Decision ‘08

What’s The Rush?

Looks like SOMEBODY’s got a guilty conscience:

New commercial satellite photos show that a Syrian site believed to have been attacked by Israel last month no longer bears any obvious traces of what some analysts said appeared to have been a partly built nuclear reactor.

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,” said a senior intelligence official. “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.”

Any attempt by Syrian authorities to clean up the site would make it difficult, if not impossible, for international weapons inspectors to determine that exact nature of the activity there. Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna have said they hoped to analyze the satellite images and ultimately inspect the site in person. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that released a report on the Syrian site earlier this week, said the expurgation of the building was inherently suspicious.

“It looks like Syria is trying to hide something and destroy the evidence of some activity,” Mr. Albright said in an interview. “But it won’t work. Syria has got to answer questions about what it was doing.”

The striking difference in the satellite photos surprised even some outside experts who were skeptical that Syria might be developing a nuclear program.

“It’s clearly very suspicious,” said Joseph Cirincione, an expert on nuclear proliferation at the Center for American Progress in Washington. “The Syrians were up to something that they clearly didn’t want the world to know about.”

Mr. Cirincione said the photographic evidence “tilts toward a nuclear program,” but does not prove that Syria was building a reactor.

…The desolate Syrian site is located on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River some 90 miles north of the Iraqi border and seven miles north of the desert village of At Tibnah. An airfield lies nearby. The new images reveal that the tall building is gone but still show a secondary structure and a pumping station on the Euphrates. Reactors need water for cooling.The purported reactor at the site is believed to be modeled on a North Korean model, which uses buildings a few feet longer on each side than the Syrian building that vanished.Mr. Albright called the Syrian site “consistent with being a North Korean reactor design.”

Res ipsa loquitur…

8 Responses to “What’s The Rush?”

1 mikebdot Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 10:06 am
I’m no nuclear pysicist, but the building that was leveled was 150 ft. by 150 ft. Is that enough space to do anything remotely useful in making nuclear weapons? Seriously, I have no idea. That seems really small to me. I suppose there is a large underground area? All I’m saying is color me unimpressed.

http://www.isis-online.org/publications/SyriaUpdate25October2007.pdf

If it only takes a 150 ft. by 150 ft. footprint to create nuclear weapons, it seems like it’d be really easy to miss underground bunkers or, shoot, caves where they could do that.

Or was this building supposedly the first of many?
2 mikebdot Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 10:08 am
And are inspectors allowed in after a building has been destroyed but not before? I can’t imagine they would even allow inspectors in regardless of how fast they clean it up.
3 Andy Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
With all the talk about commercial sites finally getting around to snapping new pics six weeks after the fact ignores the inevitable thousands of pics snapped by non-commercial sources. I’d like to see some of those with Syrians and NoKos scurrying to “scrub” the site. Heh!
4 Aaron Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1192380657735
5 Mark Says:
October 27th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
Mike, if the building had not been nuclear in nature, they would have certainly allowed the IAEA inspectors to come look at the wreckage rather than destroying it, because to do so would have been a HUGE black eye for Israel and another massive intelligence failure. The fact that they quickly destroyed the building and wiped the site is as close to an admission that the site was nuclear as you’re ever going to see outside of direct confirmation through analysis of the wreckage, impossible now…
6 mikebdot Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Good point. Still, though, wondering about the size to facilitate a nuclear building capable of building weapons. How big does it need to be? Only 150 ft. by 150 ft.? That’s tiny.
7 mikebdot Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Perhaps there were other things besides nuclear stuff they didn’t want anyone to see, like a weapon supply to Iraqi insurgents, or some other such nefarious activity.
8 Mark Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Well, the experts are saying it appeared to be from a North Korean design, so I guess they found the dimensions similar enough to warrant that conclusion…though I don’t claim to share their expertise. It’s worth noting that some cooling facilities were apparently nearby but seperate…the building has been around since at least 2003, also, according to other recently discovered photos, rendering any connection with Iraq exceedingly remote…