[Peace-discuss] What did US/Israel do in Syria?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The war within the USG goes on.  Democracy (as well as the Congress) 
has nothing to do with it.  --CGE]

	A warning shot for Iran, via Syria
	By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - Until late October, the accepted explanation about the 
September 6 Israeli air strike in Syria, constructed from a series of 
press leaks from US officials, was that it was prompted by dramatic 
satellite intelligence that Syria was building a nuclear facility with 
help from North Korea.

But new satellite evidence has discredited that narrative, suggesting a 
more plausible explanation for the strike: that it was a calculated 
effort by Israel and the United States to convince Iran that its nuclear 
facilities could be attacked as well.

The narrative promoted by neo-conservatives in the George W Bush 
administration began to unravel in late October with the release by a 
private company of a series of satellite images showing that the same 
square, multi-storey building that was hit by Israeli planes on 
September 6 had been present on the site four years earlier. Although 
the building appears to be somewhat more developed in the August 2007 
image, it showed that the only major change at the site since September 
2003 was what appears to be a pumping station on the Euphrates and a 
smaller secondary structure.

Media reports based on leaks from administration officials had suggested 
that the presence of a water pump indicated that the building must have 
been a nuclear reactor. But Jeffrey Lewis, a specialist on nuclear 
technology at the New America Foundation, pointed out in an interview 
with Inter Press Service (IPS) that the existence of a water pump cannot 
be taken as evidence of the purpose of the building, since other kinds 
of industrial buildings would also need to pump water.

The campaign of press leaks portraying the strike as related to an 
alleged nuclear weapons program assisted by North Korea began almost 
immediately after the Israeli strike. On September 11, a Bush 
administration official told the New York Times that Israel had obtained 
intelligence from "reconnaissance flights" over Syria showing "possible 
nuclear installations that Israeli officials believed might have been 
supplied with material from North Korea".

The Bush administration officials leaking this account to the press, 
obviously aligned with Vice President Dick Cheney, were hoping to shoot 
down the administration's announced policy, pushed by Secretary of State 
Condoleezza Rice, of going ahead with an agreement to provide food and 
fuel aid to North Korea in exchange for the dismantling of its nuclear 
program.

They had lost an earlier battle over that policy and were now seeking to 
use the Israeli strike story as a new argument against it.

The officials did not want the intelligence community involved in 
assessing the alleged new evidence, suggesting that they knew it would 
not withstand expert scrutiny. Glenn Kessler reported in the Washington 
Post on September 13 that the "dramatic satellite imagery" provided by 
Israel had been restricted to "a few senior officials" and not 
disseminated to the intelligence community, on orders from National 
Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

The intelligence community had opposed a previous neo-conservative 
effort in 2002-2003 to claim evidence of a Syrian nuclear program at the 
same site. A senior US intelligence official confirmed to the New York 
Times on October 30 that US intelligence analysts had been aware of the 
Syrian site in question "from the beginning" - meaning from before 2003 
- but had not been convinced that it was an indication of an active 
nuclear program.

In 2002, John Bolton, then under secretary of state for arms control and 
international security, wanted to go public with an accusation that 
Syria was seeking a nuclear weapons program, but the intelligence 
community rejected the claim. A State Department intelligence analyst 
had called Bolton's assertion that Syria was interested in nuclear 
weapons technology "a stretch" and other elements of the community also 
challenged it, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report.

The attack on the site was an obvious demonstration of Israeli military 
dominance over Syria, generally considered a vital ally of Iran by 
Israeli and US officials. It was also in line with the general approach 
of using force against Syria that Cheney and his allies in the 
administration had urged on Israel before and during the war against 
Hezbollah in Lebanon in summer 2006.

During the war, Deputy National Security Adviser Elliot Abrams told a 
senior Israeli official that the Bush administration would not object if 
Israel "chose to extend the war beyond to its other northern neighbor", 
leaving no doubt he meant for Israel to attack Syria, IPS reported last 
December.

David Wurmser's wife Meyrev Wurmser, director of the neo-conservative 
Hudson Institute's Center for Middle East Policy, told Israel's Ynet 
News in December 2006 that, "many parts of the American administration 
believed that Israel should have fought against the real enemy, which is 
Syria and not Hezbollah". She said such an attack on Syria would have 
been "such a harsh blow for Iran that it would have weakened it and 
changed the strategic map in the Middle East".

Both Israeli and US officials dropped hints soon after the Israeli air 
raid that it was aimed at sending a message to Iran. Ten days after the 
raid, Israeli's military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin declared to a 
parliamentary committee, "Israel's deterrence has been rehabilitated 
since the Lebanon war, and it affects the entire regional system, 
including Iran and Syria ..."

Although he did not refer explicitly to the strike in Syria, the fact 
that the Syrian raid was the only event that could possibly have been 
regarded as restoring Israel's strategic credibility left little doubt 
as to the meaning of the reference.

That same day, Reuters quoted an unnamed US Defense Department official 
as saying that the significance of the strike "was not whether Israel 
hit its targets, but rather that it displayed a willingness to take 
military action".

On September 18, former United Nations ambassador John Bolton was quoted 
by JTA, a Jewish news service, as saying, "We're talking about a clear 
message to Iran. Israel has the right to self-defense - and that 
includes offensive operations against WMD [weapons of mass destruction] 
facilities that pose a threat to Israel. The United States would justify 
such attacks."

On October 7, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who enjoys 
access to top administration officials, quoted an unnamed official as 
providing the official explanation for the Israeli attack as targeting 
"nuclear materials supplied to Syria by North Korea".

But then, without quoting the official directly, Ignatius reported the 
official's description of the raid's implicit message: "[T]he message to 
Iran is clear: America and Israel can identify nuclear targets and 
penetrate air defenses to destroy them."

The official's suggestion that the strike was a joint US-Israeli message 
about a joint policy toward striking Iran's nuclear sites was the 
clearest indication that the primary objective of the strike was to 
intimidate Iran at a time when both Israel and the Cheney faction of the 
Bush administration were finding it increasingly difficult to do so.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing 
in US national security policy. His latest book, Perils of Dominance: 
Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in June 
2005.

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