PrintOctober 24, 2007
Did Kim send nuke materials to Syria?
Alarm is now spreading about the Syrian facility that was bombed by Israel on September 5. Israeli jets, along with Special Forces, an electronic countermeasures plane, and possibly a human spy planted inside the bombed facility, were able to identify the facility as a North Korean reactor, similar to the one that produced plutonium at Byong Yon --- which the NoKos have now promised solemnly to dismantle in return for lots of goodies.
If the NoKo-style plant in Syria was a reactor, the speculation is that it would be some time from going critical. But a shipment of North Korean "cement" arrived a few days before the raid. The alarm that is now spreading suggests that the shipment involved fissionable material. According to British and US sources, this was a close call --- too close for just a reactor under construction.
In an article titled, "How close were we to a third world war?" the Sunday Herald of Scotland quotes a "Senior British ministerial official" as saying that:
"If people had known how close we came to world war three that day there'd have been mass panic ... Never mind the floods or foot-and-mouth, (British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown really would have been dealing with the bloody Book of Revelation and Armageddon."
President Bush used surprisingly similar language last week, when he grimly warned that "World War Three" might result from Iran getting weapons.
Stanley Kurtz at National Review Online also just published a thoroughly alarming report, suggesting similar possibilities.
It looks now as if Syria has been used as safe haven for Iranian nuclear efforts, in collaboration with the North Koreans. The US State Department, including Secretary Rice, have tried to keep that secret for fear of undermining the six-party agreement with North Korea. It now seems as if the NoKos had a trick up their sleeves, and the most alarming possibility is that they simply sent some of their fissionable materials to Syria or even Iran. It would need to be only a small amount of material, and Kim Il Jong has engaged in criminal enterprises for many years. He knows how to smuggle goods by sea or air. He is a malevolent trickster, a description that applies to A'jad and his boss, Khamenei, as well Bashar Assad. These people would delight in pulling a nuclear fast one on the West.
The danger is that all the CIA stories telling us that Iran won't have nukes for ten or fifteen years could simply be false. By going straight to North Korea (or even Pakistan), it is easy for Ahmadi-Nejad and his band of zealots to simply buy plutonium or uranium. They could then surprise the West with a fait accompli, years before the intelligence predictions were to come true. (They are nearly always wrong anyway.)
Israeli Special Forces are thought to have collected soil samples indicating whether there were radioactive materials at the Syrian site. In addition, the bombing itself might have spread radioactive products by air, which are readily detectable.
In an unexpected way all this confirms President Bush's phrase "the Axis of Evil" --- long ridiculed by the Left. What we have seen is an Israeli raid on a Syrian target immediately eliciting a public protest, not from Syria (which stayed mum), but from North Korea. The back story is said to be the death of NoKo technicians in the Syrian plant. The North Koreans stupidly implicated themselves by publicly protesting an Israeli raid on the other side of the world. It is a rare occurrence when a nation immediately points the finger at itself.
It is believed that Syria, which has no oil, does not have the finances to pay for its recent shopping spree for Russian planes and anti-air defenses. Those materials likely have been paid for by Iran's oil money. The Iranians may be hiding nuclear materials in Syria in case of a Coalition attack on Iran itself. But the cover has now been blown.
Bottom line: Alarm bells should be shrilling all over the civilized world. The Iran-North Korean-Syria danger has been getting bigger by the day. There is no way to tell exactly when the balloon will go up. But be prepared.
James Lewis blogs at dangeroustimes.wordpress.com
