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EnolaGaia Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Total posts: 495 Location: USA Gender: Male |
 Posted: 23-09-2007 18:03 Post subject: |
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New wrinkle added to this murky story ....
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Israeli commandos prepared Syria strike: paper
Sun Sep 23, 2007 9:55am EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - A British newspaper said on Sunday Israeli commandos seized North Korean nuclear material in Syria to help secure U.S. approval for an Israeli air strike that destroyed a suspect weapons plant on September 6.
The Sunday Times report, citing Israeli and U.S. sources, was the latest version of an incident shrouded by contradictory accounts from officials and diplomats and by Israeli military censorship of media operating in the country, including Reuters.
As with previous such reports in foreign media, Israel's own public broadcaster led bulletins with the Sunday Times account.
Elements of the story, which did not say when the commando raid took place, coincided with what political sources in the Middle East told Reuters on September 6 and subsequently -- that an air strike reported by Syria that day was linked to a covert Israeli ground raid and that this was linked to Israeli fears its neighbor was developing "weapons of mass destruction".
There are many other accounts, including Syria's which says its air defenses successfully repelled intruding Israeli jets.
A U.S. official source has told Reuters that the area where Syria said Israeli aircraft dropped bombs -- harmlessly in the desert by the Syrian statement -- was a focus of suspicions of secret cooperation on nuclear arms with North Korea.
However, diplomats close to the International Atomic Energy Agency have said they are unaware of such concerns. And some analysts also question the theory, noting in some cases, the failure to find secret weapons in Iraq after Washington had used their supposed existence to justify toppling Saddam Hussein.
The Sunday Times said that, in order to win U.S. President George W. Bush's support for the air raid in Syria's Deir az-Zor region in the early hours of September 6, Israeli commandos earlier had seized "nuclear-related" material. Tests later indicated it had originated in North Korea, the newspaper said.
North Korea, which is negotiating with Washington to end its nuclear program, has dismissed as a "conspiracy" accusations that it may have sent nuclear material or technology to Syria, with which it has said lately it has strengthening ties.
Damascus called reports of nuclear deals a "fabrication". Syria, a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, denies having illegal nuclear activities or nuclear links to North Korea.
ALLIANCE
The United States and Israel view Syria as part of a hostile alliance with Lebanese and Palestinian guerrillas and with Iran, whose nuclear program is strongly opposed by Israel and its allies, despite Tehran's assurances of its civilian purpose.
Jane's Defence Weekly said last week that a fatal blast at a Syrian military complex in July was caused not by hot weather, as Damascus said, but a malfunctioning Iranian chemical warhead.
The Israeli leadership has sought to defuse Syrian warnings about retaliation by suggesting talks. Syria has complained to the United Nations but taken no other public action so far.
The only official Israeli indication that a significant operation took place has been from opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu last week. By saying that he was consulted in advance and had congratulated Prime Minister Ehud Olmert afterwards, he indicated that the mission was both important and successful.
U.S. officials have also been quoted as saying Washington was consulted in advance.
Syria has said its air defenses forced Israeli aircraft to flee and that their bombs caused no damage. Western diplomats have said Israeli jets may have simply been testing Syrian air defenses after Damascus bought new weaponry from Russia.
U.S. media have also quoted officials in Washington saying Israeli forces may have hit Iranian arms destined for Lebanon's Hezbollah group, with which Israel fought a war last year.
One political source in the region has told Reuters that at least part of the air operation may have been intended to divert attention from the activities of Israeli troops on the ground.
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SOURCE: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2361165320070923?sp=true |
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| EnolaGaia Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Total posts: 495 Location: USA Gender: Male |
| Posted: 14-10-2007 03:16 Post subject: |
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Israeli air strike was on Syrian nuke reactor: paper
Sat Oct 13, 2007 4:37pm EDT
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Israel's air strike inside Syria last month was directed at a site judged by Israeli and U.S. intelligence analysts to be a partly constructed nuclear reactor, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.
Citing U.S. and foreign officials who had access to the analysts' intelligence reports, all who spoke under condition of anonymity, the Times said the reactor was apparently modeled on one in North Korea used for stockpiling nuclear weapons fuel.
... Continued...
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSB68881220071013 |
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| maximus_otter Recovering policeman
Great Old One Joined: 13 Sep 2006 Total posts: 219 Location: You don't have the "Need to Know." Gender: Male |
| Posted: 16-10-2007 16:38 Post subject: |
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Sounds like classic proxy warfare.
1. In the late 70s Saddam's Iraq - despite huge oil reserves - "needs a nuclear facility to generate power."
2. Israel - perceiving this to be an Iraqi ploy, and the Osirak plant to be intended to manufacture nukes, launches Operation Opera.
