*JERUSALEM:* Israel for the first time confirmed that it bombed a suspectedSyrian nuclear reactor in 2007, saying on Wednesday that the strike removeda major threat to Israel and the region and was a “message” to others.
The first public acknowledgement by Israel that its F-16 warplanes carriedout the September 6, 2007, bombing of the partially constructed Al-Kubarfacility near Deir al-Zor was made after military censors lifted a morethan 10-year order that had barred Israeli officials from discussing it.
The strike had already been extensively reported on abroad, and discussedby US officials. The Israeli military released newly declassifiedoperational footage, photographs and intelligence documents about thebombing, showing the moment that the suspected reactor was hit, anddetailing the intelligence operation that led up to it.
Israeli intelligence reports concluded that the reactor had been underconstruction with North Korean help and was months away from activation.Reuters has been unable to immediately verify the Israeli material.Israel’s decision to go public comes after repeated calls in recent monthsby Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the United States and theinternational community to take tougher action on Syria’s ally, Iran.
“The motivation of our enemies has grown in recent years, but so too themight of the IDF (Israel Defence Forces),” Israeli Defence Minister AvigdorLieberman said on Wednesday.
“Everyone in the Middle East would do well to internalise this equation,”he said.
The 5 am Wednesday release of the declassified documents prompted a cascadeof Israeli newspaper and television reports.
The Israeli military described in detail the events leading up to the nightof September 5 to September 6, 2007, in which, it said, eight F-16warplanes took off from the Ramon and Hatzerim air bases and flew to Deiral-Zor region, 450 km northwest of Damascus, Syria. The operation waslaunched after it received intelligence indicating that “a substantialthreat to Israel and the region, in the form of a nuclear reactor, wasbeing built in Syria”.
*“TOP SECRET”*
The military declassified internal “top secret” intelligence reports, inHebrew, some of them partly redacted.
One, dated March 30, 2007, said: “Syria has set up, within its territory, anuclear reactor for the production of plutonium, through North Korea, whichaccording to an (initial) worst-case assessment is liable to be activatedin approximately another year. To our assessment [REDACTED] secretive andorderly [REDACTED] for achieving a nuclear weapon.”
Israeli intelligence predicted that the suspected reactor “would turnoperational by the end of 2007”.
The mission to destroy the facility started at 10:30 pm on September 5 andended with the safe return of the warplanes at 2:30 am the next day, theIsraeli military said.
The military said the reactor “had been totally disabled, and that thedamage done was irreversible”. It decided at the time not to go public withthe strike. As it happened, the event was first made public by Syria,which, as reported by Reuters at the time, said in the early hours ofSeptember 6 that Syrian air defences had repelled an incursion by Israeliwarplanes.
Syria, a signatory of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), hasalways denied that the site was a reactor or that Damascus engaged innuclear cooperation with North Korea. The Israeli military announcement onWednesday noted that the area in question, around Deir al-Zor, was capturedby Islamic State after the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011.
Had there been an active reactor there, the Israeli military said, it wouldhave had “severe strategic implications on the entire Middle East as wellas Israel and Syria”.
*COUNTDOWN*
The Israeli release contains a black-and-white aerial photograph captioned“before the attack” and showing a box-like square structure amid desertdunes with smaller outlying buildings. A series of black-and-white videos,taken above the target, shows the structure in cross-hairs. A male voice isheard counting down three seconds, a cloud of black smoke rises from thecentre of the structure as it explodes. Other footage appears to show theaftermath – a smouldering hole in the ground.
A clip taken from “The Air Force Control Center, headed by the Commander ofthe IAF, Maj Gen Eliezer Shkedi” shows assembled Israeli air forcepersonnel, some of their faces pixilated, applauding as they receive anupdate.
In declassified and unredacted letters to Shkedi, then Israeli defenceminister Ehud Barak and then prime minister Ehud Olmert praised theoperation.
Wednesday’s release came ahead of the publication of a memoir by Olmert.One of his aides told Reuters the book would contain passages about the2007 strike in Syria. – Agencies