“Bomb-assembly” theory further illuminates Israeli airstrike
From the Jerusalem Post:
Meanwhile, an Israeli nuclear expert said on Thursday that the main target of the Israeli attack was most likely a plant for assembling a nuclear bomb, challenging other analysts’ conclusions that it housed a North Korean-style nuclear reactor.
Tel Aviv University chemistry professor Uzi Even, who worked in the past at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor, said satellite pictures of the site taken before the Israeli strike showed no sign of the cooling towers and chimneys characteristic of reactors.
The absence of telltale features of a reactor convinced him the building must have housed something else, he said. And a rush by the Syrians after the attack to bury the site under tons of soil suggests that the facility was a bomb-assembly plant left leaking lethal doses of radiation by the Israeli attack.
The notion that the Syrian facility was a bomb-assembly plant, as opposed to a nuclear reactor, seems a lot more reasonable to me. While satellite imagery shows it to have extremely cursory similarities to nuclear sites in North Korea, the Syrian facility looks to me a lot more like the various rocket and missile development centers here in my hometown of Huntsville, Alabama. For instance, examine the rocket testing facilities at Wiley Labs courtesy of Google. Compare them with images of the Syrian installation. The design of the Syrian facility begins to make more sense. The likelihood that the Syrians constructed a rudimentary rocket development facility is much higher than the possibility of the Syrians somehow developing nuclear technology with no thermal emissions, visible output, or ventilation.
While it’s somewhat reasonable to presume that the Syrian facility was intended to be used by Iran to produce nuclear weapons, I’m doubtful that there was actually any nuclear material at the site before the attack. The Iranians would not risk losing all international legitimacy by allowing themselves to be directly linked to nuclear weapons development before their entire nuclear program is fully online. The paradigm of a peaceful nuclear power program is paramount to the Iranian position on the nuclear file, and they show absolutely no other signs of abandoning this paradigm for the sake of expediency. However, this doesn’t fully explain why the Syrians covered up and abandoned the site.
More likely, it was the Israelis who used tactical nuclear weapons on the site. This better explains why the Syrians would contain the site. A radioactive leak from damaged warheads is much easier to clean and repair than an actual warhead detonation. After a tactical nuclear strike, there is no hope of repair, no other option than to seal the site. This also explains the surreal discretion and silence from the Israeli government immediately following the strike. The Israelis will gladly comment about Iranian or Iraqi or anyone else’s nuclear weapons. What they won’t do is comment on Israeli nuclear weapons. This could also shed more light on the comic-book-like stories about Israeli commandos stealing plutonium from the Syrian site just before the airstrike. It begins to appear that these various media reports were plants to head off public opinion in case any government or international institution cried foul over sudden signs of radiation. As it’s become clear that no one is going to confront Israel on their use of nuclear weapons, they have relaxed their discretion and begun to comment more openly on the airstrike. Unfortunately, this doesn’t do anything to explain the silence from regional and international players.
While the US Administration could be accused of hubris in some instances, it’s unlikely that the US and Israel conducted a tactical nuclear strike and simply expected regional and international governments to keep quiet. In addition, given the complexity of the operation, involving among other things multiple sovereign airspaces and inter-military coordination, it’s unlikely that the West could have conceived, plotted, and executed the operation with zero intelligence leaks. It’s much more probable that the US informed various other players long before the airstrike occurred.
For this we turn to AINA via Beirut to the Beltway:
Saudi Arabia has told Iran not to count on the kingdom’s help if the international community imposes harsher measures on Tehran because of its refusal to abide by international requirements on the nuclear issue.
At a meeting in Riyadh last month, King Abdullah told visiting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Iran will have to “bear the consequences” of its actions, and should not underestimate the power, capabilities or will of the United States and the rest of the international community, according to a Saudi official.
“We told him, ‘Don’t come back to us and say you wish somebody had told you that,’” the official said. “Don’t come back and ask for help.”
The king was equally blunt with Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom he met in Riyadh on the sidelines of the Arab summit last month. Abdullah told Assad that if he wants to improve relations with Saudi Arabia — which are at an all-time low — he first has to prove his good intentions in Lebanon, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues.
Abdullah’s words to the two close allies — Iran and Syria — come amid Saudi worries that the two countries’ defiance of the international community could plunge the region into larger chaos than the turmoil that resulted from Saddam Hussein’s refusal to come clean on his weapons of mass destruction program.
This occurred in March of 2007, months before the airstrike occurred. It’s possible that Abdullah’s reference to “us” and “we” refers not to the Saudis themselves, but more broadly to Arabs and muslims. Restive Arab dictatorships like Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia have nothing but catastrophe to gain from another Iraq-like scenario in the Middle East, which is precisely what the US is promising if Iran obtains nuclear weapons. Turkey was the only regional player to respond publicly, declaring that Turkish airspace was not used to conduct the operation. It’s entirely not true, but it wasn’t intended to be. Turkey’s new prime minister, as a devout muslim, has a lot to prove to the international community as Turkey struggles to join the European Union. The statement about airspace was simply a political message to Turkish domestic audiences who may be upset that a muslim prime minister’s first act in office was to attack other muslims.
Under this interpretation, it appears that the entire operation was a success, with the West effectively deterring Syrian and Iranian development of nuclear weapons. However, the consequences must not be underestimated. After Saddam’s Iraq used chemical weapons against the Iranians with impunity, Tehran developed the idea that the international community does not care about Iran’s interest, no matter what the transgression. The use of nuclear weapons, and the proceeding silence, placed Syria firmly in Tehran’s corner. Syrian president Bashar Assad, unlike the ideologically-run regime in Tehran, is much more reasonable and open to compromise with the West. The near-immediate assassination of yet another March 14 minister in Lebanon was likely Assad’s response to the airstrike, and perhaps loose evidence of Syria’s future position on compromise with the West.
But the broader strategic implications for the US could be even more dire. It’s a wise bet that military planners in Beijing and Moscow immediately re-assessed their plans for Taiwan and the Caucasus respectively. While it’s unlikely that China or Russia could ensure the compliance of regional governments with the same degree of success as the US, the prospect of being free to use tactical nuclear weapons unilaterally without repercussions may be too enticing to pass up.
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