World Threats

I’ve been vocal about my suspicion that this was occuring; that the WMD programs of Syria, North Korea, Iran and possibly others were not individual enterprises but part of an internationalized program. When one progresses, all progress. When one falters, they all falter or another picks up the slack.

The high-level Iranian defector, Ali Reza Asghari, the Iranian deputy defense minister who defected in February 2007, said that Iran was financing North Korea’s involvement in the Syrian nuclear weapons program. Israel bombed a Syrian nuclear site in September 2007.

“The biggest surprise, however, was his assertion that Iran was financing a secret nuclear project of Syria and North Korea,” he said. “No one in the American intelligence scene had heard anything of it. And the Israelis who were immediately informed also were completely unaware.”

The “he” is Hans Ruehle, Germany’s former chief of planning for the Defense Ministry, who adds that the Israelis believe the Iranians paid the North Koreans $1-2 billion for the Syrian project. And here comes the predictable response from an anonymous U.S. official:

In Washington, however, a U.S. counterproliferation official denied that Iran funded the Syrian site.

“There is strong reason to believe that only two countries were involved in building the Syrian covert nuclear reactor at Al Kibar — Syria and North Korea,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

This is corroborated by some reporting that suggested Iranians were killed at the Syrian site that the Israelis destroyed.

Ruehle also confirms some details of the Israeli operation:

He said U.S. and Israeli intelligence had detected North Korean ship deliveries of construction supplies to Syria that started in 2002, and American satellites spotted the construction as early as 2003.

But they regarded the work as nothing unusual, in part because the Syrians had banned radio and telephones from the site and handled communications solely by messengers — “medieval but effective,” Ruehle said.

Intensive investigation followed by U.S. and Israeli intelligence services until Israel sent a 12-man commando unit in two helicopters to the site in August 2007 to take photographs and soil samples, he said.

“The analysis was conclusive that it was a North Korean-type reactor,” a gas graphite model, Ruehle said.

Other sources have suggested that the reactor might have been large enough to make about one nuclear weapon’s worth of plutonium a year.

Just before the Israeli commando raid, a North Korean ship was intercepted en route to Syria with nuclear fuel rods, underscoring the need for fast action, he said.

“On the morning of Sept. 6, 2007, seven Israeli F-15 fighter bombers took off to the north. They flew along the Mediterranean coast, brushed past Turkey and pressed on into Syria. Fifty kilometers (30 miles) from their target they fired 22 rockets at the three identified objects inside the Kibar complex.

“The Syrians were completely surprised. By the time their air defense systems were ready, the Israeli planes were well out of range. The mission was successful, the reactor destroyed,” Ruehle said.

Related posts:

1. Israeli Source: Covert Ops Prove Syria Has Restarted Nuclear Program
2. More Evidence of Syrian Nuclear Program
3. Undeclared Nuclear Material Found in Syria
4. Daily Report: U.S. Still Trying to Sway Syria, Imminent Announcement From North Korea
5. Daily Report: North Korea Threatens South, More on Syria Raid