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14-01-2008, 08:37
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מומחה לתעופה, תעופה צבאית, חלל ולווינות. חוקר בכיר במכון פישר
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חבר מתאריך: 02.07.05
הודעות: 11,676
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בוש: התקיפה בסוריה היתה פעולת מנע חשובה
מתוך DEFENSE NEWS:
http://www.defensenews.com/story.ph...98844&C=mideast
Bush Privately Lauds Israeli Attack on Syria
By BARBARA OPALL-ROMEAnd VAGO MURADIAN
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TEL AVIV and WASHINGTON — In one of the most extensive, face-to-face security discussions since an Israel Air Force attack on a Syrian nuclear reactor last autumn, U.S. President George W. Bush privately commended his Israeli host on what was described as an important preventive action, according to an Israeli official briefed on the high-level exchange.
Bush’s private endorsement of the Sept. 6 attack — offered in the context of Jan. 9 discussions in Jerusalem on the Iranian threat and Israel’s cardinal opposition to nuclear weapon development programs in the region — was disputed by Olmert spokesman Mark Regev. “I don’t know that to be true,” Regev said.
Nevertheless, the Israeli official briefed on the Bush-Olmert talks said he understood the U.S. president’s comments as endorsement of the pre-emptive necessity of the Syrian strike. If true, such a reference to the Syrian operation during talks devoted to denial options vis a vis Iran appears to support contentions that the Syrian reactor was very close to becoming operational prior to its destruction.
In a late December interview, a participant in Israeli security cabinet discussions in the months leading up to the Sept. 6 attack said information gathered on the Syrian facility was unequivocal. “There was no doubt about the time-critical need to act as we did,” he said.
Israeli intelligence agencies concluded that Iran had no connection to the Syrian nuclear program and probably was not even aware of the clandestine site in eastern Syria along the Euphrates River, the official said.
According to U.S. officials and analysts, the challenge in attacking nuclear facilities is to attack them before they are fueled to minimize the chance of radioactive contamination that could be released in the strike. Achieving that level of precision, they said, requires pinpoint intelligence through external persistent aerial surveillance and human intelligence inside the facilities themselves.
Despite intense efforts by Tel Aviv to determine linkage between the Iranian and Syrian nuclear drives, “multiple examinations by various means” determined just the opposite, the official said. He added that Israeli political officials had hoped to use incriminating evidence of Iranian proliferation to ratchet up international pressure to halt Tehran’s enrichment program.
“It was certainly disappointing to discover no connection between the two programs,” the official said. “Apparently, this was an independent, high-priority Syrian-funded national project sustained and supported through bilateral ties with the North Korean regime.”
That Israeli determination coincided with a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate in which American intelligence agencies concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 while continuing to seek a civilian nuclear capability.
Bush, at a Jan. 9 joint news conference with Olmert, sought to clarify misperceptions stemming from the NIE.
“Iran is a threat towards peace. There was a recent intelligence report that came out that I think sent the signal to some that said perhaps the United States does not view an Iran with a nuclear weapon as serious problem,” Bush said. “Now I want to remind people … that Iran was a threat. Iran is a threat, and Iran will be a threat, if the international community does not come together and prevent that nation from the development of the know-how to build a nuclear weapon.
“A country which once had a secret program can easily restart a secret program; a country which can enrich for civilian purposes can easily transfer that knowledge to a military program; a country which has made statements that it has made about the security of our friend Israel is a country that needs to be taken seriously, and the international community must understand with clarity the threat that Iran provides to world peace. And we will continue to work with European countries, Russia and China, as well as nations in this neighborhood, to make it abundantly clear the threat that Iran poses for world peace.”
But with the Israeli government intent on using the occasion of the first American presidential visit here in more than a decade to showcase the Iranian threat, that findings absolving Iranian involvement in the Syrian program were presented to Bush or his considerable entourage.
According to the Israeli official present at most of the Olmert-Bush events, the two sides were adhering to a coordinated policy of discretion regarding the disabled Syrian nuclear program, in large part as a means of maintaining regional and international focus on the Iranian nuclear threat.
The official refused all additional comment on the Syrian nuclear program and its connection — or lack thereof — to Iran.
“That problem appears to be solved for the time being,” the official said of the Syrian nuclear threat. “Now more than ever, we need to keep focused on the problem of Iran.”
Indeed, neither leader mentioned the Syrian nuclear threat during a Jan. 9 joint news conference or in multiple public addresses offered during the first day of Bush’s three-day visit here.
In contrast, both leaders repeatedly aired their respective concerns and grievances regarding Iran, including the prospective threat that a nuclear-capable Islamic Republic would pose to Israel and others throughout the region.
“It seems [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad distrusted A.Q. Khan and his agents in Dubai,” the official added. “He suspected they may be agents of the West preparing for him a trap.”
In a Dec. 19 interview with the Austrian newspaper Die Press, Assad was quoted as saying Syria rejected overtures thought to have come from Khan back in 2001. “Someone brought us a letter from a certain Khan. We did not know if the letter was genuine or a forgery by Israel to lure us into a trap. In any case ... we never met Khan,” Assad was quoted as saying.
In the Austrian report, Assad acknowledged that the site bombed by the Israel Air Force was “a military facility under construction,” but insisted, “That does not mean this was a nuclear facility.”
John Bolton, a former U.S. State Department official and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was one of the first to publicly shed light on the target of Israel’s Sept. 6 air operation, all details of which remain heavily classified by Israel’s military censor.
In a Dec. 25 interview with political analyst Kenneth Timmerman, Bolton restated contentions that the site was a North Korean-supplied nuclear reactor and went further by suggesting the Syrian project provided a convenient vehicle through which Pyongyang could renege on international inspection and verification agreements.
“I think this facility [in Syria] that the Israelis bombed on Sept. 6 is an indication of yet another alternative [for cheating on international commitments]. … How better to hide your North Korean program than to build it in Syria where nobody is looking!” Bolton was quoted as saying in an interview published by Newsmax.com.
Prior to conclusions from the Israeli investigations clearing Iran of proliferation links with Syria, Tehran was widely presumed to have provided funding, or at the very least indirect support, for the reactor project.
A strategic update by analyst Emily Landau, published in November by Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, reflected prevailing conventional wisdom: “Considering the nature of relations between the two countries, it is hard to believe that Iran had no involvement in the decision [to pursue an elevated regional standing through nuclear capabilities].”
She wrote that Iran was the likely source of funding for the project and that “It’s possible that Iran and North Korea hoped to use Syria as a ‘shelter’ for their respective technologies and nuclear components at a time when they would be subject to more intrusive international inspections.” |
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