#OyVeyDonaldTrump's Confusing Strike on Syria.If President#OyVeyDonaldTrump broadens his aims against Assad, he will enter the very morass that Candidate #OyVeyDonaldTrump warned against.

Illustration by Tom Bachtell

On August 7, 1998, Al Qaeda suicide bombers struck two U.S. embassies in East Africa, killing two hundred and twenty-four people, most of them Africans. Two weeks later, President Bill Clinton launched Operation Infinite Reach, a fusillade of cruise missiles aimed at a reported Al Qaeda meeting in Afghanistan, and at a factory in Sudan, which was suspected of involvement with chemical weapons. “There will be no sanctuary for terrorists,” Clinton declared. The retaliation produced few tangible benefits. And yet, since then, from Kosovo to Waziristan to Libya, the United States has repeatedly threatened or carried out missile and drone attacks and air strikes for limited and sometimes imprecise purposes. In the modern Presidency, firing off missiles has become a rite of passage.

Last Thursday, his seventy-seventh day in office, President Donald Trump pressed the cruise-missile button, sending fifty-nine Tomahawks to strike an airbase in Syria. He did so after concluding from intelligence reports that President Bashar al-Assad’s Air Force had, on April 4th, killed or sickened hundreds of people in a chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, a town held by rebels seeking Assad’s overthrow. Trump said that his strike was aimed at ending “the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria.”



The President’s decision was familiar for being both spontaneous and confusing. As has happened before, he was apparently inspired to act by what he saw on TV—in this case, distressing images of stricken women and children. Yet, despite having previously seen similarly horrifying pictures, Trump had been skeptical of military action in Syria. In 2013, Assad’s forces attacked civilians and rebels near Damascus with sarin, a banned nerve agent, killing more than a thousand people. Trump advised President Obama, via Twitter, “Do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside.” (Obama had called Assad’s use of chemical arms crossing a “red line,” which might lead the U.S. to take military action, but he did not strike. Instead, Russia helped broker an agreement by which Assad gave up many—but evidently not all—of his chemical arms.)

Trump has said, “I’m very capable of changing to anything I want to change to.” In the case of Syria, however, he seems to have acted without a clear plan in place. During the campaign, he promised to “bomb the shit out of” isis, which holds territory in Syria, but he also said that it was foolish to become mired in the civil war, or to target Assad, who has opposed isis—at least, rhetorically. As recently as March 30th, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Assad’s future would be “decided by the Syrian people,” words that signalled a sharp departure from Obama’s insistence that Assad must leave office. Then, last Thursday, Tillerson seemed to shift direction, saying that “it would seem there would be no role” for Assad in Syria’s political future. But he later said, “I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today.”

Syria’s civil war is the worst geopolitical disaster of the twenty-first century. It has claimed at least four hundred and seventy thousand lives; prompted a refugee crisis that has destabilized European politics and fuelled the rise of nativist populism; and created a playing field for Russian and Iranian adventurism in the Middle East. Six years of efforts to end the war through diplomacy have failed. The interference of regional and global powers, combined with the fragmentation of militias and guerrillas on the battlefield, have made the conflict appear all but unresolvable. During the past year, the more mainstream rebels opposing Assad have suffered repeated setbacks, including the loss of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city.

Why, then, would the Trump Administration want to lob a few dozen cruise missiles into this splintered landscape? One limited rationale might be that Syria’s conflict has eroded global treaties banning the use of chemical arms—every time Assad gasses civilians, he increases the likelihood that another dictator or general will use them. It seems odd, though, to initiate armed intervention to prevent one sort of Syrian war crime but not others. Assad has tortured and executed thousands of his own people. Syrian and Russian forces routinely violate international law by targeting civilians, physicians, and rescue workers with bombs and artillery shells. And, if Trump has suddenly been moved to address the suffering, he might start recognizing the legitimacy of Syrians as refugees of war and welcoming them to resettle in the United States.

If President Trump broadens his aims against Assad, to establish civilian safe havens, for example, or to ground Syria’s Air Force, or to bomb Assad to the negotiating table, he will enter the very morass that Candidate Trump warned against. He would have to manage risks—military confrontation with Russia, an intensified refugee crisis, a loss of momentum against isis—that Obama studied at great length and concluded to be unmanageable, at least at a cost consistent with American interests.

Since the Cold War’s end, the United States has led or joined more than half a dozen wars or armed interventions lasting longer than a few months, including the ouster of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, in 1991; the conflicts in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo; the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11; and, in 2011, during the Arab uprisings, the removal of the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. A few of these wars achieved their aims, albeit at a cost in lives and treasure; others went sideways or turned into disasters, as in Libya, where Obama’s intervention has been followed by six years of chaos, civil war, and the rise of a branch of isis. You don’t need an advanced degree in military history to identify the main lessons: once started, even limited wars upend initial plans and assumptions, violence produces unintended consequences, and conflicts are much easier to begin or escalate than to end.

Canadian, European, and Middle Eastern allies, as well as some sections of the Washington foreign-policy establishment, applauded Trump for his strike, pointing out its narrow scope, and noting that Assad had brought it on himself. Unfortunately, Donald Trump’s continual search for approval seems to contribute to his unpredictability. Perhaps he will soon rediscover his inclination to proceed cautiously in Middle Eastern wars. Given his bombast, his inconsistency, and his preference for gut instinct over policy knowledge, he always seemed likely to be a dangerous wartime President. The worry now is that he will also be an ambitious one. ♦

#RIPPaxAmericana ?? #OyVeyDonaldTrump in Bed ?or Against? the Russian -Iranian Alliance in the Syria , Lebanon and the rest of Middle East

Can Trump Break Up the Russian-Iranian Alliance?


One of the president's biggest early foreign policy tests will be navigating the aftermath of the nuclear deal, which brought the Islamic Republic even further into Russia's orbit.

Russia and Iran are currently engaged in unprecedented cooperation. Never in 500 years has the leadership of the two countries been so close. Despite deeply rooted mistrust and a long history as rivals, a number of common interests have brought Russia and Iran together. First among them is the mutual geostrategic goal of zero-sum opposition to the West, especially the United States.

Russian-Iranian cooperation may be short-lived. But in the meantime it can inflict lasting damage to U.S. interests. It is going to be difficult to drive a wedge between Russia and Iran in the short-term, but there are certain things the new Trump administration could do to that end.

To understand the close ties between Russia and Iran, it's important to understand the complicated history between the two countries.

The Grand Duchy of Muscovy, the precursor of the modern Russian state, and Iran, then called Persia, opened official relations in 1521. Trade was the main reason for the relationship; both countries looked down on each other as inferior, and thus gave little thought to expanding ties. Tsarist Russia, which succeeded the Muscovy in 1547, and then the Russian Empire that Peter the Great proclaimed in 1721, soon began to expand south and southeast into Central Asia and the Caucasus. This is when Russian and Persian interests first clashed. In 1796, Catherine the Great sent troops into the Iranian North Caucasus, and only her death that year may have prevented a full-scale Russian invasion.

