Dirty Bombs and the Mysterious Israeli Air Strike on Syria

Oct 11, 2007 at 6:20 AM
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Some information is finally beginning to leak out about why Israel bombed a certain place in Syria recently. Some in the U.S. government led by Vice President Dick Cheney believe Israeli intelligence when they claim that the work was nuclear related. Others led by Secretary of State Condolezza Rice and Defense Secretary Bill Gates say the evidence is not conclusive. The New York Times article is here. (this is the best one I have seen on the subject so far)

It has long been known that North Korean scientists have aided Damascus in developing sophisticated ballistic missile technology, and there appears to be little debate that North Koreans frequently visited a site in the Syrian desert that Israeli jets attacked Sept. 6. Where officials disagree is whether the accumulated evidence points to a Syrian nuclear program that poses a significant threat to the Middle East.

Last week, Turkish officials traveled to Damascus to present the Syrian government with the Israeli dossier on what was believed to be a Syrian nuclear program, according to a Middle East security analyst in Washington. The analyst said that Syrian officials vigorously denied the intelligence and said that what the Israelis hit was a storage depot for strategic missiles.
That denial followed a similar denial from North Korea. Mr. Hill, the State Department’s assistant secretary for East Asia and Pacific affairs, raised the Syria issue with his North Korean counterparts in talks in Beijing in late September. The North Koreans denied providing any nuclear material to Syria.
Publicly, Syrian officials have said Israeli jets hit an empty warehouse.

So what to believe?

Still, Mr. Riedel said Israel would not have launched the strike in Syria if it believed Damascus was merely developing more sophisticated ballistic missiles or chemical weapons.
“Those red lines were crossed 20 years ago,” he said. “You don’t risk general war in the Middle East over an extra 100 kilometers’ range on a missile system.”
Another former intelligence official said Syria was attempting to develop so-called airburst capability for its ballistic missiles. Such technology would allow Syria to detonate warheads in the air to disperse the warhead’s material more widely.

I find it very hard to believe Syria was attempting to make a nuclear bomb since that attempt would have been detected earlier but this airburst comment suggests that they might be seeking to make a large dirty bomb to put on top of a missile. If so that would be scary.

All analyzes I have seen on dirty bombs assume some terrorist gets a hold of some small amount of reactor produced radioactive material and put that in a small bomb (10 to 20 pounds). None have considered the effect of what a large amount of radioactive material would have if a 500 pound airburst bomb goes off.

For a fine analysis of small dirty bombs see here.

The very good Wikipedia article explaning that dirty bomb material only comes from nuclear reactors is found here.

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Thank you! this is such an informative article with good links. I don't know what to think about all this mess, but I would be inclined to believe Israel, I don't think
they would have made a strike,which may have started a major war over nothing,
or small range missiles, it must have been something bigger!

Israel's excursion into Syria was a dry run to test Syria's radar capabilities and defenses. Syria is not making any nuclear dirty bomb, it is total nonsense. if you have cable you ought to see Mosiac on Link TV news from the Middle East to get a different perspective on current on the Middle East.

SpiritSeeker replied to The Informer’s comment:
Oct 11, 2007
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You do not need to run several airplanes deep into a country to gather electronic intelligence on radar capabilities. A flight to the border or just over the border will get you that information.

I find all TV news simplistic and sensationalistic so I don't get my news from TV.

From a New York Times article:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 — Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.

“There wasn’t a lot of debate about the evidence,” said one American official familiar with the intense discussions over the summer between Washington and the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. “There was a lot of debate about how to respond to it.”

In his only public comment on the raid, Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, acknowledged this month that Israeli jets dropped bombs on a building that he said was “related to the military” but which he insisted was “not used.”

A senior Israeli official, while declining to speak about the specific nature of the target, said the strike was intended to “re-establish the credibility of our deterrent power,” signaling that Israel meant to send a message to the Syrians that even the potential for a nuclear weapons program would not be permitted. But several American officials said the strike may also have been intended by Israel as a signal to Iran and its nuclear aspirations. Neither Iran nor any Arab government except for Syria has criticized the Israeli raid, suggesting that Israel is not the only country that would be disturbed by a nuclear Syria. North Korea did issue a protest.
Syria is known to have only one nuclear reactor, a small one built for research purposes. But in the past decade, Syria has several times sought unsuccessfully to buy one, first from Argentina, then from Russia.
The partly constructed Syrian reactor was detected earlier this year by satellite photographs, according to American officials. They suggested that the facility had been brought to American attention by the Israelis, but would not discuss why American spy agencies seemed to have missed the early phases of construction.
North Korea has long provided assistance to Syria on a ballistic missile program, but any assistance toward the construction of the reactor would have been the first clear evidence of ties between the two countries on a nuclear program. North Korea has successfully used its five-megawatt reactor at the Yongbyon nuclear complex to reprocess nuclear fuel into bomb-grade material, a model that some American and Israeli officials believe Syria may have been trying to replicate.

No mention was made on where Syria was expecting to get the enriched Uranium to fuel the reactor.

The New York Times today provided before and after satellite pictures of the site. Something was definitely destroyed.

Two photos, taken Wednesday from space by rival companies, show the site near the Euphrates River to have been wiped clean since August, when imagery showed a tall square building there measuring about 150 feet on a side.
The Syrians reported an attack by Israel in early September; the Israelis have not confirmed that. Senior Syrian officials continue to deny that a nuclear reactor was under construction, insisting that Israel hit a largely empty military warehouse.
But the images, federal and private analysts say, suggest that the Syrian authorities rushed to dismantle the facility after the strike, calling it a tacit admission of guilt.
“It’s a magic act — here today, gone tomorrow,” a senior intelligence official said. “It doesn’t lower suspicions; it raises them. This was not a long-term decommissioning of a building, which can take a year. It was speedy. It’s incredible that they could have gone to that effort to make something go away.”

The building shown in the images is not a warehouse by any stretch of the imagination.