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'Syria was preparing for Israeli attack'

Oct. 24, 2007

Syria was preparing for a large-scale Israeli attack some two weeks ago, the Al-Khaleej newspaper, published in the United Arab Emirates, reported Wednesday.

Al-Khaleej quoted "senior sources" in Damascus as saying that Syria had received intelligence that Israel was seriously considering launching an offensive during the Id al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of Ramadan.

Therefore, the article said, Syria began taking "defensive steps."

The Syrian sources, who were unnamed, told Al-Khaleej that Russia and China, when apprised of Syria's concerns, sent "stern warnings" to both Jerusalem and Washington that an Israeli attack would destroy the balance of the Middle East. According to the report, China and Russia asked the United States to intervene and "rein in" what Syria perceived as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's threats of war.

"Despite Israel's calming messages, sent through mediators, there is still a possibility of a military confrontation," the sources told the UAE paper.

The sources added that Syrian President Bashar Assad had raised the issue during his visit with Turkey's leaders last week, and said that Turkey's deputy military chief had given Assad his word that Turkey would not allow Israel to use its air space to attack Syria.

Meanwhile, US experts said they have identified the Euphrates River nuclear site in Syria that was allegedly bombed by IAF planes last month, as well as satellite imagery of the facility showing buildings under construction, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. According to the report, the facility was similar in design to a North Korean nuclear reactor capable of producing nuclear material for one bomb a year.

Photographs of the area taken before the September 6 raid show an isolated compound which included a boxy structure similar to the type of building used to house a gas-graphite reactor. They also show what could have been a pumping station used to supply cooling water for the reactor, expert David Albright of the US Institute for Science and International Security was quoted as saying by The Washington Post.

The newspaper also reported that International and American experts familiar with the site, who were shown the photos on Tuesday, said there was a strong possibility that they show the remote compound which was allegedly attacked by Israel. Israeli officials and the White House declined to comment.

The facility depicted was located approximately 10 kilometers north of At Tibnah in the Dayr az Zawr region, according to an ISIS report to be released Wednesday. Albright, a former UN weapons inspector, said the size of the structures suggested that Syria might have been building a gas-graphite reactor of about 20 to 25 megawatts of heat, which is similar to the reactor North Korea built at Yongbyon.

Source: Jerusalem Post

Yet Another Photo of Site in Syria, Yet More Questions

By WILLIAM J. BROAD and MARK MAZZETTI

The mystery surrounding the construction of what might have been a nuclear reactor in Syria deepened yesterday, when a company released a satellite photo showing that the main building was well under way in September 2003 — four years before Israeli jets bombed it.

The long genesis is likely to raise questions about whether the Bush administration overlooked a nascent atomic threat in Syria while planning and executing a war in Iraq, which was later found to have no active nuclear program.

A senior American intelligence official said yesterday that American analysts had looked carefully at the site from its early days, but were unsure then whether it posed a nuclear threat.

In the time before the Iraq war, President Bush and his senior advisers sounded many alarms about Baghdad’s reconstituting its nuclear program. But they have never publicly discussed what many analysts say appears to have been a long-running nuclear effort next door.

Yesterday independent analysts, examining the latest satellite image, suggested that work on the site might have begun around 2001, and the senior intelligence official agreed with that analysis. That early date is potentially significant in terms of North Korea’s suspected aid to Syria, suggesting that North Korea could have begun its assistance in the late 1990s.

A dispute has broken out between conservatives and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the administration’s pursuit of diplomacy with North Korea in the face of intelligence that North Korea might have helped Syria design a nuclear reactor.

The new image may give ammunition to those in the administration, including Ms. Rice, who call for diplomacy. If North Korea started its Syrian aid long ago, the officials could argue that the assistance was historical, not current, and that diplomacy should move ahead.

The progress of the site in late 2003 also raises new questions about a disagreement at the time between intelligence analysts and John R. Bolton, then the State Department’s top arms control official.

In the summer of 2003, Mr. Bolton’s testimony on Capitol Hill was delayed after a dispute erupted in part over whether Syria was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. Some intelligence officials said Mr. Bolton overstated the Syrian threat.

“There was disagreement about what Syria was interested in and how much we should be monitoring it,” Mr. Bolton said in an interview yesterday. “There was activity in Syria that I felt was evidence that they were trying to develop a nuclear program.”

Mr. Bolton declined to say whether he had knowledge at the time about the site that the Israelis struck in September.

Spokesmen for the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council declined to comment.