In the 19th century, Russia and Iran fought two wars, in 1804-1813 and 1826-1828. Iran lost both and ceded to Russia parts of what are now Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, and Turkmenistan. The wars took a serious financial toll on Iran and anti-Russian sentiment rose on both religious grounds and resentment of the high cost of the war effort. In February 1829, a mob murdered Russian ambassador Alexander Griboyedov with his staff in Tehran. Griboyedov had helped negotiate the Treaty of Turkmenchay, which ended the war in 1828 on what the Iranians saw as humiliating terms. A Russian envoy would not be murdered by foreign nationals in a foreign country again until 2016.

Despite these tensions, commercial and political interests brought Russia and Iran together in the early 1900s. The Kremlin wanted to pull Iran into its sphere of influence and the Iranian shah needed money, which he began borrowing from Russia either at exorbitant rates or with political strings attached. The Iranian public, of course, bore the cost. This opened a rift between the Iranian government's attitude toward Russia and that of its people -- one that remains to this day.

After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet forces sponsored separatist movements in Iranian territory, first in the northern Iranian province of Gilan on the Caspian Sea and later in both Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. In 1946, Soviet leader Josef Stalin sparked the first real crisis of the Cold War when he briefly refused to withdraw the Red Army from Iran in 1946. To this day, Iranians speak resentfully of the Soviet occupation. Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini disdained both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. His defining slogan was "Neither East nor West but Islamic Republic."

While the Iranian public remained distrustful of Russia, with the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, as well as Khomeini's death and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, some Iranian officials sought to improve ties with Moscow on pragmatic grounds. Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani even traveled to Moscow. But the Kremlin worried that Iran might export its radical ideology to Russia's large Muslim population or foment unrest in the Caucasus and Central Asia in order to influence Moscow -- after all, this is the traditional Kremlin approach. Yet Tehran sided with Moscow during Chechnya's separatist struggles in the early 1990s. Iran also helped Moscow end Tajikistan's 1992-1997 civil war. By the end of the '90s, despite remaining differences, Russia had emerged as Iran's main conventional arms supplier and began assisting in its nuclear program.

When Vladimir Putin rose to power in Russia in 2000, he began the process of returning to the Middle East. To do so, he worked with everyone in the region, friend and foe alike. Russia's relationship with Iran was part of this effort.

The strategy grew out of Putin's antagonism toward the West and its democratic values. He viewed Russia's foreign policy as a zero-sum game against the West and acted accordingly. He had several reasons to pursue improved ties with Iran, but his desire to reduce Western influence and pull Iran closer to Russia overrode all others. As Prof. Mark Katz of George Mason University wrote, Putin worried that then-Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's "dialogue of civilizations" would bring Iran closer to the U.S. -- and thus out of Russia's sphere of influence.

In October 2000, soon after taking office, Putin publicly repealed the 1995 Gore-Chernomyrdin pact, which limited Russia's sale of conventional arms to Iran. Press reports indicated that in practice the agreement gave Russia "a free pass to sell conventional weapons to Iran" until 1999, but the public cancellation of the deal sent a message that Putin wanted closer cooperation with the Islamic Republic.

Putin also sought to improve ties with Iran for economic reasons. Iran was a lucrative market for Russia's military and the arms trade and nuclear cooperation continued to expand. In addition, the two countries shared a strong opposition to Sunni Islamism. A tough stance against terrorism helped propel Putin into power in March 2000 after a series of apartment bombings shook Moscow and several other cities in September 1999. Putin immediately blamed the Chechens and declared a second war on Chechnya, though much evidence suggests Putin and his main intelligence service, the FSB, may have orchestrated the attacks. In any case, Moscow's human rights abuses in the first Chechen war had already transformed the secular Chechen separatist cause into a radical Islamist one.

The majority of Russia's Muslims are Sunni and countering Sunni extremism was among Putin's official policies from the very beginning. Shia Iran shared this concern. Indeed, Russian experts and officials claim that Iran is a potentially "secular" force that can help counter Sunni Islamism. This has led to a double standard on Sunni versus Shia terrorism. In February 2003, for example, Russia's Supreme Court declared the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, while Shia Hezbollah received no such designation. Though in practice Putin was just as willing to work with Sunni Islamists as anyone else, he took a different stance domestically.

Of course, difficulties remained in the Russia-Iran relationship. Since 2006, Moscow has sought to dilute sanctions against Iran. For its part, Iran would have preferred Russia did not support sanctions at all. Tehran also felt snubbed when, under pressure from the U.S. and Israel, Moscow froze the sale of S-300 air defense missiles to Iran in 2010.

In 2013, however, Russian-Iranian cooperation rose to an entirely new level as the two countries' political interests converged more than ever before.

In 2012, Putin began a third presidential term amidst massive protests against him and his United Russia party. Putin launched a domestic crackdown and blamed the U.S. State Department for "giving a signal" to protestors to take to the streets. He could not even fathom the possibility that people could protest independently. Fear that domestic protest can break out anywhere, anytime now guides much of his domestic policy, which goes hand-in-hand with his foreign policy. In Russia the line between the two is blurred to a degree that is hard to imagine in the West.

Putin believes that the West is behind all protests in the post-Soviet sphere and the Middle East, and that he is next. This is one of the main reasons why he has supported the Assad regime in Syria at all costs. This in turn brought Moscow especially close to Tehran. Putin believes he is in a stronger position to confront the West in the Middle East if he is allied with Iran.

Russia also emerged as a strong voice in the P5+1 group that negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran, especially in the context of Western retreat from the Middle East. Putin pursued his own self-interest in regard to the talks: A deal with Iran would open more possibilities for cooperation. On the one hand, Russia would prefer a non-nuclear Iran; it hardly needed convincing to participate in talks to curb Tehran's nuclear program. On the other hand, Moscow felt less threatened by the program than the West, and ultimately puts its desire to counter the West above all. It may make little sense from a Western perspective, but Moscow often ignores real threats and elevates imaginary ones -- hence its obsession with a perceived threat from NATO.

Russia and Iran also shared a concern about the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan following President Obama's plans to draw down U.S. troops by 2014. Ironically, Putin wanted the U.S. to remain in Afghanistan more than the U.S. wanted to -- albeit on Putin's terms. Russia and Iran were impacted by narcotrafficking coming out of Afghanistan and viewed the Taliban, which is traditionally both anti-Shia and anti-Russian, as a potential enemy.

In spring 2013, according to Russian sources, Russian and Iranian officials discussed the idea of Tehran joining the Moscow-led Eurasian Customs Union at a seminar in Tehran titled "Iran and Regional Cooperation in Eurasia." Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi attended the event and reportedly spoke of Iran's usefulness to the development and expansion of Eurasianism -- Putin's alternative vision to Western liberalism. The Customs Union in particular, and the Eurasian Economic Union that followed it in 2014, are part of Putin's effort to counterbalance the European Union. This may have been just talk, but that the conversation took place at all is significant. Putin never offered to allow any Arab country to join the Customs Union, and Iran was never part of the Soviet Union, as were the other member countries.

