusually quiet, regional analysts note, are moderate Arab states and international players who would, in the past, have been quick to condemn any act of Israeli aggression against a neighbor.

Amid the state-imposed silence from officialdom here on what exactly Israeli bombs struck and why (Israelis are discussing it only on the basis of leaks in Washington), observers see several key messages.

First, Israel was able to strike at Syria without suffering any consequences, military or diplomatic. Second, Israel might take steps to fulfill one of its ultimate security objectives, which is to prevent other countries in the Middle East from obtaining nuclear capability, especially those overtly hostile to Israel. Third, if a Syrian nuclear installation can be targeted by Israel without any international outcry – and with the tacit backing of allies in the US and Turkey – Iran's nuclear facilities are looking more likely than ever to be next.

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

Last update - 10:56 20/09/2007
J'lem outraged by Netanyahu's admission of IAF strike on Syria

By Mazal Meulam and Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service

The political and defense establishments reacted with fury on Thursday to opposition leader MK Benjamin Netanyahu's apparent confirmation of an Israeli operation in Syria two weeks ago.

more
In what appears to be the first confirmation by a senior politician of foreign media reports, MK Benjamin Netanyahu told Channel One television that he was party to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's decision to attack Syria, an operation on which Israeli officials have remained uncharacteristically silent.

Labor Party secretary-general, Eitan Cabel, said to Army Radio that Netanyahu's words were "an outburst that is severe, stupid and irresponsible."
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"Bibi [Netanyahu] is the same Bibi. I haven no idea if it is foolishness, stupidity, the desire to jump on the bandwagon, the desire to be a partner, to steal credit - or something else. It is simply very dangerous. The man simply does not deserve to lead," Cabel told Army Radio.

In an interview with Channel One news anchor Haim Yavin, Netanyahu shocked the Prime Minister's Office when he said that he was briefed on Olmert's decision to carry out an operation in Syria, gave him his backing and congratulated him.

"When the prime minister takes action in important and necessary matters, and generally when the government is doing things for the security of Israel, I give it my endorsement," he said. "I was party to this matter, I must say, from the first minute and I gave it my backing, but it is still too early to discuss this subject."

Yavin then asked Netanyahu, "did you congratulate him [Olmert] on the operation?"

Netanyahu responded, "Personally, yes."

In response to the interview, sources close to Olmert said that "Bibi's slip of the tongue borders national irresponsibility."

An official said Tuesday that "once again Netanyahu couldn't restrain himself and he ran to tell the guys."

Members of the defense establishment also censured Netanyahu, calling his statement "the highest level of irresponsibility."

Politicians from the right, on the other hand, expressed support for Netanyahu and were critical of Olmert.

MK Yuval Steinitz (Likud) said that "Netanyahu's statements were unfortunate ones, but they caused no harm. This is a tempest in a teacup."

MK Gilad Erdan (Likud) said that "it is a pity that the aides of the worst prime minister in the history of the state seek out every opportunity to incite against Netanyahu, and permit themselves to use language that is lowly and contemptible, albeit typical."

"It was actually Olmert who, with his endless chatter, exposed the existence of Israel's nuclear arms. He should stay mum and not create a virtual storm from the support he is receiving from the head of the opposition as part of his responsible and stately conduct," Erdan continued.

MK Effi Eitam (National Religious Party) also came to Netanyahu's defense. "Although I am not a member of Netanyahu's party, I condemn the wrongful way in which the Prime Minister's Office is attacking Netanyahu in a personal and ugly manner in the name of national defense. His comment did not harm Israel's security, and Olmert's aides would do well to examine (Olmert's) judgment and statements during the Second Lebanon War.

...try this.

A trigger happy Israeli fighter pilot, believing he was about to be fired on by a SAM missile site inside Syria, unloaded a barrage of missiles to destroy it. Other SAM sites inside Syria fired back, and rather than risk further conflict with Syria while overflying Turkish airspace with permission, the Israeli fighter bombers and AWACS aircraft turned back and returned to Israel. It is important to note that at the time of the incident, the Israeli planes were almost certainly inside Turkish airspace; the Syrians apparently got scared and lit them up with SAM radars in case the Israeli planes were to suddenly turn and run for Damascus, provoking the response.

He goes on to speculate the Israelis were off to hit Natanz. More fodder for Numerian's post.