3. Osirak is hit by a squadron of Israeli F-16s with F-15 top cover.
4. 25 years later: Iran - despite huge oil reserves - states that it needs nuclear power in order to generate electricity.
5. Iran's President Ahmadinejad makes 2005 speech saying that Israel should be "wiped off the map."
6. "An empty stretch of sand" in Iran's neighbour and ally, Syria, is bombed by a squadron of Israeli F-16s.
"The lesson of history is that no-one learns the lesson of history."
maximus otter |
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| wembley8 Home of Legends Joined: 24 Jan 2003 Total posts: 2001 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 17-10-2007 22:39 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | In the late 70s Saddam's Iraq - despite huge oil reserves - "needs a nuclear facility to generate power." |
There are one or two other countries with huge oil reserves that have nuclear power stations.
| Quote: | | Iran's President Ahmadinejad makes 2005 speech saying that Israel should be "wiped off the map." |
Or did he?
"Experts confirm that Iran's president did not call for Israel to be 'wiped off the map'. Reports that he did serve to strengthen western hawks"
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_steele/2006/06/post_155.html
| Quote: | | "The lesson of history is that no-one learns the lesson of history." |
"What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it." - Hegel
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_by/georg+wilhelm+friedrich+hegel |
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| coldelephant |
| Posted: 18-10-2007 15:32 Post subject: |
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Semantics - whereby government = government and people = everybody else on the planet which is not government
government + people = everybody
If everybody does not learn from history then
Everybody does not learn from history = nobody learned from history
Nobody learned from history (when converted into present continuous) = nobody learns from history.
Anyhoo - did the "US empire" order Israel to strike Syria to set a cat among the pidgeons or did Israel act by itself in order to flex it's muscles and rattle a sabre a bit? |
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| Pietro_Mercurios Heuristically Challenged
Great Old One Joined: 10 Aug 2005 Total posts: 6499 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 18-10-2007 15:44 Post subject: |
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| coldelephant wrote: | ...
Anyhoo - did the "US empire" order Israel to strike Syria to set a cat among the pidgeons or did Israel act by itself in order to flex it's muscles and rattle a sabre a bit? |
Israel is quite capable of stirring the pot on its own. Like the midget that mouths off in a pub and then ends up holding the coats. It has previous for it. |
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| ted_bloody_maul Great Old One Joined: 23 May 2003 Total posts: 4013 Location: Quester's Psykick Dancehall Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 26-10-2007 14:41 Post subject: |
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US claims photos show Syrian nuclear reactor
By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Their analysis of satellite images in an area near the river Euphrates reveals what they say are buildings similar to a North Korean nuclear reactor capable of producing fuel for a nuclear bomb. The experts, David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector, and Paul Brannan, from the Institute for Science and International Security (Isis), believe they have found the site that could have been the target of a night-time Israeli raid on 6 September. The Israelis imposed a news blackout on the raid, which prompted speculation that the attack may have been a dry run for a strike on Iran.
In a report released yesterday by Isis, the experts say that commercial satellite imagery of the area shows buildings under construction. The buildings have the same footprint as that of North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, which is capable of producing nuclear material for one bomb a year.
Syria admits co-operating with North Korea but says the two countries have no nuclear co-operation. The site is 100 miles from Syria's border with Iraq and close to an airstrip that would allow for easy transportation of personnel. 'I'm pretty convinced that Syria was trying to build a nuclear reactor,' Mr Albright told The Washington Post yesterday. However the Isis report said the images 'raise as many questions as they answer'. Isis is an independent research organisation that follows nuclear weapons production around the world.
A week ago ABC News reported that Israel had recruited a spy to take ground photographs of the reactor construction from inside the complex. Because the building was already covered with a roof, they say, a spy may have been necessary to take photographs from inside the reactor building. The Washington Post has reported that the North Korean-style reactor is built gradually on site and the roof would hide what was inside the building.
The Isis experts suspect that Syria was building a small gas-graphite reactor of about 20-25 megawatts, which is large enough to make about one nuclear weapon's worth of plutonium each year.
Israel, which has an estimated 100 nuclear weapons, has remained silent about the bombing raid. Nor has it provided any justification for its raid on a foreign country. Syria flatly denies having a nuclear programme. But secretly building a nuclear reactor would put Syria in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which all signatories must reveal such decisions.
