-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: September 15, 2007 8:53:01 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: The Observer (UK) Investigates: Was Israeli raid a dry
run for attack on Iran?
Was Israeli raid a dry run
for attack on Iran?
Mystery surrounds last week's air foray into Syrian territory.
The Observer's Foreign Affairs Editor attempts to unravel the truth
behind Operation Orchard and allegations of nuclear subterfuge
Peter Beaumont
The Observer (UK), September 16, 2007
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2170188,00.html
The head of Israel's airforce, Major-General Eliezer Shkedi, was
visiting a base in the coastal city of Herziliya last week. For the
50-year-old general, also the head of Israel's Iran Command, which
would fight a war with Tehran if ordered, it was a morale-boosting
affair, a meet-and-greet with pilots and navigators who had flown
during last summer's month-long war against Lebanon. The
journalists who had turned out in large numbers were there for
another reason: to question Shkedi about a mysterious air raid that
happened this month, codenamed 'Orchard', carried out deep in
Syrian territory by his pilots.
Shkedi ignored all questions. It set a pattern for the days to
follow as he and Israel's politicians and officials maintained a
steely silence, even when the questions came from the visiting
French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner. Those journalists who
thought of reporting the story were discouraged by the threat of
Israel's military censor.
But the rumours were in circulation, not just in Israel but in
Washington and elsewhere. In the days that followed, the sketchy
details of the raid were accompanied by contradictory claims even
as US and British officials admitted knowledge of the raid. The New
York Times described the target of the raid as a nuclear site being
run in collaboration with North Korean technicians. Others reported
that the jets had hit either a Hizbollah convoy, a missile facility
or a terrorist camp.
Amid the confusion there were troubling details that chimed
uncomfortably with the known facts. Two detachable tanks from an
Israeli fighter were found just over the Turkish border. According
to Turkish military sources, they belonged to a Raam F15I - the
newest generation of Israeli long-range bomber, which has a combat
range of over 2,000km when equipped with the drop tanks. This would
enable them to reach targets in Iran, leading to speculation that
it was an 'operation rehearsal' for a raid on Tehran's nuclear
facilities.
Finally, however, at the week's end, the first few tangible details
were beginning to emerge about Operation Orchard from a source
involved in the Israeli operation.
They were sketchy, but one thing was absolutely clear. Far from
being a minor incursion, the Israeli overflight of Syrian airspace
through its ally, Turkey, was a far more major affair involving as
many as eight aircraft, including Israel's most ultra-modern F-15s
and F-16s equipped with Maverick missiles and 500lb bombs. Flying
among the Israeli fighters at great height, The Observer can
reveal, was an ELINT -- an electronic intelligence gathering aircraft.
What was becoming clear by this weekend amid much scepticism was
the nature of the allegation, largely from sources connected with
the administration of President George Bush, if not the facts.
In a series of piecemeal leaks from US officials that gave the
impression of being co-ordinated, a narrative was laid out that
combined nuclear skulduggery and the surviving members of the 'axis
of evil': Iran, North Korea and Syria.
It also combined a series of neoconservative foreign policy
concerns: that North Korea was not being properly monitored in the
deal struck for its nuclear disarmament and was off-loading its
material to Iran and Syria, both of which in turn were helping to
rearm Hizbollah.
Underlying all the accusations was a suggestion that recalled the
bogus intelligence claims that led to the war against Iraq: that
the three countries might be collaborating to supply an
unconventional weapon to Hizbollah.
It is not only the raid that is odd but also, ironically, the
deliberate air of mystery surrounding it, given Israel's past
history of bragging about similar raids, including an attack on an
Iraqi reactor. It was a secrecy so tight, in fact, that even as the
Israeli aircrew climbed into the cockpits of their planes they were
not told the nature of the target they were being ordered to attack.
According to an intelligence expert quoted in the Washington Post
who spoke to aircrew involved in the raid, the target of the
attack, revealed only to the pilots while they were in the air, was
a northern Syrian facility that was labelled as an agricultural
research centre on the Euphrates river, close to the Turkish border.
