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U.S. Officials Debate Syrian Weapons Capabilities
Although the United States has credited North Korea with assisting Syria in developing weapons technologies such as the advanced Scud-D missile, analysts have doubted Syria’s ability to fund or staff a serious nuclear weapons program. However, U.S. analysts have been reviewing two technology trade agreements signed by Syria and North Korea this summer that could have paved the way for early nuclear collaboration. “One has to balance the skepticism that the Syrians can build an indigenous nuclear program with the very sobering assessment that North Korea is the world’s No. 1 proliferator and a country willing to sell whatever it possesses,” said a former senior Bush administration official who once had full access to U.S. intelligence on Syria and North Korea. John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, however, expressed skepticism that Syria could have established a nuclear program that Israel would consider a threat worthy of attack. “Any country in the region that was not at least learning what it would take to develop a nuclear program is asleep at the switch,” he said. “But the proposition that there is anything sufficiently mature to warrant bombing is difficult to believe” (Mazzetti/Sanger, New York Times, Sept. 22).
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