In March 2014, Moscow annexed Crimea and began destabilizing activities in Eastern Ukraine. The U.S. and Europe imposed sanctions on Russia in response. U.S.-Russian relations plunged to the lowest levels since the Cold War, intensifying Putin's need for anti-Western allies. Iran fit that role perfectly. That America's allies are traditionally Sunni only adds to Iran's appeal.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Iran in January 2015 and Putin visited in November -- the first such visits in at least a decade. After they met, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei praised Putin for "neutralizing Washington's plots." Putin again brought up the issue of Iranian cooperation with the Customs Union, offered a $5 billion line of credit, and discussed expansion of bilateral trade. He also highlighted Iran's positive role as a "trustworthy and reliable ally," demonstrating once again his true priority of pulling Iran into his sphere of influence. Indeed, Russian Middle East expert Georgiy Mirsky wrote in his blog on the liberal website Echo Moskvy, "Several years ago, I heard from the lips of one MIA [Ministry of Internal Affairs] employee such reasoning: 'For us, a pro-American Iran is worse than a nuclear Iran.'" Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani have met several times since 2015, as have their ministers and aides. Subsequent high-level meetings followed and are now almost routine.

As negotiations on the nuclear deal gained traction, the Kremlin highlighted Russia's indispensable role in them. When the agreement was signed in July 2015, Putin praised the deal and emphasized Russia's participation in the process, while the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted that the accord was "based on the approach articulated by President Vladimir Putin." The ink had barely dried on the accord when Putin lifted the freeze on the S-300 sale and deliveries began in April 2015, despite Israel's concerns. In June 2016, Putin called for Iran's admission to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, something -- just as with the Customs Union -- he had never done for any Arab state.

In August 2016, Moscow took the world -- and many in Iran -- by surprise when it reportedly used Iran's Hamadan airbase to bomb targets in Syria. The last time a foreign power had based itself in Iran was during World War II. Russian media was awash with praise for Russia-Iran anti-terrorism cooperation. In the context of public outrage in Iran, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan accused Moscow of "ungentlemanly" behavior for publicizing its use of the base. Nonetheless, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said only days afterwards that "The flights [of Russian warplanes] haven't been suspended. Iran and Russia are allies in the fight against terrorism," though the Hamedan air base, he claimed, was only "used for refueling."

The following month, Putin said that it would be "just" if Iran reached pre-sanctions level of oil production. In November, he began discussing a $10 billion arms deal. In late December, discussions on Iranian admission to the Customs Union continued. A number of Russian sources reported that Iran hopes to move closer to the Union and benefit from free trade with its members. In the same month, Rouhani travelled to Armenia -- a Customs Union member -- ostensibly to improve ties, and signed a number of agreements. It was Rouhani's first visit to Armenia as president. The traditionally more liberal-oriented press outlet Nezavisimaya Gazeta suggested that Armenia might tie Iran to the Customs Union. While it remains unclear whether this will happen, it is significant that the issue remains on the table.

When it comes to the Iranian view of Russia, sources report that the two countries agree on terrorism-related issues and Iran sees Russia's policies in Syria as "wise." Recently, Russian press outlet Izvestiya wrote that, reflecting on the past year, it was Russia that always spoke out for lifting sanctions and maintained dialogue with Tehran. Iranian cinema made its way into Europe, the article claims, because it was widely shown at Russian film festivals. The article concludes, "Dialogue between the two countries has not been interrupted even for a minute. And it is this fact that gives reason for optimism -- whatever the complexities may be, Russia and Iran will find a reason for friendship."

At the moment, it is going to be difficult to drive a wedge between Russia and Iran. Too many interests hold them together and they are likely to continue to put historical mistrust aside even as Tehran's persistent and historically-justified fears that Moscow will throw Iran under the bus continue to undermine the relationship.

From Moscow's perspective, the U.S. has been and will continue to be an enemy, no matter how hard any U.S. president tries to improve relations. Putin needs the U.S. as an enemy to justify domestic problems at home and he sees the current geopolitical order, anchored by the U.S., as disadvantaging him. Nothing short of a rearrangement of that order will satisfy Putin. Nobel Prize-winning author and journalist Svetlana Alexievich observed in October 2015 that Russians "are people of war. We don't have any other history. Either we were preparing for war or we were fighting one. And so all of this militarism has pushed all of our psychological buttons at once." Putin needs allies who share this worldview.

President Trump expressed two contradictory policies during his campaign: being tough on Iran and improving relations with Russia. These two goals are incompatible because Putin wants a partnership with Trump in Syria, but Syria is where Putin is most closely allied with Iran. In order to push Iran and Russia apart, Trump needs to resolve this contradiction. The recent Syria peace talks in Kazakhstan only brought Russia and Iran closer together, if anything, given their pledge to fight "jointly" against ISIS and al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. This development will also make it even more difficult for Trump to ally with Russia on Syria.

So far, Putin has succeeded in balancing Israeli and Sunni interests with its growing relationship with Iran. But it is unclear how long Putin can sustain this policy. Certainly, Putin did not hesitate to discount Israel's interests when it came to selling S-300 weapons to Iran. Indeed, it is not in Israel's interest for Putin to continue supporting Bashar al-Assad and thereby expand Iran's influence in the Middle East. The Trump administration could encourage and support U.S. allies like Israel in order to make it more difficult for Putin to maintain his balance of good relations with all sides. It should also step up security cooperation with its allies to demonstrate that it is still committed to the region.

In the long term, Russia and Iran diverge somewhat on Syria. Iran perceives Syria as within its sphere of influence, which is not very different from how Putin views the former Soviet Union countries that he does not consider real states. Iran is interested in exacerbating sectarian divisions in Syria so that the Assad regime becomes an Iranian client-state with no independent decision-making. Iran is also closer to Assad himself than Putin, who simply wants Assad or someone else like him to ensure his interests in Syria. He cares more about how he can leverage Syria in his relations with the West than Syria itself. At the same time, Putin also increasingly perceives the Middle East as falling within the Russian sphere of influence, albeit differently than Iran. Historically, Moscow always looked for buffer zones out of its sense of insecurity, and this is precisely how it feels now.

The Trump administration could emphasize to Putin that Russian and Iranian interests in Syria are bound to clash in the future, and therefore an alliance with Iran can only go so far. But most of all, the U.S. needs to be present in the region and regain its leadership position. Putin preys on weakness and has perceived the U.S. as weak for years. He stepped into a vacuum in the Middle East, especially in Syria, that was created by America's absence. By taking an active role in the region, the U.S. would limit Putin's influence, including his alliance with Iran.

While Syria Burns: Friction and Ignorance among the Republicans Ticket. Difference of Opinion between Obama and Clinton

Gov. Mike Pence had said the United States should push back on the Russians. His running mate Donald Trump disagreed during the 2nd Presidential debate on Sunday in front of 67 millions Americans  in the USA and 200+ million interested parties million.

 For more than a year, Syria’s civil war has vexed and divided the Obama administration. Now, barely a month before the election, those tensions are finally spilling into the presidential race.

On Sunday, at their second debate, Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton both struggled to explain how they would handle the five-year-old war, which President Obama has refused to get drawn into despite a dire humanitarian crisis.