Olmert: "Bibi's slip of the tongue borders national irresponsibility."

Mazal Meulam and Aluf Benn | September 20

Haaretz - The political and defense establishments reacted with fury on Thursday to opposition leader MK Benjamin Netanyahu's apparent confirmation of an Israeli operation in Syria two weeks ago.

In what appears to be the first confirmation by a senior politician of foreign media reports, MK Benjamin Netanyahu told Channel One television that he was party to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's decision to attack Syria, an operation on which Israeli officials have remained uncharacteristically silent.

Labor Party secretary-general, Eitan Cabel, said to Army Radio that Netanyahu's words were "an outburst that is severe, stupid and irresponsible."
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"Bibi [Netanyahu] is the same Bibi. I haven no idea if it is foolishness, stupidity, the desire to jump on the bandwagon, the desire to be a partner, to steal credit - or something else. It is simply very dangerous. The man simply does not deserve to lead," Cabel told Army Radio.

In an interview with Channel One news anchor Haim Yavin, Netanyahu shocked the Prime Minister's Office when he said that he was briefed on Olmert's decision to carry out an operation in Syria, gave him his backing and congratulated him.

"When the prime minister takes action in important and necessary matters, and generally when the government is doing things for the security of Israel, I give it my endorsement," he said. "I was party to this matter, I must say, from the first minute and I gave it my backing, but it is still too early to discuss this subject."

Yavin then asked Netanyahu, "did you congratulate him [Olmert] on the operation?"

Netanyahu responded, "Personally, yes."

more ...

Israel, U.S. Shared Data On Suspected Nuclear Site
Bush Was Told of North Korean Presence in Syria, Sources Say

By Glenn Kessler and Robin Wright
Washington Postt Staff Writers
Friday, September 21, 2007; A01

Israel's decision to attack Syria on Sept. 6, bombing a suspected nuclear site set up in apparent collaboration with North Korea, came after Israel shared intelligence with President Bush this summer indicating that North Korean nuclear personnel were in Syria, U.S. government sources said.

The Bush administration has not commented on the Israeli raid or the underlying intelligence. Although the administration was deeply troubled by Israel's assertion that North Korea was assisting the nuclear ambitions of a country closely linked with Iran, sources said, the White House opted against an immediate response because of concerns it would undermine long-running negotiations aimed at persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.

Ultimately, however, the United States is believed to have provided Israel with some corroboration of the original intelligence before Israel proceeded with the raid, which hit the Syrian facility in the dead of night to minimize possible casualties, the sources said.

The target of Israel's attack was said to be in northern Syria, near the Turkish border. A Middle East expert who interviewed one of the pilots involved said they operated under such strict operational security that the airmen flying air cover for the attack aircraft did not know the details of the mission. The pilots who conducted the attack were briefed only after they were in the air, he said. Syrian authorities said there were no casualties.

U.S. sources would discuss the Israeli intelligence, which included satellite imagery, only on condition of anonymity, and many details about the North Korean-Syrian connection remain unknown. The quality of the Israeli intelligence, the extent of North Korean assistance and the seriousness of the Syrian effort are uncertain, raising the possibility that North Korea was merely unloading items it no longer needed. Syria has actively pursued chemical weapons in the past but not nuclear arms -- leaving some proliferation experts skeptical of the intelligence that prompted Israel's attack.

Syria and North Korea both denied this week that they were cooperating on a nuclear program. Bush refused to comment yesterday on the attack, but he issued a blunt warning to North Korea that "the exportation of information and/or materials" would affect negotiations under which North Korea would give up its nuclear programs in exchanges for energy aid and diplomatic recognition.

"To the extent that they are proliferating, we expect them to stop that proliferation, if they want the six-party talks to be successful," he said at a news conference, referring to negotiations that also include China, Japan, South Korea and Russia.

Unlike its destruction of an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, Israel made no announcement of the recent raid and imposed strict censorship on reporting by the Israeli media. Syria made only muted protests, and Arab leaders have remained silent. As a result, a daring and apparently successful attack to eliminate a potential nuclear threat has been shrouded in mystery.

"There is no question it was a major raid. It was an extremely important target," said Bruce Riedel, a former intelligence officer at Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. "It came at a time the Israelis were very concerned about war with Syria and wanted to dampen down the prospects of war. The decision was taken despite their concerns it could produce a war. That decision reflects how important this target was to Israeli military planners."

