During the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, a report prepared by Syria explained that the country was against any proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the region, especially nuclear weapons. Thus, in this context, it is getting more and more relevant to analyze the declarations of U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, who announced that Syria is included in the list of American States suspected of having clandestine nuclear activities.
In case Israel and U.S. were testing Iran’s reaction while bombing Syria, it seems that Iran has been replying in its own way. A number of Iranians military researchers explained that the Iranian response to any Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear sites will be strong. Iranian military researcher Captain Mohammad Rostami, member of the Iranian military Center for Studies was explaining this week end that Iran will reply like any other States to the principle of surprise. He added: "I believe that Iran will respond harshly because Iranian forces today are greater than they were during the first Gulf war in. 1980. He explained that Iran's response will be hard for any American or Israeli attack, being able to use 600 missile Shahab 3 and 4, the first batch in less than a minute; The other installments will be followed by the first installment and will be one of the places other terms of the viability of the launchers disappearance behind the mountains. Iran also has missiles that reach deep into Israel. He continued that the Dimona reactor would be within the target goals.
In the event that Syria is attacked again, Rostami said that Iran had already signed a security agreement with Syria, it will enter the war next to Syria. He added: Iran developped sophisticated weapons and Syria will get access to those, that is our duty and the Islamic legitimate.
In Egypt, Dr Hassan Younis, Minister of Electricity and Energy, has been holding contacts with Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, Director Deneral of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to participate in a working meeting with Egyptian experts to review the studies for the establishment of nuclear power plants in Egypt.
The minister pointed out that there are 17 studies for the establishment of nuclear power plants and that the ministry will study the subject within the end of this year.
The minister said a “scientific method” will be implemented to deal with these stations and to deal with a nuclear plant on the land of Egypt
Source: Al Shaab
In Jordan, expected general manager of the nuclear energy program, Dr. Ziyad Al Quadi, thinks that the start of the first Jordanian stations is coming close, and that the nuclear program to generate electricity will be ready after ten years from now.
Source: Al Arab Alyam
Now we will have a look at different analysis regarding the Syrian issue in English Press:
Was Israeli raid a dry run for attack on Iran?
Peter Beaumont
Sunday September 16, 2007
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.
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.
Source: Observer
Haaretz has been as well highlighting some facts around the Northern Korea presence:
Records on North Korean ship docked in Syria were altered
By Yossi Melman
Online databases tracking a ship reportedly flying a North Korean flag that docked in Syria have changed their records following a report in The Washington Post linking the alleged Israeli air strike in Syria to a North Korean shipment.
Ronen Solomon, who searches information in the public domain for companies, told Haaretz he found references to a ship called Al Hamad on three different Web sites after the initial reports of the Israeli raid in Syria on September 6. These included the official sites of Syria's Tartous Port and the Egyptian Transportation Ministry.
Two of the three sites said the ship was flying a North Korean flag, and the third site reported it was flying a South Korean flag.
Haaretz confirmed Solomon's report.
Saturday, the Washington Post published an article citing an American Mideast expert, who said a shipment that arrived in Syria three days before the alleged Israel Air Forces strike was labeled as cement, but that Israel believed it carried nuclear equipment.
Following the Washington Post report, Solomon returned to the three sites, and discovered that all mentions of the North Korean flag on Al Hamad had been deleted, and that the ship's flag was now registered as 'unknown.'
The official site of Syria's Tartous Port, www.tartousport.com, had reported that Al Hamad, flying a North Korean flag and carrying cement, entered the port on September 3. Solomon stressed that several North Korean ships docked at Tartous during August.
Syria said IAF planes entered its airspace on September 5.
According to the site, the ship had passed through Tripoli port in Lebanon, Solomon said.
He then found a site, www.e-ships.net, that said Al Hamad was registered as a 1,700-ton ship intended for general cargo and flying a North Korean flag. The ship had been built in 1965 and had had several owners, according to the site.
In addition, Solomon found on the Web site of Egypt's Transportation Ministry, www.MTS.gov.eg, a record that Al Hamad had docked in Damietta Port Said in the Nile Delta about a month earlier, on July 28. However, this site registered the ship as flying a South Korean flag.
Haaretz was able to access the Tartous Port Internet site until Saturday afternoon, after which it went offline for several hours.
Source: Haaretz
Haaretz has been anaylsing as well the attack on Syria as a test against Iran:
What Tehran has learned, Damascus understands
By Amir Oren
The events of the last two months between the two edges of Asia, Korea to the east and Syria to the west, are gradually being deciphered, according to the international press, like a fascinating detective story. The Washington Post yesterday reported the latest detail in the series of clues: The Israel Air Force targeted a suspected nuclear center in Syria that came from North Korea.