In Mr. Trump’s case, he disavowed the hawkish stance toward Russia of his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, advocating an entirely different set of strategic objectives. In Mrs. Clinton’s case, she threatened to widen a policy split over Syria with the president she served as secretary of state.

Mr. Trump’s response was the more striking one: He countered Mr. Pence’s pledge, made only five days earlier in his debate with Mrs. Clinton’s running mate, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, to use airstrikes against the government of President Bashar al-Assad as a response to Russian provocations.


“He and I haven’t spoken, and I disagree,” Mr. Trump said, not just throwing Mr. Pence under the bus, but rolling it over him once or twice.

Mrs. Clinton did not contradict Mr. Obama’s basic policy. But she reiterated her call for a no-fly zone over northern Syria, a step the president and his senior military advisers have long rejected. Such a move, she argued, would pressure the Russians, with whom Mr. Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry, tried in vain over seven months to negotiate a cease-fire.

Though Mrs. Clinton did not flesh out her proposal, her wording suggested she might be willing to impose such a zone without Russia’s cooperation. That would be a major break with the administration, analysts said — one that could lead to the United States striking government targets and raise the risk of a clash between Russian and American warplanes.

“That’s a really bold statement,” said Andrew J. Tabler, an expert on Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

It was the first time that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump had faced off over Syria at any length in their campaign — a remarkable fact, given that it is arguably the most urgent geopolitical crisis in the world. Their exchange captured the mind-numbing complexity of the conflict, the shrinking number of viable options for dealing with it, and the fast-moving nature of events.

“Between now and the election, a quarter of a million people are going to be starving, and going to be forced to surrender to Assad and the Russians,” Mr. Tabler said. “The next president will have to deal with it in pretty short order.”

By the time Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump is inaugurated, in fact, the besieged city of Aleppo may well have fallen to Mr. Assad and his Russian backers, its exhausted residents may be dead or displaced, and the rebels who holed up there scattered into the hinterland, where analysts believe they would be likely to wage a guerrilla war against the Assad government.

With few good options for protecting the city that do not involve deploying American troops, it made sense for the candidates not to stake out a hard-and-fast position, analysts said. Mrs. Clinton said she would not commit ground troops to such an effort; Mr. Trump, for his part, argued that Aleppo “basically has fallen” already, which is not accurate.

“No one has an easy answer on Aleppo,” said Philip H. Gordon, a former coordinator of Middle East policy in the Obama administration. “But assuming that the mere threat of force or a handful of airstrikes would quickly make it better would be the triumph of hope over experience. If you decide to go that route you had better be prepared to back it up.”

For Mrs. Clinton, there is the added risk of putting daylight between her and Mr. Obama during a campaign in which the president’s support has proved more important than many expected, given his rising approval ratings and popularity with elusive younger voters. As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton split with Mr. Obama over providing weapons to the rebels in Syria — a decision the president made after she left the administration.

Mr. Gordon, who now advises the Clinton campaign, said there were other good reasons for Mrs. Clinton not to lay out the details of her strategy.

“Deciding the details of a no-fly zone is not something you do during a campaign,” he said. “You sit in the Situation Room, consult the military, run red teams, and make an assessment.”

Mr. Trump, he noted, does not have experience in the Situation Room to make these judgments. His description of his Syria policy betrayed little preparation and was replete with faulty statements, like the one about Aleppo. To the extent that there was a consistent thread, it was the argument advanced by Mr. Assad and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia: that the war is a binary conflict between the Syrian government and Islamic terrorists.

For Mr. Trump, the one and only military objective of American forces in the Syria conflict is to focus on the Islamic State — a position that puts him pretty close to Mr. Obama, who has directed the Pentagon to keep its attention on the group, because it, and not Mr. Assad, pose a direct threat to American interests.

“Right now, Syria is fighting ISIS; we have people that want to fight both at the same time,” Mr. Trump said, using an acronym for the group. “We have to worry about ISIS before we can get too much more involved.”

Without question, Mr. Trump has been consistent: In two interviews with The New York Times, in March and July, he argued that it made little sense to try to unseat Mr. Assad if he is fighting the same enemy the United States is battling. Mr. Pence, who has served a decade on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and received a stream of classified briefings on the many-sided conflict, has taken a more traditional Republican view: Don’t let the Russians dominate a proxy war in a small Mideast nation.

During his debate with Mr. Kaine, Mr. Pence argued that the tragedy in Aleppo was so great that the United States is bound, for humanitarian and strategic reasons, to push back against Mr. Putin. On Monday, he said one of the moderators, Martha Raddatz of ABC News, had mischaracterized his position, though she read aloud his own words.

The difference is more than one of nuance. It goes to the heart of two major issues: whether the United States should intervene in humanitarian crises and how it should deal with Russia.

On the first, Mr. Trump seems clear. While he told The Times that he would consider using American force to prevent a humanitarian tragedy, he came up with no examples of where he might do that. On the second, Mr. Trump has sought at every turn to play down Russia’s influence. He has talked about beginning a new relationship with Mr. Putin and avoided any discussion of pushing back against Mr. Putin’s actions in Syria, or his recent efforts to intimidate former Soviet states that are now part of NATO — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

On Sunday, Mr. Trump argued again that there was no evidence Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee or of the emails of prominent Americans — including some Republicans. It was an interesting moment to make the case, 48 hours after the director of national intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security publicly blamed Russia, and its leadership, for the actions.

“I don’t know Putin,” Mr. Trump said, trying to put some distance from him. “But I notice, anytime anything wrong happens, they like to say the Russians are — she doesn’t know if it’s the Russians doing the hacking. Maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia. And the reason they blame Russia because they think they’re trying to tarnish me with Russia.”

God Save America from Donny T ...Trump Could Be Catastrophic for Israel

Trump Could Be Catastrophic for Israel by Louis René Beres ( Guest). Published with permission of the Author and US Today where the article first appeared on August 30th ,2016

Conventional wisdom suggests that Donald Trump would be better for Israel than his opponent. But without getting into any systematic comparison of concrete foreign policy proposals, it is nonetheless plain that the Republican candidate's crudely cobbled together ideas on world affairs hold substantially little real promise for Israel. Indeed, no meaningfully capable analysis of Trump's Aug. 15, 2016 speech could ever avoid the conclusion that his enthusiastically expressed willingness to "work with" Russia, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah would in fact be injurious to the Jewish State.Senior advisers of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu have however indicated that they would prefer to deal with Hillary Clinton who they know very well rather the unpredictable and unstable Donald Trump.

From the standpoint of Israel's existential security, this is actually a charitable assessment. After all, Trump's proposals would go so far as to put Israel's physical survival at a tangibly greater risk. What else can be said for a seemingly random patchwork of ready-made phrases that call implicitly or explicitly for accelerating Russian military basing in Iran? How else ought anyone interpret Trump's stunningly naive call for combating the Islamic State group at all costs, even if that effort should correspondingly strengthen the Shiite militia Hezbollah? And how should a tiny Jewish state in the region that is inextricably consecrated to a sacred posture of "Never Again" simultaneously countenance or effectively support the continuing mass murder of Syrian children by the Damascus regime?

