Today The Jerusalem Post reports that Israeli authorities have started to talk about the September 6 IAF attack on targets in northern Syrian. Up until now Israeli officials had been uncharacteristically mum on the incident, leaving everyone to speculate on the nature and intent of the operation. The Jerusalem Post's round-up:
The Washington Post reported that the target had been a facility involved in a joint Syrian-North Korean nuclear project – a claim backed by former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton.
Britain's Sunday Times, meanwhile, reported just over a week ago that soldiers from the IDF's elite General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal) had seized North Korean nuclear material from a secret Syrian military installation before it was bombed by IAF jets.
The paper claimed that the IAF attack on September 6 was sanctioned by the US after the Americans were given proof that the material was indeed nuclear-related. It also stated that Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who used to head the unit, personally oversaw the operation.
Someone who claims to have access to Binyamin Netanyahu told me that the strike was essentially a test of Iranian surveillance capability – to see what Iran could catch and how soon. Sounds far fetched, but who knows?
I was shocked from the start that this story wasn't a much bigger deal. It would seem to me that a nuclear nexus of Iran, Syria, and North Korea pretty much defines our worst nightmare. This comes, by the way, two months after a mysterious accident in northern Syria, widely believed to be the result of chemical weapons development, killed both Syrian and Iranian engineers.
What I find most interesting about this is that Victor Davis Hanson said a long a time ago we would start to see Saudi Arabia and Turkey and others in the area give Israel the implicit okay to take out regional threats to stability. Hanson said they'd condemn Israel publicly, but not do a thing about it. I'm not sure I've even seen the public condemnation.
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