US claims photo shows Syrian nuclear reactor.

This is from the Independent. This must all be taken with a grain of salt. Most articles do not point out that these types of actions are a gross insult to the IAEA. In fact most reporters must be blissfully ignorant of this aspect of the matter as well as the issue of unprovoked aggression against a sovereign nation. You can imagine the response if Iran or Egypt should have attacked and destroyed Israeli nuclear facilities as they were building their bombs. However, in this case it is not even clear what if anything was there. We know the Israelis were building nuclear bombs--and of course denying it and supposedly successfully fooling the US.
Even the ISIS report says the photographs raise as many questions as they answer, including whether they even have the right sight!
Of course the US is simply going along with and trying to justify Israel's attack. Why Syria co-operates with the US on renditions and other matters is a mystery. The US attitude is that there is no reward for help or co-operation. Syria has also accepted hordes of Iraqi refugees.


US claims photos show Syrian nuclear reactor
By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Published: 25 October 2007
US security experts have published what they believe to be photographs of a secret nuclear facility in Syria, which was bombed by Israeli jets last month.

Their analysis of satellite images in an area near the river Euphrates reveals what they say are buildings similar to a North Korean nuclear reactor capable of producing fuel for a nuclear bomb. The experts, David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector, and Paul Brannan, from the Institute for Science and International Security (Isis), believe they have found the site that could have been the target of a night-time Israeli raid on 6 September. The Israelis imposed a news blackout on the raid, which prompted speculation that the attack may have been a dry run for a strike on Iran.

In a report released yesterday by Isis, the experts say that commercial satellite imagery of the area shows buildings under construction. The buildings have the same footprint as that of North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, which is capable of producing nuclear material for one bomb a year.

Syria admits co-operating with North Korea but says the two countries have no nuclear co-operation. The site is 100 miles from Syria's border with Iraq and close to an airstrip that would allow for easy transportation of personnel. "I'm pretty convinced that Syria was trying to build a nuclear reactor," Mr Albright told The Washington Post yesterday. However the Isis report said the images "raise as many questions as they answer". Isis is an independent research organisation that follows nuclear weapons production around the world.

A week ago ABC News reported that Israel had recruited a spy to take ground photographs of the reactor construction from inside the complex. Because the building was already covered with a roof, they say, a spy may have been necessary to take photographs from inside the reactor building. The Washington Post has reported that the North Korean-style reactor is built gradually on site and the roof would hide what was inside the building.

The Isis experts suspect that Syria was building a small gas-graphite reactor of about 20-25 megawatts, which is large enough to make about one nuclear weapon's worth of plutonium each year.

Israel, which has an estimated 100 nuclear weapons, has remained silent about the bombing raid. Nor has it provided any justification for its raid on a foreign country. Syria flatly denies having a nuclear programme. But secretly building a nuclear reactor would put Syria in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which all signatories must reveal such decisions.

Syria is reported to be to removing what remains of the site, while the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is also analysing photographs in an attempt to establish what Syria was up to. The director of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, is angry at Syria, the Israelis and Western intelligence agencies for failing to pass on information about the alleged secret nuclear programme.

"We have said, 'If any of you has the slightest information showing that there was anything linked to nuclear, we would of course be happy to investigate it,'" Mr ElBaradei told Le Monde. "Frankly, I venture to hope that before people decide to bombard and use force, they will come and see us to convey their concerns." Mr ElBaradei also warned that efforts to contain nuclear proliferation were endangered by military action.

"The use of force can set things back, but it does not deal with the roots of the problem," he said.

Syria reacts to suggestions of nuclear co-operation with North Korea

Apparently the intelligence the US is losing is Israeli. Israel is not above manufacturing evidence for its own purposes. This is from AFP and http://www.spacewar.com/2006/070916084931.dkahzytd.html
Of course the article fails to mention that Israel already has nuclear facilities and weapons.

Syria warns of US 'lies' over Israel air violation

DAMASCUS, Sept 16 (AFP) Sep 16, 2007
An official Syrian daily warned on Sunday that US "lies" over nuclear cooperation with North Korea could serve as a pretext for an attack on Syria following an Israeli violation of its airspace.
"Members of the choir have started up a new song that is full of hostility, this time about Syrian-Korean nuclear cooperation," Ath-Thawra said. "This is a big lie... Syria is used to having to put up with such lies."