The new image of the desolate Syrian site was released yesterday by GeoEye, in Dulles, Va. Mark Brender, the company’s vice president for communications and marketing, said the picture was taken on Sept. 16, 2003. He added that the image had been collected as part of the company’s agenda of building a large archive of global images.

Earlier this week, federal and private analysts identified the precise location of the Syrian site, and since then rival companies have raced to release images. The site is on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, 90 miles north of the Iraqi border.

Images taken in August, before the Israeli raid, show a tall building about 150 feet wide on each side that analysts suspect might have sheltered a half-built nuclear reactor. Also visible is a pumping station on the Euphrates, which may be significant because reactors need water for cooling.

John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private group in Alexandria, Va., that analyzes satellite images, said the 2003 picture showed the tall building in the midst of early construction, surrounded by churned earth. He put the groundbreaking in 2001.

“It’s uncommon to see such activity in the middle of nowhere,” he said, adding that it was sufficiently unusual to have worried American intelligence officials. “I’d have put it on my suspect site list and kept watching,” he said.

The senior intelligence official said that American spy satellites and analysts had, in fact, watched the site for years.

“It was noticed, without knowing what it was,” the official said. “You revisit every so often, but it was not a high priority. You see things that raise the flag and you know you have to keep looking. It was a case of watching it evolve.”

Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on nuclear proliferation at the New America Foundation in Washington, said it was surprising from the photos how little progress had been made at the site between 2003 and 2007.

But Mr. Lewis said it was ironic that Syria might have been trying to build a nuclear program just as the United States was invading Iraq in the fear that Iraq was developing nuclear arms.

Source: NYT

Israel moves maneuvers away from Syria

By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press WriterFri Oct 26, 5:47 PM ET

Israel has decided to move an upcoming military exercise off the disputed Golan Heights to avoid further heightening tensions with neighboring Syria, defense officials said.

The border has been jittery since Sept. 6, the date of a mysterious raid by Israeli jets on a target in Syria's north.

Next week's military maneuver was scheduled to be held partially on the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War.

Israel sent messages reassuring Syria that the exercise signaled no aggressive intentions, the officials said. But this week, the military decided to hold the exercise solely in northern Israel and not on the Golan Heights because of concerns it might unsettle the Syrians, they said.

The officials spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge details of the military's decision to the media.

The exercise is slated to be the largest Israeli military maneuver since Israel's 34-day war with Hezbollah in Lebanon last summer.

Israel's military regularly holds exercises on the strategic heights, but it seems Israel is being especially cautious not to provoke Syria in the aftermath of the Sept. 6 raid, which is still enveloped in secrecy. Israel still has not officially commented on the raid or acknowledged carrying it out.

Syrian President Bashar Assad said the attack targeted an unused military building. But reports following the incident have contradicted that account.

New commercial satellite images show a presumed Syrian nuclear reactor site has been wiped clean since the apparent airstrike.

The alleged nuclear site has been under construction for at least four years, since September 2003, according to newly released archived IKONOS commercial satellite images provided by GeoEye/SIME to the Associated Press Friday. Previously, the earliest available image was from August 2006.

The 2003 images shows the large roofed building — now gone — and construction vehicles.

"It's actually more active construction than in the imagery we've seen so far," said Paul Brannan, a senior research analyst with the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.

Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that the strike had targeted a partially built nuclear reactor, made with North Korean help, that was years away from completion, citing U.S. and foreign officials. The Washington Post also cited U.S. officials as saying the building had characteristics of a small but substantial nuclear reactor similar to North Korea's facility.

Analysts said the cleanup will hinder a proposed investigation by international nuclear inspectors and suggests Syria is trying to conceal evidence.

"It took down this facility so quickly it looks like they are trying to hide something," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, which analyzed the images.

Albright said Syria may have acted so swiftly because the Israeli attack blew a hole in the roof, which would have exposed the building's contents to spy aircraft and satellites.

Had the building not been razed, inspectors would have been able to tell from its construction whether it was meant to house a North Korean-style nuclear reactor, Albright said. He said the fact that the structure got a roof so early in its construction also suggests that it was a reactor.

Syria has strenuously denied the target was a nuclear reactor.

The border between Israel and Syria has been tense since that incident.

Last month, Israeli fighter jets were scrambled to the northern Golan Heights because of suspicious aerial activity that later turned out to be migrating birds. A few days later, Israel dispatched several fighter jets toward Syria after a Syrian aircraft disappeared from Israeli air force radar screens. The jets returned to their bases minutes later when it became clear the Syrian airplane had crashed.

Source: Yahoo