For Israel, these should not be difficult questions.

For Israel's allies in the United States, moreover, it's finally time to separate out purposeful and refined strategic analyses of the "Trump foreign policy" from the endless litany of barren clichés, emotional arguments and thoroughly empty witticisms. It's not that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are in any way perfect on Israel, but rather that Donald Trump is manifestly and incontestably imperfect.

For Israel, judging at least by the Republican candidate's own steadily enthusiastic words of support for Jerusalem's chief enemies, a Trump presidency could be irremediably catastrophic.

Ultimately, Israel's core survival will not be about Hillary's emails, or Benghazi, or her speaking fees or the Clinton Foundation. It will be about each identifiable enemy's particular "order of battle" and about certain ratios and correlations of raw power in the Middle East, including various and bewilderingly complex intersections between state and substate adversaries. In this vital regard, Israel will not be helped in any way by Trump's ill-conceived and persistently inexpert recommendations.

That, again, is actually a charitable assessment of Trump's proposed foreign policy.

Crafting a nation's foreign policy is never a job for narrowly educated political operatives. It is, rather, an inherently nuanced intellectual task, one that calls for a deep and genuine appreciation of strategic interdependencies and also of assorted and corresponding legal obligations. It should not be "forgotten" by Trump that international law remains an integral part of the law of the United States, largely by way of the Constitution's Article VI "Supremacy Clause" and of associated Supreme Court decisions, especially the Paquete Habana (1900).

During my almost half-century of teaching international relations and international law at Princeton and Purdue, I instructed my students that there are multiple and sometimes indecipherable axes of conflict in world politics. Understood in terms of Trump's August 15 foreign policy speech and Israel, this point means, inter alia, that we ought never to assume that inflicting harms upon any one selected enemy is automatically in our own overall national interest. Instead, our American president must always bear in mind that what is appropriately harmful to one adversary or set of adversaries (e.g., the Islamic State group) may at the same time be altogether helpful to other principal enemies.

Trump remains so singularly focused on the perceived threat from the Islamic State group that he is also willing to tolerate deepening military cooperation between Iran and Russia. Already, Tehran is allowing Russian military aircraft to operate against Syrian rebels from an Iranian air base in Hamadan Province. From the particular standpoint of Israeli national security, further encouraging any such allowance would make it increasingly difficult or perhaps operationally impossible to mount any residually indispensable preemptions against Iran. From the starkly amateurish perspective of candidate Trump's expressed foreign policy preferences, it must be judged reasonable or "cost-effective" to sacrifice Israel's most critical security requirements for the presumed benefit of defeating a single substate Jihadist foe.

The ultimate irony of Trump's disjointed preferences is that they would actually work on behalf of the Islamic State group, while at the same time strengthening America's most formidable enemies. Although still unrecognized by Trump, or by his well-hidden "advisers," the prospective existential threat to the United States from Russia remains immeasurably greater than any conceivable threat from the Islamic State. It follows, among many other recognizable flaws in Trump's proposed foreign policy, that the Republican candidate's prescriptions would be calculably injurious to both Israel and the United States.

In the matter of Donald Trump's proposed foreign policy, the conventional wisdom is markedly unwise. This is true, of course, unless one should somehow prefer Russia, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah to Israel and America.

Louis René Beres

Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war. His latest academic articles have been published in the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,” “Harvard National Security Journal” (Harvard Law School), “International Security” (Harvard), “Parameters: Journal of the US Army War College” (Department of Defense), “International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence,” “Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs,” “Brown Journal of World Affairs” and Oxford University Press. Dr. Beres' 12thbook, “Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel's Nuclear Strategy,” was published earlier this year, by Rowman & Littlefield.

September 2007 Operation Orchard: Israel's Strike on the Syrian Reactor Remembered in Zion

Operation Orchard (Hebrew: מבצע בוסתן‎‎, Mivtza bustan) was an Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria, which occurred just after midnight (local time) on September 6, 2007. The Israeli and U.S. governments imposed virtually total news blackouts immediately after the raid that held for seven months. The White Houseand Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) subsequently confirmed that American intelligence had also indicated the site was a nuclear facility with a military purpose, though Syria denies this.A 2009 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation reported evidence of uranium and graphite and concluded that the site bore features resembling an undeclared nuclear reactor. IAEA was initially unable to confirm or deny the nature of the site because, according to IAEA, Syria failed to provide necessary cooperation with the IAEA investigation. Syria has disputed these claims. Nearly four years later, in April 2011, the IAEA officially confirmed that the site was a nuclear reactor

The Israeli attack followed top-level consultations with the Bush Administration. After realizing that the US was not willing to take its own military action, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert decided to adhere to the 1981 Begin Doctrine and unilaterally strike to prevent a Syrian nuclear weapons capability, despite serious concerns about Syrian retaliation. In stark contrast to the doctrine's prior usage against Iraq, the airstrike against Syria did not elicit international outcry. A main reason is that Israel maintained total and complete silence regarding the attack, and Syria covered up its activities at the site and did not cooperate fully with the IAEA. The international silence may have been a tacit recognition of the inevitability of preemptive attacks on "clandestine nuclear programs in their early stages." If true, the Begin Doctrine has undoubtedly played a role in shaping this global perception.

According to later news reports, the raid was carried out by Israeli Air Force (IAF) 69 Squadron F-15Is, F-16Is, and an ELINT aircraft; as many as eight aircraft participated and at least four of these crossed into Syrian airspace. The fighters were equipped with AGM-65 Maverick missiles, 500 lb bombs, and external fuel tanks.^] One report stated that a team of elite Israeli Shaldag special-forces commandos arrived at the site the day before so that they could highlight the target with laser designators. while a later report identified Sayeret Matkal special-forces commandos as involved

Pre-strike activity

In 2001, the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence service, was profiling newly inducted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Visits by North Korean dignitaries, which focused on advanced arms deliveries, were noticed. Aman, Israel's military intelligence department, suggested nuclear arms were being discussed, but the Mossad dismissed this theory. In spring 2004, U.S. intelligence reported multiple communications between Syria and North Korea, and traced the calls to a desert location called al-Kibar. Unit 8200, Israel's signals intelligence and code breaking unit, added the location to its watch list.

On April 22, 2004, a massive explosion occurred on a North Korean freight train heading for the port of Namp'o. According to British intelligence writer Gordon Thomas, the Mossad had learned that dozens of Syrian nuclear technicians were in a compartment adjoining a sealed wagon. According to Thomas, the Syrians had arrived in North Korea to collect the fissionable material stored in the wagon. All of the technicians were killed in the train explosion. Their bodies were flown to Syria in lead-encased coffins aboard a Syrian military plane. A wide area around the explosion site was cordoned off for days as North Korean soldiers in anti-contamination suits collected wreckage and sprayed the area. Mossad analysts suspected they were trying to recover weapons-grade plutonium. Since the explosion, the Mossad tracked about a dozen trips by Syrian military officers and scientists to Pyongyang, where they met with high-ranking North Korean officials.

