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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| 'Commandos captured nuclear materials before air raid in Syria' |
| 2007-09-23 |
| Soldiers from an elite Israeli unit captured nuclear material originating in North Korea from a secret Syrian military installation before IAF jets bombed it, a report by Britain's Sunday Times wrote Saturday night, quoting "informed sources in Washington and Jerusalem." According to the sources quoted by the report, the alleged IAF attack was sanctioned by the US on September 6, after the Americans were given proof that the material was indeed nuclear related. The sources confirmed that the materials were tested after they were taken from Syria and were found to be of North Korean origin, which raised concerns that Syria may have been trying to come into possession of nuclear arms. The report said that the commandos, from the legendary General Staff's Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal), may have been disguised in Syrian army uniforms. It also stated that Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who used to head the unit, personally oversaw the operation. Israeli sources admitted that special forces had been accruing intelligence in Syria for several months, the report said, adding that evidence that North Koreans were at the site was presented to President George Bush during the summer. The report said North Korean and Chinese diplomats believed that North Koreans were also killed in the subsequent "IAF air strike." |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #9 Maybe just ground up spent fuel rods to make a radiological bomb. Or dirt from the hole their dud is in. |
| Posted by: KBK 2007-09-23 22:39 |
| #8 "Several months" > usually longer than that wid INTEL. I take this to mean new movements were discovered and watched ala LONG MARCH OF THE SS MAPO + AL-HAMAD/OTHERS??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-09-23 20:35 |
| #7 It's not clear the Syrians were doing anything more than running a Public Storage franchise for the convenience of other members of the Axis of Evil. Pencilneck has little oil to export but lots of empty space to let. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-09-23 13:46 |
| #6 It just doesn't make sense for the Syrians to try to retrofit a NKOR nuke device on one of their existing missiles. For one thing the NKOR devices don't work that well under perfect conditions. For another, doing the kind of work needed for retrofit requires a lot of lab equipment around to calibrate. There are several other things that argue against this. On the other hand, it may be that the NKORs had some small electronic devices needed for nukes. But if so, they could have easily hidden them in NKOR-stan. They could also have tried to hide a small amount of radiological stuff, but this could also have been done in some deep mines in NKORstan. Of course since both baby Assad and dear leader are arrogant and ignorant about nukes, they might have done something that doesn't make sense. |
| Posted by: mhw 2007-09-23 13:23 |
| #5 when they broke ... |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-23 09:42 |
| #4 Back in the mid-90s the US gave the NORKs technical assistance in encasing used nuclear fuel rods. It was part of the Carter-Clinton agreement that Pyongyang eventually abrogated openly when the broke the monitored seals on nuclear facilities. I would imagine we got good profiles of their materials at that time. |
| Posted by: lotp 2007-09-23 09:41 |
| #3 I concur gorb, if Zenster's scenario of the sampling method doesn't preclude US or Israeli atmosheric 'scooping' then it leaves water retrieval from inside the facility or outside nearby. A microscopic element sample would be more daring (to breach security detection, and would require an non suspicious "mole" to ferret the goods to the west, just as you're surmising! |
| Posted by: smn 2007-09-23 03:26 |
| #2 It's a slim chance, but there may be a mole in the NorK NooK program . . . |
| Posted by: gorb 2007-09-23 02:19 |
| #1 The sources confirmed that the materials were tested after they were taken from Syria and were found to be of North Korean origin, which raised concerns that Syria may have been trying to come into possession of nuclear arms. Hokay, this article is a bit more explicit about post-operations analysis of the North Korean nuclear material. I wasn't aware that North Korea had ever submitted fissile material for isotopic analysis and "fingerprinting", be it to the IAEA or NPT groups. Aside from Hangul printing on the crates, how would they be able to confirm this? My best guess is that there might have been some atmospheric release during last year's dud test in North Korea. Still, only American operations would have been able to do the atmospheric sampling to recover even slight traces for elemental analysis. Any information like that would be of such a highly classified nature I'd have to wonder about it being shared with Israel. Admittedly, Israel giving us samples for more reliable confirmation may well have justified such sharing, it's just that there's still some very dubious scenarios involved in all of this. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-09-23 01:33 |