Thanks to Israel, Assad (or ISIS) have no nukes

The U.S. is concerned about the “civil” war in Syria. People forget that it could have been much worse had Israel not acted eight years ago when, on Sept. 6, 2007, IAF bombers flew into the Syrian Desert and lay to waste their nuclear facility.

The raid was described in the Sunday Times of London a week later:

“It was just after midnight when the 69th Squadron of Israeli F15Is crossed the Syrian coastline. On the ground, Syria’s formidable air defenses went dead. An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles from the Iraqi border was under way. At a rendezvous point on the ground, a Shaldag air force commando team was waiting to direct their laser beams at the target for the approaching jets. The team had arrived a day earlier, taking up position near a large underground depot.

“Soon the bunkers were in flames. Ten days after the jets reached home, their mission was the focus of intense speculation this weekend amid claims that Israel believed it had destroyed a cache of nuclear materials from North Korea. The Israeli government was not saying. ‘The security sources and IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] soldiers are demonstrating unusual courage,’ said Ehud Olmert, the prime minister. ‘We naturally cannot always show the public our cards’.”

At the time, Syria denied the Israeli raid ever happened. But about a month after the attack the Syrian U.N. Ambassador fessed up, although Israel remained quiet as not to publicly embarrass the Syrian government (which need little help in that area). The Jerusalem Post reported:

“The Syrian envoy disclosed the nature of the target during a meeting of a U.N. committee where Israeli envoys were also present. A senior source in the Foreign Ministry confirmed that the statement was made in New York by the Syrian official. Since first announcing on Sept. 6 that an incursion into Syrian airspace by IAF jets took place, Syria has attempted to strike a balance between mustering international condemnation of Israel on the one hand and efforts by Damascus to blur the nature and purpose of the facility attacked on the other hand.”

In other words, they kept telling different stories of what really happened. This is how the story evolved (according to Syria): First they said that the IAF dropped a fuel tank in the Syrian desert, then Syria admitted the IAF bombed a strategic location — a warehouse; finally Syria said there was NO Raid. They followed no raid with blaming the U.S. for the attacks, and I believe the last thing they said the IDF bombed nothing important, just a construction site.

Thirteen months after the attack, the Associated Press explained:

“Samples taken from a Syrian site bombed by Israel on suspicion it was a covert nuclear reactor contained traces of uranium combined with other elements that merit further investigation, diplomats said Monday.

“The diplomats — who demanded anonymity because their information was confidential — said the uranium was processed and not in raw form, suggesting some kind of nuclear link. But one of the diplomats said the uranium finding itself was significant only in the context of other traces found in the oil or air samples taken by International Atomic Energy Agency experts during their visit to the site in June.”

The AP continued: “The U.S. says the facility hit by Israeli warplanes more than a year ago was a nearly completed reactor that — when on line — could produce plutonium, a pathway to nuclear arms.”

In other words, if Israel didn’t strike Syria in 2007 Assad might have a nuclear arsenal by today, or things could be even worse because the area where the nuclear reactor that Israel wiped out is now controlled by ISIS. They could have had their murderous hands on nuclear weapons or at least the nuclear fuel necessary for a “dirty bomb.”

Israel has this “nasty” habit of preventing nuclear war, or at the very least preventing tyrants from having the opportunity of using nuclear weapons against the United States, Israel or their own people.

Before the Syrian action, in 1981, Israel executed a military plan that was roundly criticized across the world (including by the United States). It was only with the hindsight of history that we can now say that Menachem Begin’s decision to bomb an Iraqi nuclear reactor may have saved the world from a Sadaam Hussein with nuclear weapons.

Twenty-six years later, Israel destroyed the nuclear facility in Syria, a mission that had the blessing of an American president, a mission that the world should be very thankful happened because if it didn’t, Syria or ISIS might have nuclear weapons today.

Remembering the Syrian mission illustrates the difference between the Bush administration that blessed the IAF mission in Syria and the Obama administration, which not only prevented Israel from wiping out the Iranian nuclear facilities, but also signed an agreement that guarantees that Iran will be able to develop nukes within ten years (and soon if they cheat).