| | | Date: Mar 22, 2018 | | Source: The Daily Star |  |  |  |
| | Israel: 2007 bombing of Syrian nuclear reactor a lesson for Iran | OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel for the first time admitted that it bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 and said Wednesday the strike should be a warning to Iran that it would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. The military released previously classified cockpit footage, photographs and intelligence documents about its Sept. 6, 2007, airstrike on the Al-Kubar facility near Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria.
It said the reactor was being constructed with help from North Korea and had been months away from activation. Amos Yadlin, Israel’s military intelligence chief at the time, said on Israel Radio that even with a functioning reactor, it would have taken Syria years to build a nuclear weapon.
Israel’s decision to go public comes after repeated calls in recent months by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the United States and the international community to take tougher action on Iran, Syria’s ally.
Netanyahu said Wednesday that Israel was determined to prevent its enemies from obtaining nuclear weapons. “The Israeli government, the Israel Defense Forces and the Mossad prevented Syria from developing nuclear capability. They are worthy of full praise for this. Israel’s policy was and remains consistent – to prevent our enemies from arming themselves with nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu wrote on Twitter.
Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz, said earlier on Twitter: “The [2007] operation and its success made clear that Israel will never allow nuclear weaponry to be in the hands of those who threaten its existence – Syria then, and Iran today.”
Iran, which says its nuclear program has only peaceful aims, signed a 2015 deal under which it accepted curbs on its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. U.S. President Donald Trump and Netanyahu have both been critical of the deal.
The Israeli military described in detail events leading up to the night of Sept. 5-6, 2007, in which, it said, eight warplanes, F-16s and F-15s, carried out the mission after taking off from the Ramon and Hatzerim air bases. They flew to Deir al-Zor region, 450 kilometers northwest of Damascus, and dropped 18 tons of munitions on the site, it said.
Yadlin said Israel decided at the time against acknowledging the raid on the reactor so as not to provoke Syrian President Bashar Assad into retaliating. “No core. No war,” Yadlin said about Israel’s goal.
The Israeli military Wednesday declassified internal “top secret” intelligence reports, in Hebrew, some of them partly redacted.
One, dated March 30, 2007, said: “Syria has set up, within its territory, a nuclear reactor for the production of plutonium, through North Korea, which according to an [initial] worst-case assessment is liable to be activated in approximately another year. To our assessment secretive and orderly for achieving a nuclear weapon.”
Israeli intelligence predicted that the suspected reactor “would turn operational by the end of 2007.”
The mission to destroy the reactor started at 10:30 p.m. on Sept. 5 and ended with the return of the warplanes at 2:30 a.m. the next day, the Israeli military said.
The disclosure Wednesday stemmed in part, Yadlin said, from years of pressure by the Israeli media on military censors to allow them to publish Israeli-sourced information about the raid and the release Wednesday of memoirs by Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister who ordered the bombing.
The event was first made public by Syria, which, as reported by Reuters at the time, said in the early hours of Sept. 6 that its air defenses had repelled an incursion by Israeli warplanes. Syria, a signatory of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has always denied that the site was a reactor or that Damascus engaged in nuclear cooperation with North Korea.
In his memoir, “Decision Points,” former U.S. President George W. Bush said Israel first asked the United States to bomb the site and then carried out an attack itself when Washington declined. The strike came about a year after Israel’s inconclusive war against Hezbollah, in which the Lebanese group battled Israel’s army to a stalemate. The poor performance raised questions about Israel’s deterrent capabilities.
“Prime Minister Olmert’s execution of the strike made up for the confidence I had lost in the Israelis during the Lebanon war,” Bush wrote, adding that the Israeli leader rejected a suggestion to go public with the operation. “Olmert told me he wanted total secrecy. He wanted to avoid anything that might back Syria into a corner and force Assad to retaliate. This was his operation, and I felt an obligation to respect his wishes,” Bush wrote.
Olmert, who was prime minister from 2006 until 2009 and was recently released from prison after serving time for corruption, is expected to delve more deeply into the issue in his memoir. The disclosure looks to help rehabilitate at least part of Olmert’s tarnished image while damaging the legacy of his longtime rival, then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who was reportedly hesitant to strike in Syria. |
| | |
|
