The unknown Syrian target Israel attacked is becoming known

The most puzzling recent event in the Middle East has been the air attack September 6 by Israel on a target in Syria. What was the target, and why was it worth attacking? No one has been talking about that. As the New York Times point out:

In Washington and Israel, information about the raid has been wrapped in extraordinary secrecy and restricted to just a handful of officials, while the Israeli press has been prohibited from publishing information about the attack. [Snip]

In his only public comment on the raid, Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, acknowledged this month that Israeli jets dropped bombs on a building that he said was “related to the military” but which he insisted was “not used.”

Now, almost six weeks later, the New York Times breaks through the silence.

Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.

The technology appears to be North Korean.

The partly constructed Syrian reactor was detected earlier this year by satellite photographs, according to American officials. They suggested that the facility had been brought to American attention by the Israelis, but would not discuss why American spy agencies seemed to have missed the early phases of construction.

North Korea has long provided assistance to Syria on a ballistic missile program, but any assistance toward the construction of the reactor would have been the first clear evidence of ties between the two countries on a nuclear program. North Korea has successfully used its five-megawatt reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear complex [Link added by editor of WTF-o] to reprocess nuclear fuel into bomb-grade material, a model that some American and Israeli officials believe Syria may have been trying to replicate.

So Israel is striking a blow to tell its neighbors that they will remain the only nuclear power in the Middle East. This is, among other things, clearly a message to Iran. Since the source of the nuclear technology used in Syria appears to be North Korea, this is also a message to that nation. The recent agreement of the North Koreans to dismantle their own nuclear reactor at yongbon could well release people and assets which other nations might want for the development of nuclear weapons. But this is an issue for the future and has little direct connection to the September 6th Israeli attack on Syrian facility.

The effort towards nuclear proliferation recognizes two different types of nuclear reactor. One produces electricity, while the other produces both electricity and throws off the type of highly enriched uranium that can be used in nuclear bombs. The distinction between the two types appears to be as much international inspection as anything else, since the development of uranium of sufficient purity to build weapons is a process that is long, expensive, and requires a lot of very obvious equipment and facilities which is not required for production of electricity.

There is a second process. The plutonium used in nuclear reactors can be reprocessed and concentrated to create nuclear weapons. Both processes require the time, facilities and obvious effort so extensive to produce such plutonium or highly enriched uranium that it becomes easily obvious to inspectors.

It appears to me (at least) that the differences between producing purely peaceful nuclear power and producing nuclear weapons is in the cost and extensiveness of the effort. The two technologies are of different and easily discernibly different levels of magnitude. The result is that the differences in technology between electricity production and weapons production means that close international inspection can allow the production of nuclear-based electric power while preventing the production of nuclear weapons. Whether or not this is true is beyond my capacity to determine, but the experts seem to agree that it is, in fact, true.

Syria shares an economic disability with its Middle Eastern neighbor Israel. Neither sit on top of pools of oil. [The Israelis blame Moses who chose the location. The religious Israelis blame God for directing him there. I don't know who the Syrians blame.] Syria is on a per capita basis one of the poorest nations in the Middle East. Nuclear electric power would be a major boost to the Syrian economy. Syrian President Bashar al-ASAD is clearly driven by economics to try to obtain nuclear electric power.

Were the Syrians to build such a facility under inspections by Mohamed El Baradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, they could probably have such a power source. My guess is that the history of war with Israel (in 1973 the Israelis are reputed to have had aircraft armed with nuclear weapons sitting on the runway) means that national pride and Syrian security considerations prevent them from permitting the UN inspections that would allow them to possess an "approved" nuclear power facility. [This is my speculation, as I have no direct or extensive knowledge of Syria.]

But the Syrians clearly observed the Libyans and Pakistanis who were able to evade inspections and obtain nuclear weapon producing facilities [from North Korea.] The Syrians may have seen a "window of opportunity" and hoped to slip through it, without realizing that it was closing on them. Since Syria is run by the military, security considerations will normally trump all other political considerations internally.

It appears that the refusal of all the Middle Eastern nations, including Syria, to complain about the Israeli attack suggest that almost everyone thinks that the Syrians stepped over an invisible boundary of good sense when they tried to set up a Middle Eastern nuclear facility in secret. If there is any good news out of this incident, that would seem to me to be it.

There is a political mechanism at work here. It seems that there is no nation who wants their neighbors to get nuclear weapons. So if someone stops the efforts of their neighbors, great! The change in relative power relations will be generally resisted. That's a pretty strong consensus in favor of nuclear non-proliferation.

Within each nation, however, there are hardliners who want freedom from international limitations, and they are pushing towards developing nuclear weapons. That's a strong pressure for each nation to obtain those weapons, a pressure that is especially strong in nations currently in active conflict with their neighbors.

That political mechanism suggests that nonproliferation cannot be brought about with the power of the gun or with armies. Such efforts are short term at best, and counter-productive in the long term.

In the long term, nonproliferation requires eliminating the armed conflicts between nations. General conflicts between nations cannot be eliminated, but those which must be resolved by the use of armed force can be. [I'm sure that this is no surprise to those who have studied the subject at length. I have only just come to consideration of nonproliferation, and this is what jumps out at me as the obvious mechanism.] Seen in these terms, the attack by Israel on the (apparent) nuclear facility in Syria is another piece of fallout from the still unresolved Yom Kipper War of 1973.

There will be more fallout from the Israeli attack on the apparent nuclear facility in Syria. [Prediction, with effort at humor - Ed. I ask no forgiveness.] Good diplomacy will use this event to defuse military tensions in the area surrounding Syria.

I don't expect any good diplomacy out of the Bush administration or the Rice State Department. There is no history of success there. Both the UN and the European Union are more likely to do something positive with this event.