Since the mid-1990s, the United States has sought to make the Korean Peninsula a nuclear-free zone. If North Korea obtained nuclear arms, then South Korea would not long withstand pressure from its Washington ally to refrain from a similar move. Nuclear nonproliferation means not acquiring nuclear weapons in the first place or disarmament should they already exist. To that end, the Clinton administration signed both Koreas to the Agreed Framework, which provided for compensation to North Korea for suspending its nuclear program.
In 2002, North Korea withdrew from this agreement, as well as from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The foreign inspectors assigned to the reactor in Yongbyon were sent away, the walls around the reactor's production facilities were torn down and within five weeks plutonium was once again being produced. The Americans suspected that uranium was being enriched at other facilities, and that North Korea planned to import, and later perhaps even to manufacture, components, materials and nuclear technology, in particular centrifuges, from the private network of the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Even before that, North Korea hastened to announce it was in possession of at least one nuclear bomb. American officials dismissed the claim but did not dare to test their assumption, in contrast to U.S. action with regard to Iraq. The U.S. intelligence community believed that Baghdad was in the early stages of renewing its nuclear program, but President George W. Bush was quick to attack before Saddam Hussein had the chance to obtain nuclear weapons.
The take-home lesson for the third axis in Bush's "Axis of Evil," Iran, was that the most dangerous and vulnerable stage was the homestretch. The fait accompli was the decisive factor. As soon as a state acquired the bomb, the deterrent effect was on its side. No one would dare attack for fear of a nuclear response and for fear of the fate of civilian populations near active nuclear facilities.
According to American declarations, the lesson learned in Tehran was understood in Damascus as well. Within the Bush administration, a bitter disagreement has been raging since the start of the decade over the progress of Syria?s nuclear program. Former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton, a Bush political appointee, represents the suspicious camp. In the opposing camp are State Department and CIA officials, burned by their over-cautious analyses on Iraq. They were skeptical about the intelligence that implicated Syria, should giving it too much weight serve the militaristic agenda of the disenfranchised Cheney-Rumsfeld faction.
In October 2006, after North Korea claimed it had conducted a nuclear test, Bush called for renewed effort to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, warning that North Korea's transfer of nuclear weapons or materiel to Syria, Iran or terror organizations would be seen as a "grave threat." It was a blind prophecy. The reports in the American press over the past week and Bolton's accusations lend the impression that North Korea was indeed willing to smuggle nuclear technology beyond its borders to evade new inspections and because Syria was interested in acquiring an off-the-shelf product.
One may assume that a Syrian nuclear program would be opposed by states such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, which would be pushed into a proliferation race by a sudden Syrian announcement of success in that sphere. Bush, who sounded the alarm a year ago, has avoided responding publicly for 10 days now to reports of a Syrian-North Korean nuclear connection. He does not want to divert attention from the congressional debate on continued U.S. military presence in Iraq, nor to increase the strain on the Korean nonproliferation talks scheduled for completion in the autumn of 2008. By then, the extent of Bush?s determination to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear arms will also become clear.
The show in Syria, according to The Washington Post, is likely to be the trailer for a long, complicated American performance in Iran. The lesson that should be learned, particularly in the Middle East, is that it is too soon to eulogize Bush. Maligned, his wings clipped, he still has the power to set fateful measures into motion.
Source: Haaretz
We will end with another try from Iran to get closer to Saudi Arabia, offering expertise to develop nuclear energy to the Kingdom, under the supervision of the IAEA.
Iran, SaudiArabia underline strengthening Islamic unity
TEHRAN (IRNA) -- President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Saudi King Amir Abdullah on Saturday discussed ways of consolidating Islamic unity.
Ahmadinejad in a phone call with the Saudi king congratulated the Saudi nation and government on advent of the holy fasting month of Ramadan and wished all Muslims dignity, health, prosperity, peace and tranquility.
Referring to enemies' consecutive defeats, Ahmadinejad said, ""Since they do not dare to face nations, enemies of Islam intend to divide Muslim nations, especially the Iranian and Saudi nations.""
He said that while Muslim states try to strengthen unity in the world of Islam enemies try to divide them by spreading rumors and taking flimsy actions.
Thanking the Saudi king for trying to render better services to Hajj pilgrims, Ahmadinejad said Iran fully trusts the activities and attempts of Saudi Arabia, especially its king, to forge unity among Muslim nations.
Referring to enemies' efforts to block Iranian nation's nuclear progress and achievement, Ahmadinejad said thanks God Almighty, enemies of Islamic Iran have failed and today Iran is in a good status both in the IAEA and worldwide and its nuclear rights have been stabilized.
""The Islamic Republic of Iran stands by the Saudi nation and is prepared to share experience with the country in nuclear technology under the IAEA supervision.""
The Saudi king for his part congratulated the Iranian nation and government on advent of the holy month of Ramadan and said efforts should be made to foil enemy's divisive plots.
Terming Ahmadinejad as a ""big lover of the world of Islam and Muslims,"" the king regretted mistreatment of the Iranian Hajj pilgrims in Saudi Arabia
Source: IRNA
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