Syria is reported to be to removing what remains of the site, while the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is also analysing photographs in an attempt to establish what Syria was up to. The director of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, is angry at Syria, the Israelis and Western intelligence agencies for failing to pass on information about the alleged secret nuclear programme. 'We have said, 'If any of you has the slightest information showing that there was anything linked to nuclear, we would of course be happy to investigate it,'' Mr ElBaradei told Le Monde. 'Frankly, I venture to hope that before people decide to bombard and use force, they will come and see us to convey their concerns.' Mr ElBaradei also warned that efforts to contain nuclear proliferation were endangered by military action. 'The use of force can set things back, but it does not deal with the roots of the problem,' he said. US security experts have published what they believe to be photographs of a secret nuclear facility in Syria, which was bombed by Israeli jets last month.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/article3096422.ece |
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| EnolaGaia Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Total posts: 495 Location: USA Gender: Male |
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| ramonmercado AKA Dora Kaplan Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 7414 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
| Posted: 04-11-2009 17:24 Post subject: |
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Some more "news".
| Quote: | Mossad Hacked Syrian Official’s Computer Before Bombing Mysterious Facility
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/mossad-hack
By Kim Zetter November 3, 2009 | 2:25 pm | Categories: Hacks and Cracks, NSA, Surveillance
Agents of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service hacked into the computer of a senior Syrian government official a year before Israel bombed a facility in Syria in 2007, according to Der Spiegel.
The intelligence agents planted a Trojan horse on the official’s computer in late 2006 while he was staying at a hotel in the Kensington district of London, the German newspaper reported Monday in an extensive account of the bombing attack.
The official reportedly left his computer in his hotel room when he went out, making it easy for agents to install the malware that siphoned files from the laptop. The files contained construction plans for the Al Kabir complex in eastern Syria — said to be an illicit nuclear facility — as well as letters and hundreds of detailed photos showing the complex at various stages of construction.
At the beginning — probably in 2002, although the material was undated — the construction site looked like a treehouse on stilts, complete with suspicious-looking pipes leading to a pumping station at the Euphrates. Later photos show concrete piers and roofs, which apparently had only one function: to modify the building so that it would look unsuspicious from above. In the end, the whole thing looked as if a shoebox had been placed over something in an attempt to conceal it. But photos from the interior revealed that what was going on at the site was in fact probably work on fissile material.
Early in the morning of September 6, 2007, Israeli fighter jets bombed the complex, located in the desert near the Euphrates river about 80 miles from the Iraq border. The attack, dubbed “Operation Orchard,” seemed to come out of nowhere and was marked by a resounding silence from both Israel and the United States afterward.
Israel claimed the incident never occurred. The United States claimed ignorance, but a State Department official suggested the target was nuclear equipment obtained by “secret suppliers.”
The Syrians were said to have been building the reactor with help from North Korea. The Israeli military’s intelligence unit, known as 8200, was reportedly tipped off to this by the U.S. National Security Agency, which intercepted conversations between Syrian officials at the reactor and North Koreans.
Israel’s concern about the facility really kicked into gear when it discovered that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad traveled to Syria in 2006, according to der Spiegel. The paper alleges that Ahmadinejad promised the Syrians more than $1 billion to hasten their progress.
In early 2007, Iran’s former deputy Minister of Defense defected to Turkey and told the CIA that Iran was funding a top-secret nuclear facility in Syria in conjunction with North Korea. Days before the Israeli attack on Al Kabir, a ship from North Korea arrived in Syria loaded with uranium materials, according to the Mossad.
Israel’s attack on the facility commenced late in the evening of September 5, when 10 Israeli jets departed from a base in Northern Israel around 11 p.m. and headed west over the Mediterranean. Seven of them turned east to Syria, flying low, and took out a radar station with their missiles. About 20 minutes later they released their bombs on Al Kabir.
Afterward, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reportedly sent a message to Syria through Turkey saying no further hostilities were planned.
Israel, Olmert said, did not want to play up the incident and was still interested in making peace with Damascus. He added that if Assad chose not to draw attention to the Israeli strike, he would do the same.
In this way, a deafening silence about the mysterious event in the desert began. Nevertheless, the story did not end there, because there were many who chose to shed light on the incident — and others who were intent on exacting revenge.
Syrian President Bashar Assad maintains that the facility was a conventional military installation. But Der Spiegel reports that in June 2008, a team of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency analyzed soil at Al Kabir taken after the bombing and found traces of uranium that were “of a type not included in Syria’s declared inventory of nuclear material.” Assad says the Israelis dropped the samples from the air when they bombed the facility in order to frame Syria.
Photo: Aug. 5, 2007 satellite image of suspected nuclear reactor site in Syria a month before it was bombed. (AP Photo/DigitalGlobe) |
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| Zilch5 Vogon Poet
Great Old One Joined: 08 Nov 2007 Total posts: 277 Location: Western Sydney, Australia Gender: Male |
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