The Daily Telegraph, citing anonymous sources, reported that in December 2006, a top Syrian official arrived in London under a false name. The Mossad had detected a booking for the official in a London hotel, and dispatched at least ten undercover agents to London. The agents were split into three teams. One group was sent to Heathrow Airport to identify the official as he arrived, a second to book into his hotel, and a third to monitor his movements and visitors. Some of the operatives were from the Kidon Division, which specializes in assassinations, and the Neviot Division, which specializes in breaking into homes, embassies, and hotel rooms to install bugging devices. On the first day of his visit, he visited the Syrian embassy and then went shopping. Kidon operatives closely followed him, while Neviot operatives broke into his hotel room and found his laptop. A computer expert then installed software that allowed the Mossad to monitor his activities on the computer. When the computer material was examined at Mossad headquarters, officials found blueprints and hundreds of pictures of the Kibar facility in various stages of construction, and correspondence. One photograph showed North Korean nuclear official Chon Chibu meeting with Ibrahim Othman, Syria's atomic energy agency director. Though the Mossad had originally planned to kill the official in London, it was decided to spare his life following the discovery Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was notified. The following month, Olmert formed a three-member panel to report on Syria's nuclear program. Six months later, Brigadier-General Yaakov Amidror, one of the panel's members, informed Olmert that Syria was working with North Korea and Iran on a nuclear facility. Iran had funneled $1 billion to the project, and planned on using the Kibar facility to replace Iranian facilities if Iran was unable to complete its uranium enrichment program.

In July 2007, an explosion occurred in Musalmiya, northern Syria. The official Sana news agency said 15 Syrian military personnel were killed and 50 people were injured. The agency reported only that "very explosive products" blew up after a fire broke out at the facility. The September 26 edition of Jane's Defence Weekly claimed that the explosion happened during tests to weaponise a Scud-C missile with mustard gas.

A senior U.S. official told ABC News that, in early summer 2007, Israel had discovered a suspected Syrian nuclear facility, and that the Mossad then "managed to either co-opt one of the facility's workers or to insert a spy posing as an employee" at the suspected Syrian nuclear site, and through this was able to get pictures of the target from on the ground." Two months before the strike, Israel launched the Ofek-7 spy satellite into space. The satellite was geo-positioned to watch activity at the complex.

In mid August 2007, Israeli commandos from the Sayeret Matkal reconnaissance unit covertly raided the suspected Syrian nuclear facility and brought nuclear material back to Israel. Two helicopters ferried twelve commandos to the site in order to get photographic evidence and soil samples. The commandos were probably dressed in Syrian uniforms. Although the mission was successful, it had to be aborted earlier than planned after the Israelis were spotted by Syrian soldiers. Soil analysis revealed traces of nuclear activity.Anonymous sources reported that once material was tested and confirmed to have come from North Korea, the United States approved an Israeli attack on the site. Senior U.S. officials later claimed that they were not involved in or approved the attack, but were informed in advance. In his memoir Decision Points, President George W. Bush wrote that Prime Minister Olmert requested that the U.S. bomb the Syrian site, but Bush refused, saying the intelligence was not definitive on whether the plant was part of a nuclear weapons program. Bush claimed that Olmert did not ask for a green light for an attack and that he did not give one, but that Olmert acted alone and did what he thought was necessary to protect Israel. Another report indicated that Israel planned to attack the site as early as July 14, but some U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, preferred a public condemnation of Syria, thereby delaying the military strike until Israel feared the information would leak to the press. The Sunday Times also reported that the mission was "personally directed" by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Three days before the attack, a North Korean cargo ship carrying materials labeled as cement docked in the Syrian port of Tartus. Gordon Thomas wrote that as the ship was being unloaded, a Mossad operative photographed the process with a hidden camera. An Israeli on-line data analyst, Ronen Solomon, found an internet trace for the 1,700-tonne cargo ship, the Al Hamed, which allegedly was docked at Tartus on September 3. By April 25, 2008 the ship was under the flag of the Comoros.

The Israeli Air Force pilots who took part in the operation were personally handpicked by General Eliezer Shkedy, commander of the Israeli Air Force. Shkedy chose pilots whose flying skills matched his own. The pilots began training weeks before the raid. The pilots trained to hit a small target at an angled dive of thirty degrees. During the practice missions, the pilots used dummy bombs which exploded white phosphorus smoke on the target to determine the accuracy of the drops. The drills were carried out over the Negev at night. The pilots were not told of their target until they were briefed by General Shkedy shortly before the operation began. During the briefing, Shkedy assured the pilots that Syrian air defenses would be jammed, and warned them that no bombs were to fall on civilians

On September 4, key players in the operation met in General Shkedy's headquarters. The photographs taken by a Mossad agent as the ship was being unloaded, as well as the agent's report, were the focus of the meeting.

Several newspapers reported that Iranian general Ali Reza Asgari, who had disappeared in February in a possible defection to the West, supplied Western intelligence with information about the site

Target

Alleged Syrian nuclear reactor, after it was destroyed by Israeli air strike

CNN first reported that the airstrike targeted weapons "destined for Hezbollah militants" and that the strike "left a big hole in the desert".One week later, The Washington Post reported that U.S. and Israeli intelligence gathered information on a nuclear facility constructed in Syria with North Korean aid, and that the target was a "facility capable of making unconventional weapons". According to The Sunday Times, there were claims of a cache of nuclear materials from North Korea.

Syrian Vice-President Faruq Al Shara announced on September 30 that the Israeli target was the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands, but the center itself immediately denied this. The following day Syrian President Bashar al-Assad described the bombing target as an "incomplete and empty military complex that was still under construction". He did not provide any further details about the nature of the structure or its purpose.

On 14 October The New York Times cited U.S. and Israeli military intelligence sources saying that the target had been a nuclear reactor under construction by North Korean technicians, with a number of the technicians having been killed in the strike. On December 2 The Sunday Times quoted Uzi Even, a professor at Tel Aviv University and a founder of the Negev Nuclear Research Center, saying that he believes that the Syrian site was built to process plutonium and assemble a nuclear bomb, using weapons-grade plutonium originally from North Korea. He also said that Syria's quick burial of the target site with tons of soil was a reaction to fears of radiation.

On March 19, 2009, Hans Rühle, former chief of the planning staff of the German Defense Ministry, wrote in the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitungthat Iran was financing a Syrian nuclear reactor. Rühle did not identify the sources of his information. He wrote that U.S. intelligence had detected North Korean ship deliveries of construction supplies to Syria that started in 2002, and that the construction was spotted by American satellites in 2003, who detected nothing unusual, partly because the Syrians had banned radio and telephones from the site and handled communications solely by messengers. He said that "The analysis was conclusive that it was a North Korean-type reactor, a gas graphite model" and that "Israel estimates that Iran had paid North Korea between $1 billion and $2 billion for the project". He also wrote that just before the Israeli operation, a North Korean ship was intercepted en route to Syria with nuclear fuel rods.

