Speculation Mounts Over Israeli Target in Syria

Newspapers this weekend puzzled over the purpose of a Sept. 6 Israeli air strike inside Syria, reporting it as a possible attack against a nuclear installation receiving equipment from North Korea or a practice run for a strike against Iran, Agence France-Presse reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 14).

The New York Times last week first reported that Pyongyang might be helping Damascus to develop a nuclear facility.  Other media outlets quickly picked up the story.

An unidentified Israeli official told the London Sunday Times that the air strike eliminated a potential “devastating Syrian surprise for Israel.”

“We’ve known for a long time that Syria has deadly chemical warheads on its Scuds (missiles), but Israel can’t live with a nuclear warhead,” the source said.

The London Observer theorized that the attack could have been a “dry run” for a strike on Iran.  The Observer reported that Israel’s Sept. 6 air strike sent the country’s most advanced F-15 and F-16 fighters through Turkish airspace carrying Maverick missiles and 500-pound bombs (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Sept. 16).

An unidentified U.S. expert on the Middle East told the Washington Post that the attack targeted a facility labeled as an agricultural research center located near the country’s border with Turkey along the Euphrates River.  The source said that the strike was connected to a North Korean shipment labeled as cement that had arrived three days earlier. 

The expert has spoken with Israeli officials involved in the raid.  They said the belief was that the ship was carrying nuclear equipment, the Post reported.

Israel believed that Syria was using the facility to extract uranium from phosphates and had carefully monitored the site, the expert said (Glenn Kessler/Washington Post, Sept. 15).

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates declined to confirm reports that the Israeli strike was carried out against a nuclear weapons facility.

“All I will say is we are watching the North Koreans very carefully.  We watch the Syrians very carefully,” he said (Agence France-Presse).

Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Jafari last week dismissed the claim that Israel had targeted Iranian weapons shipments being transported to Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon, the London Independent reported Saturday.

“This is blah blah," Jafari said.  “This is nonsense, this is an unfounded statement.  It is not up to the Israelis or anyone else to assess what we have in Syria.  There was no target, they dropped their munitions.  They were running away after they were confronted by our air defense” (Donald Macintyre, London Independent, Sept. 15).

North Korea’s deputy U.N. envoy denied reports that Pyongyang was providing nuclear assistance to Syria, Reuters reported yesterday.

“They often say things that are groundless,” Kim Myong Gil said (Reuters, Sept. 16)

South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said today that there was no firm evidence supporting reports of North Korean involvement in a Syrian nuclear weapons program, AFP reported.

“Nobody presents firm evidence while talking about the suspected North Korea-Syria links,” he said.

“If Syria received nuclear materials from North Korea, it must have a facility to store them. As far as I know, Syria has no nuclear (storage) facility” (Agence France-Presse II/Spacewar.com, Sept. 17).

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