Yossi Melman, a respected investigative journalist, reports in Haaretz Thursday, that the Israeli air strike in early September may not have been against a nuclear reactor under construction but something more sinister: a facility for a much later stage in the nuclear production process.
Melman cites Prof. Uzi Even of Tel Aviv University as being the first to public challenge this assumption. "On the basis of an analysis of the same satellite photos, which have been published in the media and on Web sites and are accessible to everyone, he believes that the structure that was attacked and destroyed was not a nuclear reactor."
The target, in the opinion of this former worker in the Dimona nuclear facility and a Knesset member from the Meretz party, an expert in nuclear proliferation, the plant was for a purpose even more ominous. "In my estimation this was something very nasty and vicious, and even more dangerous than a reactor," says Even. "I have no information, only an assessment, but I suspect that it was a plant for processing plutonium, namely a factory for assembling the bomb."
In other words, Even believes, "Syria already had several kilograms of plutonium, and it was involved in building a bomb factory (the assembling of one bomb requires about four kilograms of fissionable material)."
The analysis by Even and Melman relies on analysis of what the photographs of the target reveal about its likely purposes: it lacks cooling tanks and the chimney that a nuclear reactor would require. They also site evidence that the Syrian sought, after the site, to deeply bury its deadly secret -- lethal plutonium -- deep under the ground and keep international inspectors far away.
Melman also sites the testimony of two US Congressman privy to the secret of the attack:
"Another piece of information crucial for reinforcing Even's assumption is the scant attention paid in the Israeli media to an op-ed published last month in The Wall Street Journal by two members of the U.S. Congress, Peter Hoekstra and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Hoekstra is the senior Republican member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Ros-Lehtinen is the senior Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. They expressed their anger at the fact that the Bush administration 'has thrown an unprecedented veil of secrecy around the Israeli airstrike. It has briefed only a handful of very senior members of Congress, leaving the vast majority of foreign relations and intelligence committee members in the dark. We are among the very few who were briefed, but we have been sworn to secrecy on this matter.'"
Melman continues: "They write in the article that Syria received "nuclear expertise or material" from North Korea, and in the same breath they mention Iran, without explaining why. They claim that the administration leaks are intentionally vague: to justify the Israeli attack but also to blur North Korea's part in the affair."
The bottom line is that Israel may have an even more imminent threat to worry about than Iranian nukes. A bomb may be about to be built by its northern neighbor and antagonist in each of its wars, the same country that the US Administration is now trying to coddle.
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