According to this version of events, a North Korean ship,
officially carrying a cargo of cement, docked three days before the
raid in the Syrian port of Tartus. That ship was also alleged to be
carrying nuclear equipment.
It is an angle that has been pushed hardest by the neoconservative
hawk and former US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.
But others have entered the fray, among them the US Secretary of
State, Condoleezza Rice, who, without mentioning Syria by name,
suggested to Fox television that the raid was linked to stopping
unconventional weapons proliferation.
Most explicit of all was Andrew Semmel, acting deputy assistant
Secretary of State for nuclear non-proliferation policy, who,
speaking in Rome yesterday, insisted that 'North Koreans were in
Syria' and that Damascus may have had contacts with 'secret
suppliers' to obtain nuclear equipment.
'There are indicators that they do have something going on there,'
he said. 'We do know that there are a number of foreign technicians
that have been in Syria. We do know that there may have been
contact between Syria and some secret suppliers for nuclear
equipment. Whether anything transpired remains to be seen.
'So good foreign policy, good national security policy, would
suggest that we pay very close attention to that,' he said. 'We're
watching very closely. Obviously, the Israelis were watching very
closely.'
But despite the heavy inference, no official so far has offered an
outright accusation. Instead they have hedged their claims in ifs
and buts, assiduously avoiding the term 'weapons of mass destruction'.
There has also been deep scepticism about the claims from other
officials and former officials familiar with both Syria and North
Korea. They have pointed out that an almost bankrupt Syria has
neither the economic nor the industrial base to support the kind of
nuclear programme described, adding that Syria has long rejected
going down the nuclear route.
Others have pointed out that North Korea and Syria in any case have
also had a long history of close links - making meaningless the
claim that the North Koreans are in Syria.
The scepticism was reflected by Bruce Reidel, a former intelligence
official at the Brookings Institution's Saban Centre, quoted in the
Post. 'It was a substantial Israeli operation, but I can't get a
good fix on whether the target was a nuclear thing,' adding that
there was 'a great deal of scepticism that there's any nuclear
angle here' and instead the facility could have been related to
chemical or biological weapons.
The opaqueness surrounding the nature of what may have been hit in
Operation Orchard has been compounded by claims that US knowledge
over the alleged 'agricultural site' has come not from its own
intelligence and satellite imaging, but from material supplied to
Washington from Tel Aviv over the last six months -- material that
has been restricted to just a few senior officials under the
instructions of national security adviser Stephen Hadley, leaving
many in the intelligence community uncertain of its veracity.
Whatever the truth of the allegations against Syria - and Israel
has a long history of employing complex deceptions in its
operations - the message being delivered from Tel Aviv is clear: if
Syria's ally, Iran, comes close to acquiring a nuclear weapon, and
the world fails to prevent it, either through diplomatic or
military means, then Israel will stop it on its own.
So Operation Orchard can be seen as a dry run, a raid using the
same heavily modified long-range aircraft, procured specifically
from the US with Iran's nuclear sites in mind. It reminds both Iran
and Syria of the supremacy of its aircraft and appears to be
designed to deter Syria from getting involved in the event of a
raid on Iran -- a reminder, if it were required, that if Israel's
ground forces were humiliated in the second Lebanese war its
airforce remains potent, powerful and unchallenged.
And, critically, the raid on Syria has come as speculation about a
war against Iran has begun to re-emerge after a relatively quiet
summer.
With the US keen to push for a third UN Security Council resolution
authorising a further tranche of sanctions against Iran, both
London and Washington have increased the heat by alleging that they
are already fighting 'a proxy war' with Tehran in Iraq.
Perhaps more worrying are the well-sourced claims from conservative
thinktanks in the US that there have been 'instructions' by the
office of Vice-President Dick Cheney to roll out support for a war
against Iran.
In the end there is no mystery. Only a frightening reminder.
In a world of proxy threats and proxy actions, the threat of
military action against Iran has far from disappeared from the agenda.
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