Israel has long known about Syria's interest in chemical and even biological weapons, but "if Syria decided to go beyond that, Israel would think that was a real red line," Riedel said.

Edward Djerejian, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and founding director of Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, said that when he was in Israel this summer he noticed "a great deal of concern in official Israeli circles about the situation in the north," in particular whether Syria's young ruler, Bashar al-Assad, "had the same sensitivity to red lines that his father had." Bashar succeeded his Hafez al-Assad as president of Syria in 2000.

The Israeli attack came just three days after a North Korean ship docked at the Syrian port of Tartus, carrying a cargo that was officially listed as cement.

The ship's role remains obscure. Israeli sources have suggested it carried nuclear equipment. Others have maintained that it contained only missile parts, and some have said the ship's arrival and the attack are merely coincidental. One source suggested that Israel's attack was prompted by a fear of media leaks on the intelligence.

The Bush administration's wariness when presented with the Israeli intelligence contrasts with its reaction in 2002, when U.S. officials believed they had caught North Korea building a clandestine nuclear program in violation of a nuclear-freeze deal arranged by the Clinton administration.

After the Bush administration's accusation, the Clinton deal collapsed and North Korea restarted a nuclear reactor, stockpiled plutonium and eventually conducted a nuclear test. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice convinced Bush this year to accept a deal with North Korea to shut down the reactor, infuriating conservatives inside and outside the administration.

But for years, Bush has also warned North Korea against engaging in nuclear proliferation, specifically making that a red line that could not be crossed after North Korea tested a nuclear device last year. The Israeli intelligence therefore suggested North Korea was both undermining the agreement and crossing that line.

Conservative critics of the administration's recent diplomacy with North Korea have seized on reports of the Israeli intelligence as evidence that the White House is misguided if it thinks it can ever strike a lasting deal with Pyongyang. "However bad it might be for the six-party talks, U.S. security requires taking this sort of thing seriously," said John R. Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who was a top arms control official in Bush's first term.

But advocates of engagement have accused critics of trying to sabotage the talks. China on Monday abruptly postponed a round of six-party talks scheduled to begin this week, but U.S. officials now say the talks should start again Thursday.

Some North Korean experts said they are puzzled why, if the reports are true, Pyongyang would jeopardize the hard-won deal with the United States and the other four countries. "It does not make any sense at all in the context of the last nine months," said Charles "Jack" Pritchard, a former U.S. negotiator with North Korea and now president of the Korea Economic Institute.

posted in full under fair use

http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1646/ah-they-were-scuds

Shots in the dark over Syria's skies

It's official: Israel did conduct an air "attack" on a Syrian facility two weeks ago. Beyond that, it's anybody's guess as to what happened on the fateful night. And people are guessing, with the most popular speculation linking North Korea to nuclear weapons in Syria. Damascus has quickly shot that theory down. - Sami Moubayed (Sep 21, '07)

Hours before the Israeli planes crossed the Syrian border, Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign-policy chief, delivered a message from Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak that troop deployment on the border with Syria would be reduced to prevent an outbreak of war, insisting that his country was not interested in war with the Syrians.

If this is the case, it does not help explain just what the Israeli planes were doing over Syria.

No way Syria would a up-to-no-good type facility right near the Turkish border. These are all cover stories.

ast update - 14:59 25/09/2007
N. Korea accuses U.S. of helping Israel develop nuclear weapons
By The Associated Press

North Korea accused the United States on Tuesday of actively providing nuclear weapons assistance to Israel while seeking to deprive other countries of the right to peaceful nuclear programs.

North Korea's top nuclear negotiator, meanwhile, denied accusations that his country had cooperated with Syria on a secret nuclear project.

"The United States is shutting its eyes to the nuclear programs of its allies while taking issue with the rights to nuclear activities of other countries for peaceful purposes," North Korea's communist party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said in a commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
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"As an illustration, the U.S. has long actively promoted and cooperated with the Israeli nuclear armament plan," the newspaper said. "They decided to provide assistance to Israel's nuclear development program. Then the U.S. dispatched nuclear experts to Israel and transferred highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient for nuclear weapons, to them."

Israel is widely believed to be a nuclear power, but the government has never formally confirmed or denied that it has nuclear weapons.