The Operation

Ten Israeli F-15I Ra'am fighter jets from the Israeli Air Force 69th Squadron armed with laser-guided bombs, escorted by F-16I Sufa fighter jets and a few ELINT aircraft, took off from Ramat David Airbase. Three of the F-15s were ordered back to base, while the remaining seven continued towards Syria. The Israelis destroyed a Syrian radar site in Tall al-Abuad with conventional precision bombs, electronic attack, and jamming.

Israeli intelligence may have used technology similar to the Suter airborne network attack system to neutralize Syrian radars. This would make it possible to feed enemy radar emitters with false targets, and even directly manipulate enemy sensors. In May 2008, a report in IEEE Spectrumcited European sources claiming that the Syrian air defense network had been deactivated by a secret built-in kill switch activated by the Israelis.

When the aircraft approached the site, the Shaldag commandos directed their targeting laser at the facility, and the F-15Is released their bombs. The facility was totally destroyed.

Israeli 69 Squadron F-15I

The Shaldag commandos were extracted, and all Israeli aircraft returned to base. On their way back to Israel, the aircraft flew over Turkey and jettisoned fuel tanks over the Hatay and Gaziantep provinces.

Immediately following the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, explained the situation, and asked him to relay a message to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that Israel would not tolerate another nuclear plant, but that no further action was planned. Olmert said that Israel did not want to play up the incident and was still interested in peace with Syria, adding that if Assad chose not to draw attention to the incident, he would do likewise.

Israeli official statements

The first report about the raid came from CNN. Israel initially did not comment on the incident, although Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did say that "The security services and Israeli defence forces are demonstrating unusual courage. We naturally cannot always show the public our cards." Israeli papers were banned from doing their own reporting on the airstrike. On September 16, the head of Israeli military intelligence, Amos Yadlin, told a parliamentary committee that Israel regained its "deterrent capability".

The first public acknowledgment by an Israeli official came on September 19, when opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said that he had backed the operation and congratulated Prime Minister Olmert. Netanyahu advisor Uzi Arad later told Newsweek "I do know what happened, and when it comes out it will stun everyone."

On September 17, Prime Minister Olmert announced that he was ready to make peace with Syria "without preset conditions and without ultimatums". According to a poll done by the Dahaf Research Institute, Olmert's approval rating rose from 25% to 35% after the airstrike.

On October 2, 2007, the IDF confirmed the attack took place, following a request by Haaretz to lift censorship; however, the IDF continued to censor details of the actual strike force and its target.

Amir Oren, an Israeli journalist publishing in Haaretz opined "we can safely say that behind the successful blackout campaign lies an enormous failure" namely the failure to predict how Syria would respond to the strike: "whoever expected him to respond to the operation in a military operation was wrong".

On October 28, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Israeli cabinet that he had apologized to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan if Israel violated Turkish airspace. In a statement released to the press after the meeting he said: "In my conversation with the Turkish prime minister, I told him that if Israeli planes indeed penetrated Turkish airspace, then there was no intention thereby, either in advance or in any case, to—in any way—violate or undermine Turkish sovereignty, which we respect."^[

Syrian reaction

Abu Mohammed, a former major in the Syrian air force, recounted in 2013 that air defenses in the Deir ez-Zor region were told to stand down as soon as the Israeli planes were detected heading to the reactor.

Photographs of the Syrian site before and after the strike.

According to a WikiLeaks cable, the Syrian government placed long-range missiles armed with chemical warheads on high alert after the attack but did not retaliate, fearing an Israeli nuclear counterstrike.

Syria at first claimed that its anti-aircraft weapons had fired at Israeli planes, which bombed empty areas in the desert, or later, a military construction site. During the two days following the attack, Turkish media reported finding Israeli fuel tanks in Hatay and Gaziantep Province, and the Turkish Foreign Minister lodged a formal protest with the Israeli envoy.

In a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, Syria called the incursion a "breach of airspace of the Syrian Arab Republic" and said "it is not the first time Israel has violated" Syrian airspace. Syria also accused the international community of ignoring Israeli actions. A UN spokesperson said Syria had not requested a meeting of the UN Security Council and France, at the time the president of the Security Council, said it had received no letter from Syria.

On April 27, 2008, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, making his first public comments about the raid, dismissed the allegations that it was a nuclear site which was attacked as false: "Is it logical? A nuclear site did not have protection with surface to air defenses? A nuclear site within the footprint of satellites in the middle of Syria in an open area in the desert?" Independent experts, however, suggested that Syria did not fortify its suspected reactor in order to avoid drawing attention and because the building was not yet operational. Besides a nuclear program, Syria is believed to have extensive arsenals, as well as biological and chemical warheads for its long-range missiles. On February 25, 2009, IAEA officials reported that Ibrahim Othman, Syria's nuclear chief, told a closed IAEA technical meeting that Syria built a missile facility on the site.

International reactions

No Arab government besides Syria has formally commented on the September 6 incident. The Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram commented on the "synchronized silence of the Arab world." Neither the Israeli nor Syrian government has offered a detailed description of what occurred. Outside experts and media commentators have filled the data vacuum by offering their own diverse interpretations about what precisely happened that night. Western commentators took the position that the lack of official non-Syrian Arab condemnations of Israel's action, threats of retaliation against Israel, or even professions of support for the Syrian government or people must imply that their governments tacitly supported the Israeli action. Even Iranian officials have not formally commented on the Israeli attack or Syria's reactions.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was asked if North Korea was helping Syria in the nuclear realm, but replied only that "we are watching the North Koreans very carefully. We watch the Syrians very carefully."

The North Korean government strongly condemned Israel's actions: "This is a very dangerous provocation little short of wantonly violating the sovereignty of Syria and seriously harassing the regional peace and security."

On October 17, in reaction to the UN press office's release of a First Committee, Disarmament and International Security meeting's minutes that paraphrased an unnamed Syrian representative as saying that a nuclear facility was hit by the raid, Syria denied the statement, adding that "such facilities do not exist in Syria." However state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said that media reports had misquoted the Syrian diplomat.

On the same day, the IAEA's Mohamed ElBaradei criticized the raid, saying that to bomb first and ask questions later "undermines the system and it doesn't lead to any solution to any suspicion." The IAEA had been observing the disabling of the DPRK Yongbyon nuclear facilities since July 2007, and was responsible for the containment and surveillance of the fuel rods and other nuclear materials from there.

The New York Times on October 26 published satellite photographs showing that the Syrians had almost entirely removed all remains of the facility. U.S. intelligence sources noted that such an operation would usually take a year's time, and expressed astonishment at the speed with which it was carried out. Former weapons inspector David Albright believed that the work was meant to hide evidence of wrongdoing.

The U.S. House Resolution 674, introduced on September 24, 2007, expressed "unequivocal support ... for Israel's right to self defense in the face of an imminent nuclear or military threat from Syria." The bill had 15 cosponsors, but never reached a vote.^[70]

On April 28, 2008, CIA Director Michael Hayden said that a suspected Syrian reactor bombed by Israel had the capacity to produce enough nuclear material to fuel one to two weapons a year, and that it was of a "similar size and technology" to North Korea's Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center.

