Israel Did--Did Not--Take Out a Syrian Nuclear Plant

You gotta love the news. Israeli sources gleefully report an alleged Syrian confirmation that the target struck by IAF aircraft last month was a nuclear facility. The word came from all the usual suspects. See http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3460769,00.html or http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380576317&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull or http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/123944.

The Syrians instantly denied the reports. This unsurprising development moved fast and far. See http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h44iqu-AVtbml4EBgaBy7kkKduGQD8SAVJ180 or http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hOfeiWXFOZ5v8QIeW2dWejDFVzpg or, covering both the denial and the initial report http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/913902.html.

Mideast politics as usual, isn't it?

Where in the fog of claims, denials, and silence might the truth exist?

The whole story from the day of the Israeli attack on has reminded the Geek of an old Sherlock Holmes' yarn. The one where the critical clue in the Great Sleuth's view was the dog which didn't bark in the night.

The silence from Mideast governments generally was the most significant indicator. If the IAF had hit a standard issue sort of target, say, a shipment of goodies for Hezbollah, the screams of outrage would have been audible at several thousand klicks. Even a strike on a chemical weapons depot or missile farm would have caused shrieks from Damascus, if nowhere else.

Nukes are a different matter altogether.

No government in the region is comfortable with the idea of Syria having even the slightest chance of acquiring nuclear weapons. The same conviction exists regarding any Iranian progress in the same direction.

The difference between the two countries is simple. Iran has travelled a fair distance along the road to possible nuclear power status. Syria was in the opening stages. The first is a relatively speaking hard target. The second constitutes a species of slam dunk.

The biggest question is what was the nature of the more-or-less confirmed Syrian facility. It is unlikely that the target was anything other than a nuclear reactor in the early stages of construction. Even with the assistance of Iran and behind that the Pakistani proliferation firm of A.Q Khan, there is no way that Syria could have obtained either nuclear weapons or weapons grade feedstock.

(This surmise is confirmed by the absence of any reports indicating atmospheric presence of the inevitable radioactive isotopes that would have been scattered by conventional munitions.)

This leaves two categories of facility. One would be an enrichment or plutonium separation plant. The second would be a reactor capable of producing plutonium.

It is impossible to rule out the slight chance of the target having been a uranium enrichment plant using the gas centrifuge technology developed by A.Q Khan and employed by the Iranians among others. To (dis)confirm this hypothesis would necessitate access to classified information.

The plutonium separation alternative can be dismissed. To separate plutonium, one must first have a source. The source is a nuclear reactor. Virtually all reactors produce at least some plutonium as an inevitable part of the uranium fission process. Some reactors are designed to produce plutonium at an accelerated rate from uranium 238.

It's like the old recipe for rabbit stew that started, "first catch your rabbit." In this case it's "first build your reactor."

This narrows the target list considerably.

There are a few other considerations--particularly where Syria would have obtained the resources and knowledge necessary to break ground and bend steel.

That's a no-brainer.

The technology and expertise could have come to Syria from either or both North Korea and Iran. The money would have been primarily Iranian.

The question that has the Geek scratching his head is this: Whatever gave the Syrians the idea that it would be possible to hide a nuclear reactor? The corollary question is: What fool in Damascus thought that Syria would be allowed to finish the blame thing?

It's about as easy to hide a nuclear reactor as it is to conceal an elephant under a beer mug. Did the deep thinking types in Damascus think that in an era where imaging satellites are common and other species of overhead platforms pollute the sky that no one would see their construction work in progress?

The Geek has to shake his head as he thinks, "Ahh, nothing like having misplaced faith in Russian air defense systems."

The latest Russian systems are good. No doubt about that. But, they have a weak point. They are systems. Countering air defenses has gone a long way past simply spoofing or blinding radars or perturbing on-board missile guidance equipment. Now the countermeasures are directed against the system itself, its connections, its nodes, its decision making centers.

The US and other countries have been beavering away for years on this aspect of the broad field called "information warfare." The Israeli attack shows that there has been a good measure of success in the process of defeating air defense systems.

Considering the reactor was a long way from completion, much further away than was the Iraqi equivalent taken out by the IAF over a quarter century ago, the question of timing is legitimate.

In part that question can be answered by asking another: "If not now--when?" The Syrian air defense system had barely been uncrated. It's a lot easier to counter an unassimulated system than one with which people have had experience and time to fully understand and debug. The target would get harder with time.

Another consideration to be factored in to answering the timing question is the current state of Israeli politics. Defense Minister (and one time PM) Barak is open about his desire to become Prime Minister again. To do this he has to live down the pacifist moment he experienced back in 2000 with the failed Camp David effort sponsored by President Clinton. What better way to do this then a large caliber shot across the bows of both Syria and Iran?

A third component of the timing issue is the United States. The current administration is a known quantity. It would and did smile on the attack. It served US interests in proving the value of some airborne electronic systems. It served the administration's interests in serving a reinforcing warning to the Iranians who use the same air defense systems as the Syrians.

On the downside, the success of the attack has given notice to the Russians that they better put their engineers back to work. This may provide complications if the US follows through with the current administration's bellicose rhetoric.

Rolling back the video tape, we should ask if the current (or any) administration could have stopped the Israeli attack. In principle, yes. To a significant but unknown extent the success of the strike depended upon American technology. Hypothetically, the US could have used that leverage to prohibit the airborne adventure.

In practice, the answer is unequivocal. NO! The Israelis have used US provided weapons for years in ways and at times that clearly contravened legal restrictions imposed by Congress. That didn't stop the Israelis. Neither did it result in any meaningful sanctions.

Not since the Suez War in 1956 has the US exercised a truly independent foreign policy course in the Mideast.

After the humiliating submission to US policy requirements at the end of the Great Israeli-French-British Exercise in Gunboat Diplomacy, the government of Israel took action to prevent any recurrence. Since then, the effective lobbying and political actions of the GOI and its sympathisers and supporters in the US have assured that the Israeli tail has effectively waved the American foreign policy dog.

That is a reality on which we have to get a grip. The GOI has done what every government should do--advance and protect its subjectively defined national interest.

We the People have to ask ourselves: Isn't it about time that our government do the same?