North Korea's criticism came amid news reports that Israel Air Force warplanes attacked an installation in northern Syria earlier this month which was allegedly either a joint Syrian-North Korean nuclear project or a shipment of arms for Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

North Korea has flatly denied any nuclear link with Syria, calling the accusation a fabrication by dishonest forces who want to obstruct recent progress in North Korean-U.S. relations.

"That matter is fabricated by lunatics, so you can ask those lunatics to explain it," North Korea's top nuclear envoy, Kim Kye Gwan, told reporters Tuesday after arriving in Beijing for talks on his country's nuclear weapons program.

Syria says Israel wants to make excuses for war
29 Sep 2007 12:52:33 GMT

(Adds U.S.-sponsored conference)

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

DAMASCUS, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Syria accused Israel on Saturday of making excuses for war by spreading what it described as false reports that an Israeli air raid targeted a site linked to weapons of mass destruction.

Syrian Deputy President Farouq al-Shara said his country did not want war "in the distant or near future".

"They (Israel) are making up things to justify an aggression in the future. They are playing on public opinion to mislead it," he said, describing the reports as fabrications.

"Everything reported about this raid is wrong and is part of a psychological warfare that will not fool Syria," Shara told reporters after meeting his Iraqi counterpart Adel Abdul-Mahdi.

Damascus says Israel launched the air raid on Sept. 6, bombing an empty area after air defence systems confronted the aircraft. Some U.S. officials have linked the raid to apparent Israeli suspicions of secret nuclear cooperation between Damascus and North Korea.

Diplomats in Damascus say at least four Israeli warplanes crossed deep into Syria in this month's operation. They suggest the intended target may have involved missiles supplied by North Korea but played down reports of a nuclear link.

Israel has said nothing about the raid, which Shara said caused no casualties. Damascus and North Korea have denied any nuclear cooperation.

Shara said the raid also was aimed at boosting the morale of the Israeli military, which failed to crush the Lebanese movement Hezbollah, an ally of Syria, in last year's war.

"They want to rehabilitate the Israeli army after the Lebanese resistance broke it. But what Israel needs is to rehabilitate the Israeli mind, only then will a real opportunity for genuine peace be created," he said.

bit more

Satellite Photos Show Cleansing of Syrian Site

Satellite images from Aug. 5 and Oct. 24 by DigitalGlobe

Satellite imagery of a facility in Syria collected on August 5, 2007, left, and October 24.

By WILLIAM J. BROAD and
Published: October 26, 2007

New commercial satellite photos show that a Syrian site believed to have been attacked by Israel last month no longer bears any obvious traces of what some analysts said appeared to have been a partly built nuclear reactor.

Two photos, taken Wednesday from space by rival companies, show the site near the Euphrates River to have been wiped clean since August, when imagery showed a tall square building there measuring about 150 feet on a side.

The Syrians reported an attack by Israel in early September; the Israelis have not confirmed that. Senior Syrian officials continue to deny that a nuclear reactor was under construction, insisting that Israel hit a largely empty military warehouse.

But the images, federal and private analysts say, suggest that the Syrian authorities rushed to dismantle the facility after the strike, calling it a tacit admission of guilt.

“It’s a magic act — here today, gone tomorrow,” said a senior intelligence official. “It doesn’t lower suspicions, it raises them. This was not a long-term decommissioning of a building, which can take a year. It was a speedy. It’s incredible that they could have gone to that effort to make something go away.”

Any attempt by Syrian authorities to clean up the site would make it difficult, if not impossible, for international weapons inspectors to determine that exact nature of the activity there. Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna have said they hoped to analyze the satellite images and ultimately inspect the site in person. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that released a report on the Syrian site earlier this week, said the expurgation of the building was inherently suspicious.

“It looks like Syria is trying to hide something and destroy the evidence of some activity,” Mr. Albright said in an interview. “But it won’t work. Syria has got to answer questions about what it was doing.”

Gordon D. Johndroe, a White House spokesman, declined to comment on the satellite pictures.

The satellite images of the Syrian site were taken by DigitalGlobe, in Longmont, Col., and SPOT Image Corporation, in Chantilly, Va. They show just a smooth, unfurrowed area where the large building once stood.

