The Syrian bombing mystery

Wednesday, 30th April 2008

Much remains mysterious about the Israeli bombing last September of the Syrian nuclear reactor that was built with the help of North Korea, not least the manner and timing of its disclosure by America last week. (The pictures above show the site first in October and then in January with a new construction the Syrians rushed to build on it, presumably to hide the evidence of what had been bombed). Why was the purpose of this Syrian site kept secret for so long? Why did the Americans decide to talk about it last Friday? Why will the Israelis not talk about it even now? President Bush’s explanation that the secrecy was necessary to reduce the likelihood of a Syrian attack, and that the details had finally been revealed as a warning to North Korea and Iran about the dangers of spreading nuclear weapons, is manifestly inadequate. Was it, as the New York Times suggested, an attempt to scupper a sell-out deal with North Korea in an internal battle within the Bush administration? And why — as the New York Sun reported — did the Syrians themselves, on the very morning of the day that the Americans broke the near eight-month silence over the raid, tell Al-Jazeera that the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had instructed Turkey's prime minister to deliver the message that

Olmert was ready for peace with Syria on the grounds of the return of the Golan Heights in full to Syria.

Was this a coincidence? If not, was America trying to undermine Syria or Syria trying to pre-empt America?

But while this mystery remains, the reaction of the IAEA is simply preposterous. Here is a body which is supposed to monitor adherence to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty and has a department of intelligence to enable it to do so, failing totally and utterly to detect the rogue Syrian project — and then having the gall to blame Israel for actually destroying the reactor, thus making the region that much safer, rather than passing its intelligence to the IAEA so that it could ‘verify’ Syria’s rogue nuclear programme and then do nothing about it. As Ephraim Escluai, a former worker in the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, expostulates here:

One cannot escape the conclusion that the IAEA has continuously failed in its missions, notably in Iraq, Iran, and Syria. The IAEA has set up an extensive organization, including a Division of Information, which is really a Division of Intelligence, within its Department of Safeguards. The Syrian episode clearly demonstrates that the division has failed in its task. One does not need such a division if the DG states that he has to rely on external information and chastises the Member States for not providing the information in a timely manner.

The Syrian reactor episode tells us two things. One, Syria is part of the axis of terror, in bed with Iran and North Korea. Two, the IAEA is useless. Both of which we knew already, of course; but this affair does rather concentrate the mind.