The Washington Post reported last Thursday that North Korea may be helping Syria build some kind of nuclear facility, citing unnamed intelligence sources.

Israel's secret service had relayed the information to the US government, which the Post described as "dramatic."

"This is nothing new, accusing Syria of things that it has nothing to do with... But what is new is the scope of the new lie and the way it is being peddled," said Ath-Thawra.

Syria has said its air defences fired on Israeli warplanes which dropped munitions deep inside its territory in the early hours of September 6, triggering intense media speculation about the action.

Israel has not confirmed the incident and kept up a policy of official silence, with the only details on the mysterious attack coming from foreign media reports citing anonymous officials.

Was Israeli raid a dry run for attack on Iran?

This is from the Observer. I have seen very few reports about this raid in the mass media. This attack upon another country completely unprovoked is not worth mentioning apparently. Imagine if Syria decided to launch a bombing mission into Saudi Arabia. All hell would break loose and it would be on the front page of every major newspaper.

Was Israeli raid a dry run for attack on Iran?


Mystery surrounds last week's air foray into Syrian territory. The Observer's Foreign Affairs Editor attempts to unravel the truth behind Operation Orchard and allegations of nuclear subterfuge

Peter Beaumont
Sunday September 16, 2007
The Observer


The head of Israel's airforce, Major-General Eliezer Shkedi, was visiting a base in the coastal city of Herziliya last week. For the 50-year-old general, also the head of Israel's Iran Command, which would fight a war with Tehran if ordered, it was a morale-boosting affair, a meet-and-greet with pilots and navigators who had flown during last summer's month-long war against Lebanon. The journalists who had turned out in large numbers were there for another reason: to question Shkedi about a mysterious air raid that happened this month, codenamed 'Orchard', carried out deep in Syrian territory by his pilots.

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Shkedi ignored all questions. It set a pattern for the days to follow as he and Israel's politicians and officials maintained a steely silence, even when the questions came from the visiting French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner. Those journalists who thought of reporting the story were discouraged by the threat of Israel's military censor.
But the rumours were in circulation, not just in Israel but in Washington and elsewhere. In the days that followed, the sketchy details of the raid were accompanied by contradictory claims even as US and British officials admitted knowledge of the raid. The New York Times described the target of the raid as a nuclear site being run in collaboration with North Korean technicians. Others reported that the jets had hit either a Hizbollah convoy, a missile facility or a terrorist camp.

Amid the confusion there were troubling details that chimed uncomfortably with the known facts. Two detachable tanks from an Israeli fighter were found just over the Turkish border. According to Turkish military sources, they belonged to a Raam F15I - the newest generation of Israeli long-range bomber, which has a combat range of over 2,000km when equipped with the drop tanks. This would enable them to reach targets in Iran, leading to speculation that it was an 'operation rehearsal' for a raid on Tehran's nuclear facilities.

Finally, however, at the week's end, the first few tangible details were beginning to emerge about Operation Orchard from a source involved in the Israeli operation.

They were sketchy, but one thing was absolutely clear. Far from being a minor incursion, the Israeli overflight of Syrian airspace through its ally, Turkey, was a far more major affair involving as many as eight aircraft, including Israel's most ultra-modern F-15s and F-16s equipped with Maverick missiles and 500lb bombs. Flying among the Israeli fighters at great height, The Observer can reveal, was an ELINT - an electronic intelligence gathering aircraft.

What was becoming clear by this weekend amid much scepticism, largely from sources connected with the administration of President George Bush, was the nature of the allegation, if not the facts.

In a series of piecemeal leaks from US officials that gave the impression of being co-ordinated, a narrative was laid out that combined nuclear skulduggery and the surviving members of the 'axis of evil': Iran, North Korea and Syria.

It also combined a series of neoconservative foreign policy concerns: that North Korea was not being properly monitored in the deal struck for its nuclear disarmament and was off-loading its material to Iran and Syria, both of which in turn were helping to rearm Hizbollah.

Underlying all the accusations was a suggestion that recalled the bogus intelligence claims that led to the war against Iraq: that the three countries might be collaborating to supply an unconventional weapon to Hizbollah.