The desolate Syrian site is located on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River some 90 miles north of the Iraqi border and seven miles north of the desert village of At Tibnah. An airfield lies nearby. The new images reveal that the tall building is gone but still show a secondary structure and a pumping station on the Euphrates. Reactors need water for cooling.

The purported reactor at the site is believed to be modeled on a North Korean model, the building for which is a few feet larger that the Syrian building that vanished.

Mr. Albright called the Syrian site “consistent with being a North Korean reactor design.”

Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to the United States, said in an interview last week with the Dallas Morning News denied that his country was trying to build a reactor.

“There is no Syrian nuclear program whatsoever,” he said. “It’s an absolutely blatant lie. We understand that if Syria even contemplated nuclear technology, then the gates of hell would open on us.”

Speaking of Square Reactor Buildings...

Syria [Alleged] Reactor Images

Syria Tidbits

Arms Control Wonk

October 27, 2007
Yet Another Photo of Site in Syria, Yet More Questions
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and MARK MAZZETTI

NYT - The mystery surrounding the construction of what might have been a nuclear reactor in Syria deepened yesterday, when a company released a satellite photo showing that the main building was well under way in September 2003 — four years before Israeli jets bombed it.

The long genesis is likely to raise questions about whether the Bush administration overlooked a nascent atomic threat in Syria while planning and executing a war in Iraq, which was later found to have no active nuclear program.

A senior American intelligence official said yesterday that American analysts had looked carefully at the site from its early days, but were unsure then whether it posed a nuclear threat.

In the time before the Iraq war, President Bush and his senior advisers sounded many alarms about Baghdad’s reconstituting its nuclear program. But they have never publicly discussed what many analysts say appears to have been a long-running nuclear effort next door.

Yesterday independent analysts, examining the latest satellite image, suggested that work on the site might have begun around 2001, and the senior intelligence official agreed with that analysis. That early date is potentially significant in terms of North Korea’s suspected aid to Syria, suggesting that North Korea could have begun its assistance in the late 1990s.

A dispute has broken out between conservatives and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the administration’s pursuit of diplomacy with North Korea in the face of intelligence that North Korea might have helped Syria design a nuclear reactor.

The new image may give ammunition to those in the administration, including Ms. Rice, who call for diplomacy. If North Korea started its Syrian aid long ago, the officials could argue that the assistance was historical, not current, and that diplomacy should move ahead.

The progress of the site in late 2003 also raises new questions about a disagreement at the time between intelligence analysts and John R. Bolton, then the State Department’s top arms control official.

In the summer of 2003, Mr. Bolton’s testimony on Capitol Hill was delayed after a dispute erupted in part over whether Syria was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. Some intelligence officials said Mr. Bolton overstated the Syrian threat.

“There was disagreement about what Syria was interested in and how much we should be monitoring it,” Mr. Bolton said in an interview yesterday. “There was activity in Syria that I felt was evidence that they were trying to develop a nuclear program.”

Mr. Bolton declined to say whether he had knowledge at the time about the site that the Israelis struck in September.

Spokesmen for the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council declined to comment.

The new image of the desolate Syrian site was released yesterday by GeoEye, in Dulles, Va. Mark Brender, the company’s vice president for communications and marketing, said the picture was taken on Sept. 16, 2003. He added that the image had been collected as part of the company’s agenda of building a large archive of global images.

Earlier this week, federal and private analysts identified the precise location of the Syrian site, and since then rival companies have raced to release images. The site is on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, 90 miles north of the Iraqi border.

Images taken in August, before the Israeli raid, show a tall building about 150 feet wide on each side that analysts suspect might have sheltered a half-built nuclear reactor. Also visible is a pumping station on the Euphrates, which may be significant because reactors need water for cooling.

John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private group in Alexandria, Va., that analyzes satellite images, said the 2003 picture showed the tall building in the midst of early construction, surrounded by churned earth. He put the groundbreaking in 2001.

“It’s uncommon to see such activity in the middle of nowhere,” he said, adding that it was sufficiently unusual to have worried American intelligence officials. “I’d have put it on my suspect site list and kept watching,” he said.

The senior intelligence official said that American spy satellites and analysts had, in fact, watched the site for years.

“It was noticed, without knowing what it was,” the official said. “You revisit every so often, but it was not a high priority. You see things that raise the flag and you know you have to keep looking. It was a case of watching it evolve.”

Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on nuclear proliferation at the New America Foundation in Washington, said it was surprising from the photos how little progress had been made at the site between 2003 and 2007.

But Mr. Lewis said it was ironic that Syria might have been trying to build a nuclear program just as the United States was invading Iraq in the fear that Iraq was developing nuclear arms.

William J. Broad reported from New York, and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.

http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1689/syrian-and-nuclear-weapons-again

Remarks by Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden
at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council

(as prepared for delivery)
September 16, 2008

Good afternoon. Thanks for that kind introduction, and thank you all for inviting me. It’s a pleasure and privilege to be in Los Angeles and to speak to this Council.

As eventful as the world may be right now, the development that is likely to have the most far-reaching consequences will be a domestic one—the election of a new American president. From the standpoint of the Intelligence Community, it’ll be the first time since 1952 that neither candidate is an incumbent president or vice president. It also will be the first transition since the office of Director of National Intelligence was created, and that will be a new experience for all of us.

....

Thanks to some outstanding intelligence work, we were able last year to spoil a big secret, a project that could have provided Syria with plutonium for nuclear weapons. I’d like to cover it here because it’s an excellent example of how CIA and our Community colleagues attack the problem of nuclear proliferation.

It was reported in the press last April, and you’re probably familiar with its outlines. We knew that North Korea and Syria had been cooperating since the late 1990s in the nuclear field. The depth of that relationship was revealed in the spring of last year, when we identified a nuclear reactor at Al-Kibar in the eastern desert of Syria. It was similar to the one at Yongbyon in North Korea, but with its outer structure heavily disguised.

The situation became critical late last summer, when we judged the facility could be nearing operation. The Al-Kibar reactor was destroyed the morning of 6 September 2007. The Syrians immediately cleared away the rubble and every trace of the building, stonewalling the IAEA when asked to explain. Their cover-up only underlined the intense secrecy of this project and the danger it had posed to a volatile region.

I want to focus briefly on two important aspects of this intelligence effort: the quality of tradecraft, in terms of collection and analysis, and the value of collaboration, both with colleagues in our government and with foreign services.

More than anything else, our work was a classic example of multidisciplinary, blue-collar analysis. We had a group of officers who started working overtime on this issue in April 2007 and kept at it for months. Virtually every form of intelligence—imagery, signals, human source, you name it—informed their assessments, so that they were never completely dependent on any single channel.

For instance, a report from a foreign partner initially identified the structure at Al-Kibar as a nuclear reactor similar to one in North Korea. But even without that piece of the puzzle, it wouldn’t have been long before we reached the same conclusion. We had previously identified the facility on imagery as a suspicious target. When pipes for a massive cooling system were laid out to the Euphrates River in the spring of 2007, there would have been little doubt this was a nuclear reactor. We would have known it was North Korean, too, given the quantity and variety of intelligence reports on nuclear ties between Pyongyang and Damascus.

Still, our analysts were open to alternative possibilities at every juncture. Early on, they applied a methodology that laid out the inconsistencies in each competing hypothesis. They carefully examined whether the building might be for another purpose, like a conventional power plant, or a water treatment facility. In each case, the arguments simply didn’t add up. The reactor hypothesis was the most difficult to refute with the available evidence.

We then stepped back and tried to turn the basic premise on its head: OK, we’ve got a nuclear reactor in Syria built with North Korean help, but is it necessarily for a Syrian program? Might it have been built by North Korea for its own use, to secretly replace the Yongbyon reactor they had pledged to shut down? We took that hypothesis and worked very hard on it, but the mainstream theory held sway.

Finally, this was a success reached through close collaboration across agencies, departments, and governments. Dedicated officers at CIA, DIA, the Department of Energy, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and NSA came together as a team, each bringing a specific expertise to the table. And this was an intelligence problem that required a wide range of knowledge. I already mentioned all the different forms of collection, but it also drew from a remarkable diversity of analytic firepower—everyone from nuclear technology and weapons experts to political and leadership analysts.

Our foreign partnerships too were critical to the final outcome. These relationships aren’t a matter of occasionally passing along a report that may or may not be useful. They’re more akin to working together on a complex equation over a long period. Each tries to solve a variable that in turn helps a partner solve another, and so on until we’ve cracked the case. That’s what good intelligence is all about.

“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” ~ Sir Ernest Benn