Israel Matzav: How Israel bombed Syria's al-Kibar nuclear reactor and kept it secret

Monday, September 10, 2012

How Israel bombed Syria's al-Kibar nuclear reactor and kept it secret

In a continuing effort to convince the world that Israel cannot possibly take out Iran's nuclear program, the New Yorker publishes an account by David Makovsky (well, at least it's not Seymour Hersh!) that claims to set out in detail how Israel bombed Syria's reactor and kept it secret.

Unfortunately, since I do not subscribe to the New Yorker, and no one who does has posted the full article on line as of this writing, I am working from an abstract (linked above) and from two summaries that have been posted in the Israeli media by Arutz Sheva and YNet, respectively. YNet's summary doesn't add anything beyond the abstract. Here's a bit of the abstract from the New Yorker.

In March, 2007, agents from the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, made a daring raid into the Vienna home of Ibrahim Othman, the head of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission.

...

The information the Mossad operatives recovered was damning: roughly three dozen color photographs taken from inside the building, indicating that it was a top-secret Syrian plutonium nuclear reactor. The photographs showed workers from North Korea at the site, and the reactor, from the inside, had many of the same engineering elements as the North Korean reactor in Yongbyon.

...

Five years later, Israeli officials continue to not discuss the Al Kibar affair on the record. In the days after the discovery of the Syrian site, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert began hosting important meetings at his official residence, on Balfour Street. In April, the White House was informed about the discovery. The Bush Administration felt that it didn’t have enough evidence to justify a preëmptive strike, and so the Israelis began preparations for an attack on their own. The I.D.F., the Mossad, and the Foreign Ministry all favored a low-signature attack on the reactor. Just before midnight on September 5, 2007, four F-15s and four F-16s took off from Israeli Air Force bases. Using standard electronic scrambling tools, the Israelis blinded Syria’s air-defense system. Sometime between 12:40 and 12:53 A.M., the pilots indicated that seventeen tons of explosives had been dropped on their target.

And in case you're wondering why this is being published now (other than the fact that it was five years ago last week)....

The pressing question today is whether the lessons of that success can be applied to Iran. The situation in Iran differs fundamentally from the Syrian case. Experts have pointed to the risk of civilian casualties and prolonged retaliation. What’s more, a key Iranian site lies deep underground outside the holy city of Qom, and it is strongly fortified; an attack on it would run a higher risk of failure.

Well, yes, we're not likely to have the smashing success we had in Syria. But the Syrians didn't retaliate? Why not? And why are we so sure that Iran will retaliate (effectively)?

Arutz Sheva adds:

Immediately after the strike on Syria, the Assad regime’s official government news agency SANA reported that Israeli jets had violated Syrian air space and that “Air defense units confronted them and forced them to leave after they dropped some ammunition in deserted areas without causing any human or material damage.”

Israel denied it had bombed the site but since has gradually taken responsibility for the pre-emptive attack.

More than two years ago, Der Spiegel reported that American intelligence agents as early as 2004 picked up unusual conversations between Syria and North Korea. The information as related to Israel, and the IDF set up antenna aimed at Al Kibar.

In 2006, Israeli agents in London were able to install a program on a Syrian official's computer and collected information on construction plans and photographs showing pipes that led to a pumping station at the Euphrates.

One of the photos indentified North Korean nuclear scientists. The following years, Der Spiegel reported, an Iranian general defected to the CIA and revealed that Iran was funding a top-secret project in Syrian in coordination with North Korea.

I am willing to accept that we are unlikely to have the smashing success in Iran that we had in Syria (although the EMP, if it's as described, would be at least as successful in stopping Iran's program, although it would cause a lot more collateral damage than the Syrian raid caused).

On the other hand, no one else seems to be willing to take any action to stop Iran or at least to slow it down. If Iran is allowed to continue to the point of developing a bomb - or even a breakout capability as has been discussed in earlier posts - that's a game changer. If God forbid that happens, Israel may be unable to act and the rest of the world may be all the more unwilling to act. So how can we sit on our hands and do nothing?

Labels: al-Kibar, Ehud K. Olmert, George W. Bush, Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli attack on Iran, Syrian nuclear program