It is not only the raid that is odd but also, ironically, the deliberate air of mystery surrounding it, given Israel's past history of bragging about similar raids, including an attack on an Iraqi reactor. It was a secrecy so tight, in fact, that even as the Israeli aircrew climbed into the cockpits of their planes they were not told the nature of the target they were being ordered to attack.

According to an intelligence expert quoted in the Washington Post who spoke to aircrew involved in the raid, the target of the attack, revealed only to the pilots while they were in the air, was a northern Syrian facility that was labelled as an agricultural research centre on the Euphrates river, close to the Turkish border.

According to this version of events, a North Korean ship, officially carrying a cargo of cement, docked three days before the raid in the Syrian port of Tartus. That ship was also alleged to be carrying nuclear equipment.

It is an angle that has been pushed hardest by the neoconservative hawk and former US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. But others have entered the fray, among them the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, who, without mentioning Syria by name, suggested to Fox television that the raid was linked to stopping unconventional weapons proliferation.

Most explicit of all was Andrew Semmel, acting deputy assistant Secretary of State for nuclear non-proliferation policy, who, speaking in Rome yesterday, insisted that 'North Koreans were in Syria' and that Damascus may have had contacts with 'secret suppliers' to obtain nuclear equipment.

'There are indicators that they do have something going on there,' he said. 'We do know that there are a number of foreign technicians that have been in Syria. We do know that there may have been contact between Syria and some secret suppliers for nuclear equipment. Whether anything transpired remains to be seen.

'So good foreign policy, good national security policy, would suggest that we pay very close attention to that,' he said. 'We're watching very closely. Obviously, the Israelis were watching very closely.'

But despite the heavy inference, no official so far has offered an outright accusation. Instead they have hedged their claims in ifs and buts, assiduously avoiding the term 'weapons of mass destruction'.

There has also been deep scepticism about the claims from other officials and former officials familiar with both Syria and North Korea. They have pointed out that an almost bankrupt Syria has neither the economic nor the industrial base to support the kind of nuclear programme described, adding that Syria has long rejected going down the nuclear route.

Others have pointed out that North Korea and Syria in any case have also had a long history of close links - making meaningless the claim that the North Koreans are in Syria.

The scepticism was reflected by Bruce Reidel, a former intelligence official at the Brookings Institution's Saban Centre, quoted in the Post. 'It was a substantial Israeli operation, but I can't get a good fix on whether the target was a nuclear thing,' adding that there was 'a great deal of scepticism that there's any nuclear angle here' and instead the facility could have been related to chemical or biological weapons.

The opaqueness surrounding the nature of what may have been hit in Operation Orchard has been compounded by claims that US knowledge over the alleged 'agricultural site' has come not from its own intelligence and satellite imaging, but from material supplied to Washington from Tel Aviv over the last six months, material that has been restricted to just a few senior officials under the instructions of national security adviser Stephen Hadley, leaving many in the intelligence community uncertain of its veracity.

Whatever the truth of the allegations against Syria - and Israel has a long history of employing complex deceptions in its operations - the message being delivered from Tel Aviv is clear: if Syria's ally, Iran, comes close to acquiring a nuclear weapon, and the world fails to prevent it, either through diplomatic or military means, then Israel will stop it on its own.

So Operation Orchard can be seen as a dry run, a raid using the same heavily modified long-range aircraft, procured specifically from the US with Iran's nuclear sites in mind. It reminds both Iran and Syria of the supremacy of its aircraft and appears to be designed to deter Syria from getting involved in the event of a raid on Iran - a reminder, if it were required, that if Israel's ground forces were humiliated in the second Lebanese war its airforce remains potent, powerful and unchallenged.

And, critically, the raid on Syria has come as speculation about a war against Iran has begun to re-emerge after a relatively quiet summer.

With the US keen to push for a third UN Security Council resolution authorising a further tranche of sanctions against Iran, both London and Washington have increased the heat by alleging that they are already fighting 'a proxy war' with Tehran in Iraq.

Perhaps more worrying are the well-sourced claims from conservative thinktanks in the US that there have been 'instructions' by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney to roll out support for a war against Iran.

In the end there is no mystery. Only a frightening reminder. In a world of proxy threats and proxy actions, the threat of military action against Iran has far from disappeared from the agenda.