Air strikes first, questions
later By Khody Akhavi
WASHINGTON - More than two months after
Israeli warplanes conducted a mysterious raid in
northeast Syria, there is a growing consensus
among US government and independent analysts that
the suspicious target was a nuclear facility.
But the evidence they are relying on - a
series of satellite photos showing a building and
an adjacent pumping station near the Euphrates
River - is anything but definitive, given how
closely guarded US-Israeli discussions have been.
With the exception of
several highly classified
one-on-one briefings about the incident to a
handful of US congressional leaders, the George W
Bush administration has kept mum.
Western
analysts say a tall, boxy building on the site may
have contained a nuclear reactor under
construction similar to a North Korean design, but
the structure itself was razed after the September
6 air raid. They say that the secret nuclear
reactor may be several years old.
Whether
or not the facility was nuclear, the episode - and
Israeli, Syrian and US silence over the issue -
raises even more questions as to the actual threat
posed by the facility, the timing of the raid, and
what the unilateral action portends for the
nuclear ambitions of Israel's regional neighbors.
A United Nations watchdog inquiry into the
suspected Syrian covert nuclear site may end
inconclusively without more information than the
satellite pictures that are already available. The
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has
asked to see the intelligence that prompted the
attack, and is also seeking information from
Damascus about its alleged program.
Syria
is required to inform the IAEA of any activities
relating to nuclear activities.
"At the
IAEA, we have zero, and I stress 'zero',
information on the attack," IAEA head Mohamed
ElBaradei told the French newspaper Le Monde last
week. "Frankly, I venture to hope that before
people decide to bombard and use force, they will
come and see us to convey their concerns. We would
have gone to there to check."
The air
strike unequivocally shows that the US and Israel
have decided to circumvent the UN's monitoring of
nuclear proliferation situations in the Middle
East, according to analysts.
"The Bush
administration's decision not to share its
intelligence on the Syrian site with the IAEA and
thereby encourage and support the international
agency's aggressive inspection and evaluation of
this alleged threat to peace, was another
demonstration of the contempt in which the present
US administration holds the UN organization,"
wrote former CIA analyst Ray Close in an e-mail to
Inter Press Service (IPS).
"It suggests,
in effect, that the United States intends to
manage the international nuclear proliferation
issue all by itself, independent of the rest of
the international community - except for
deputizing Israel to be the nuclear policeman of
the Middle East," he wrote.
Close also
told IPS that the US's decision not to publicize
the intelligence that presumably justified the
Israeli attack suggests that Washington did not
find the Israeli evidence altogether persuasive.
Another photo, taken on September 13, 2003, by a
US commercial satellite, suggests that US
officials may have known about the facility long
before the Israeli mission, but did not consider
it an immediate threat. During that time, the
White House officials were sounding the alarm on
the reconstitution of Saddam Hussein's nuclear
program, but, ironically, never discussed the
presumed effort in neighboring Syria.
The
White House's complicity in Israel's action also
points to the rift within the administration,
between right leaning hawks such as former UN
ambassador John Bolton and the pragmatism favored
by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Bolton's
role cannot be overstated.
Bolton, now a
fellow at the neo-conservative American Enterprise
Institute, repeatedly clashed with the
intelligence community over Syria's intentions
when he was undersecretary for arms control. In
the summer of 2003, Bolton's testimony on Capitol
Hill was delayed because some intelligence
officers felt that Bolton overstated the Syrian
threat. As former CIA officer Philip Girardi wrote
in the pages of the American Conservative, "At one
point, Bolton was forced to strike from a speech
language suggesting that Syria had a nuclear
program."
Girardi continues: "On another
occasion, Bolton's judgments on Syria were
challenged by Robert Hutchings, director of the
National Intelligence Council, who charged that
Bolton 'took isolated facts and made much more of
them ... cherry picking ... to present the
starkest possible case'."
Fast forward to
2007. Writing in the opinion pages of the Wall
Street Journal more than a week before the Israeli
strike, 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
other might be 'safe havens' for North Korea's
nuclear weapons development, or may have already
benefited from it, must be made clear," he wrote.
The focus on North Korea comes as the US
prepares to implement a deal to end the country's
nuclear weapons program, a diplomatic approach
that has drawn the ire of neo-cons like 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 blog,
www.syriacomment.org.
At the Korea
Economic Institute Forum last week, executive
director of the Arms Control Association Daryl G
Kimball said, "If Syria was indeed building a
reactor and if North Korea was involved, there are
other steps the United States could - and should -
take to hold the DPRK accountable and ensure that
Pyongyang provides no further nuclear assistance
to other states without derailing the prospects of
verifiably dismantling North Korea's nuclear
program and risking the possibility of further
North Korean proliferation transgressions."
Israel's action also came as Rice shuttled
about the Middle East in preparation for
substantive peace negotiations between Israel and
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas,
presumably the first time "final status" issues
would be discussed between the two sides in seven
years. It remains to be seen what impact Israel's
foray will have on the peace process.
"By
its attack on Syria, the Israeli leadership has
demonstrated that it attaches a higher priority to
restoring the credibility of its military
dominance over its neighbors than it does to
supporting American diplomatic efforts to advance
the peace process - on which Israel's real
security ultimately depends," Close told IPS.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
