A warning shot for Iran, via
Syria By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - Until late October, the
accepted explanation about the September 6 Israeli
air strike in Syria, constructed from a series of
press leaks from US officials, was that it was
prompted by dramatic satellite intelligence that
Syria was building a nuclear facility with help
from North Korea.
But new satellite
evidence has discredited that narrative,
suggesting a more plausible explanation for the
strike: that it was a calculated effort by Israel
and the United States to convince Iran
that
its nuclear facilities could be attacked as well.
The narrative promoted by
neo-conservatives in the George W Bush
administration began to unravel in late October
with the release by a private company of a series
of satellite images showing that the same square,
multi-storey building that was hit by Israeli
planes on September 6 had been present on the site
four years earlier. Although the building appears
to be somewhat more developed in the August 2007
image, it showed that the only major change at the
site since September 2003 was what appears to be a
pumping station on the Euphrates and a smaller
secondary structure.
Media reports based
on leaks from administration officials had
suggested that the presence of a water pump
indicated that the building must have been a
nuclear reactor. But Jeffrey Lewis, a specialist
on nuclear technology at the New America
Foundation, pointed out in an interview with Inter
Press Service (IPS) that the existence of a water
pump cannot be taken as evidence of the purpose of
the building, since other kinds of industrial
buildings would also need to pump water.
The campaign of press leaks portraying the
strike as related to an alleged nuclear weapons
program assisted by North Korea began almost
immediately after the Israeli strike. On September
11, a Bush administration official told the New
York Times that Israel had obtained intelligence
from "reconnaissance flights" over Syria showing
"possible nuclear installations that Israeli
officials believed might have been supplied with
material from North Korea".
The Bush
administration officials leaking this account to
the press, obviously aligned with Vice President
Dick Cheney, were hoping to shoot down the
administration's announced policy, pushed by
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, of going
ahead with an agreement to provide food and fuel
aid to North Korea in exchange for the dismantling
of its nuclear program.
They had lost an
earlier battle over that policy and were now
seeking to use the Israeli strike story as a new
argument against it.
The officials did not
want the intelligence community involved in
assessing the alleged new evidence, suggesting
that they knew it would not withstand expert
scrutiny. Glenn Kessler reported in the Washington
Post on September 13 that the "dramatic satellite
imagery" provided by Israel had been restricted to
"a few senior officials" and not disseminated to
the intelligence community, on orders from
National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.
The intelligence community had opposed a
previous neo-conservative effort in 2002-2003 to
claim evidence of a Syrian nuclear program at the
same site. A senior US intelligence official
confirmed to the New York Times on October 30 that
US intelligence analysts had been aware of the
Syrian site in question "from the beginning" -
meaning from before 2003 - but had not been
convinced that it was an indication of an active
nuclear program.
In 2002, John Bolton,
then under secretary of state for arms control and
international security, wanted to go public with
an accusation that Syria was seeking a nuclear
weapons program, but the intelligence community
rejected the claim. A State Department
intelligence analyst had called Bolton's assertion
that Syria was interested in nuclear weapons
technology "a stretch" and other elements of the
community also challenged it, according to a
Senate Foreign Relations Committee report.
The attack on the site was an obvious
demonstration of Israeli military dominance over
Syria, generally considered a vital ally of Iran
by Israeli and US officials. It was also in line
with the general approach of using force against
Syria that Cheney and his allies in the
administration had urged on Israel before and
during the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in
summer 2006.
During the war, Deputy
National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams told a
senior Israeli official that the Bush
administration would not object if Israel "chose
to extend the war beyond to its other northern
neighbor", leaving no doubt he meant for Israel to
attack Syria, IPS reported last December.
David Wurmser's wife Meyrev Wurmser,
director of the neo-conservative Hudson
Institute's Center for Middle East Policy, told
Israel's Ynet News in December 2006 that, "many
parts of the American administration believed that
Israel should have fought against the real enemy,
which is Syria and not Hezbollah". She said such
an attack on Syria would have been "such a harsh
blow for Iran that it would have weakened it and
changed the strategic map in the Middle East".
Both Israeli and US officials dropped
hints soon after the Israeli air raid that it was
aimed at sending a message to Iran. Ten days after
the raid, Israeli's military intelligence chief
Amos Yadlin declared to a parliamentary committee,
"Israel's deterrence has been rehabilitated since
the Lebanon war, and it affects the entire
regional system, including Iran and Syria ..."
Although he did not refer explicitly to
the strike in Syria, the fact that the Syrian raid
was the only event that could possibly have been
regarded as restoring Israel's strategic
credibility left little doubt as to the meaning of
the reference.
That same day, Reuters
quoted an unnamed US Defense Department official
as saying that the significance of the strike "was
not whether Israel hit its targets, but rather
that it displayed a willingness to take military
action".
On September 18, former United
Nations ambassador John Bolton was quoted by JTA,
a Jewish news service, as saying, "We're talking
about a clear message to Iran. Israel has the
right to self-defense - and that includes
offensive operations against WMD [weapons of mass
destruction] facilities that pose a threat to
Israel. The United States would justify such
attacks."
On October 7, Washington Post
columnist David Ignatius, who enjoys access to top
administration officials, quoted an unnamed
official as providing the official explanation for
the Israeli attack as targeting "nuclear materials
supplied to Syria by North Korea".
But
then, without quoting the official directly,
Ignatius reported the official's description of
the raid's implicit message: "[T]he message to
Iran is clear: America and Israel can identify
nuclear targets and penetrate air defenses to
destroy them."
The official's suggestion
that the strike was a joint US-Israeli message
about a joint policy toward striking Iran's
nuclear sites was the clearest indication that the
primary objective of the strike was to intimidate
Iran at a time when both Israel and the Cheney
faction of the Bush administration were finding it
increasingly difficult to do so.
Gareth Porter is an
investigative historian and journalist
specializing in US national security policy. His
latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of
Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was
published in June 2005.
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