In his memoir Decision Points, President George W. Bush claimed that the strike confirmed that Syria had been pursuing a nuclear-weapons program and that "intelligence is not an exact science", relating that while he had been told that U.S. analysts only had low confidence that the facility was part of a nuclear-weapons program, surveillance after the airstrike showed parts of the destroyed facility being covered up. Bush wrote that "if the facility was really just an innocent research lab, Syrian President Assad would have been screaming at the Israelis on the floor of the United Nations". He also wrote that in a telephone conversation with Olmert, he suggested that the operation be kept secret for a while and then made public to isolate the Syrian government, but Olmert asked for total secrecy, wanting to avoid anything that might force Syrian retaliation.

Release of intelligence

On October 10, 2007, The New York Times reported that the Israelis had shared the Syrian strike dossier with Turkey. In turn, the Turks traveled to Damascus and confronted the Syrians with the dossier, alleging a nuclear program. Syria denied this with vigor, saying that the target was a storage depot for strategic missiles. On October 25, 2007, The New York Times reported that two commercial satellite photos taken before and after the raid showed that a square building no longer exists at the suspected site On October 27, 2007, The New York Times reported that the imaging company Geoeye released an image of the building from September 16, 2003, and from this security analyst John Pike estimated that construction began in 2001. "A senior intelligence official" also told The New York Times that the U.S. has observed the site for years by spy satellite Subsequent searches of satellite imagery discovered that an astronaut aboard the International Space Station had taken a picture of the area on September 5, 2002. The image, though of low resolution, is good enough to show that the building existed as of that date.

A screenshot of a CIA computer model of the Syrian nuclear reactor at Al Kibar.

On January 11, 2008, DigitalGlobe released a satellite photo showing that a building similar to the suspected target of the attack had been rebuilt in the same location However, an outside expert said that it was unlikely to be a reactor and could be cover for excavation of the old site On April 1, 2008, Asahi Shimbun reported that Ehud Olmert told Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda during a meeting on February 27 that the target of the strike was "nuclear-related facility that was under construction with know-how and assistance from North Korean technicians dispatched by Pyongyang." On April 24, 2008, the CIA released a video and background briefing, which it claims shows similarities between the North Korean nuclear reactor in Yongbyon and the one in Syria which was bombed by Israel. According to a U.S. official, there did not appear to be any uranium at the reactor, and although it was almost completed, it could not have been declared operational without significant testing.

A statement from the White House Press Secretary on April 24, 2008, followed the briefing given to some Congressional committees that week. According to the statement, the administration believed that Syria had been building a covert reactor with North Korean assistance that was capable of producing plutonium, and that the purpose was non-peaceful. It was also stated that the IAEA was being briefed with the intelligence. The IAEA confirmed receipt of the information, and planned to investigate. It was critical of not being informed earlier, and described the unilateral use of force as "undermining the due process of verification".

Syrian officials, however, denied any North Korean involvement in their country. According to the BBC, Syria's ambassador to the UK, Sami Khiyami, dismissed the allegations as ridiculous. "We are used to such allegations now, since the day the United States has invaded Iraq - you remember all the theatrical presentations concerning the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." Mr Khiyami said the facility was a deserted military building that had "nothing to do with a reactor".

Initial scepticism about the US and Israeli claims

Despite the release of intelligence information from the American and Israeli sources, the attack on the Syrian site was initially controversial. Some commentators have argued that at the time of the attack the site had no obvious barbed wire or air defenses that would normally ring a sensitive military facility. Mohammed ElBaradei had previously stated that Syria's ability to construct and run a complex nuclear process was doubtful—speaking ahead of the IAEA inspection of the alleged Syrian nuclear site, which has been demolished, he said: "It is doubtful we will find anything there now, assuming there was anything in the first place." The New York Times reported that after the publishing of US intelligence data on April 24, "two senior intelligence officials acknowledged that the evidence had left them with no more than "low confidence" that Syria was preparing to build a nuclear weapon. However, while they said that there was no sign that Syria had built an operation to convert the spent fuel from the plant into'weapons-grade plutonium, they had told President Bush last year that they could think of no other explanation for the reactor." BBC Diplomatic Correspondent Jonathan Marcus commented on the release of the CIA video that "Briefings about alleged weapons of mass destruction programmes have a lot to live down in the wake of the US experience in Iraq"

IAEA investigation[edit]

On November 19, 2008, IAEA released a report which said the Syrian complex bore features resembling those of an undeclared nuclear reactor and UN inspectors found "significant" traces of uranium at the site. The report said the findings gleaned from inspectors' visit to the site in June were not enough to conclude a reactor was once there. It said further investigation and greater Syrian transparency were needed. The confidential nuclear safeguards report said Syria would be asked to show to inspectors debris and equipment whisked away from the site after the September 2007 Israeli air raid.

On February 19, 2009, the IAEA reported that samples taken from the site revealed new traces of processed uranium. A senior UN official said additional analysis of the June find had found 40 more uranium particles, for a total of 80 particles, and described it as significant. He added that experts were analyzing minute traces of graphite and stainless steel found at and near the site, but said that it was too early to relate them to nuclear activity. The report noted Syria's refusal to allow agency inspectors to make follow-up visits to sites suspected of harboring a secret nuclear program despite repeated requests from top agency officials. Syria disputed these claims. According to Syria's IAEA representative Othman, there would have been a large amount of graphite had the building been a nuclear reactor. Othman continued, "They found 80 particles in half a million tonnes of soil. I don't know how you can use that figure to accuse somebody of building such a facility."

The IAEA has been criticized by Robert Kelley, a US DOE engineer who wrote: "the IAEA was successful in collecting uranium particles at a site that had been 'sanitized.' But then the IAEA cavalierly dismissed Syrian explanations that the natural uranium particles found at a bombed suspect site came from Israeli missiles. The agency's claims that the particles are not of the correct isotopic and chemical composition for missiles, displays an appalling lack of technical knowledge about military munitions based on information from questionable sources. If the IAEA is to be respected it must get proper technical advice. For example deep earth penetrating bombs, not missiles were used in Syria.

In a November, 2009 report, the IAEA stated that its investigation had been stymied due to Syria's failure to cooperate. The following February, under the new leadership of Yukiya Amano, the IAEA stated that "The presence of such [uranium] particles points to the possibility of nuclear-related activities at the site and adds to questions concerning the nature of the destroyed building. ... Syria has yet to provide a satisfactory explanation for the origin and presence of these particles". Syria disputed these allegations, saying that there is not a military nuclear program in the country and that it has the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the field of nuclear medicine. Syria's foreign minister said, "We are committed to the non-proliferation agreement between the agency and Syria and we (only) allow inspectors to come according to this agreement. ... We will not allow anything beyond the agreement because Syria does not have a military nuclear program. Syria is not obliged to open its other sites to inspectors." Syria maintains that the natural uranium found at the site came from Israeli missile^] On April 28, 2010, the head of the IAEA,Yukiya Amano declared for the first time that the target was indeed the covert site of a future nuclear reactor, countering Syrian assertions.

As of summer 2014, the site is centrally located inside the territory controlled by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant forces.