No Longer a Secret: How Israel Destroyed Syria's Nuclear Reactor
It was one of the Israeli army's most successful operations, but was censored for over a decade. Now, a Haaretz investigation goes behind the scenes of the 2007 strike on 'The Cube,' shortly before it became an active nuclear reactor: From the intelligence failures and American foot-dragging, to the arguments at the top levels and the threats of a total war with Syria
By Amos Harel and Aluf Benn Mar 23, 2018

This is the story of a single night more than a decade ago, and a daring, hair-raising operation executed by the Israeli air force, army and intelligence community that destroyed an atomic plant in northeastern Syria. Yet no less, it is also a story of a big intelligence failure – the worst since the Yom Kippur War, according to a number of top intelligence people – in which Israel somehow managed for years not to notice a reactor being built right under its nose, in a neighbouring country on whose surveillance Israel was spending vast amounts of money.

The operation was the finest hour of a prime minister who just a year earlier had led Israel into a failed war in Lebanon and who less than two years later would be compelled to resign before going on to serve a prison term for crimes of corruption. And it was also the start of the intense hostility between that prime minister and his defence minister, which took root during that summer of 2007, and of the impassioned war over who among the top brass in the military organizations deserved the credit.

It is especially surprising that this is also the story of a secret that was maintained for a long time here in Israel despite the considerable personal interests of a number of those who are now involved in its publication. Only now, more than a decade later, has the military censor allowed the Israeli media to report the history of this affair – and even that, still with restrictions.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exz3FY6clrg

The Haaretz investigation of the bombing of the nuclear reactor is based on conversations with 25 of the individuals who were involved in the operation and in the events connected to it, in Israel and in the United States. One of the key figures who led to the decision to bomb the Syrian reactor, the head of the Mossad at the time, Meir Dagan, died in March last year.

"Many of the people involved in the action deserve to get credit and also demand it," said one person who played a key role in planning the operation. "Ultimately, however, the bombing of the reactor would not have happened without three people who believed in the mission and pushed the operation forward, unstintingly, throughout: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Israel Air Force commander Eliezer Shkedi."

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/MAGAZINE-no-longer-a-secret-how-israel-destroyed-syria-s-nuclear-reactor-1.5914407

OLAADEGBU:


No Longer a Secret: How Israel Destroyed Syria's Nuclear Reactor
It was one of the Israeli army's most successful operations, but was censored for over a decade. Now, a Haaretz investigation goes behind the scenes of the 2007 strike on 'The Cube,' shortly before it became an active nuclear reactor: From the intelligence failures and American foot-dragging, to the arguments at the top levels and the threats of a total war with Syria
By Amos Harel and Aluf Benn Mar 23, 2018

This is the story of a single night more than a decade ago, and a daring, hair-raising operation executed by the Israeli air force, army and intelligence community that destroyed an atomic plant in northeastern Syria. Yet no less, it is also a story of a big intelligence failure – the worst since the Yom Kippur War, according to a number of top intelligence people – in which Israel somehow managed for years not to notice a reactor being built right under its nose, in a neighbouring country on whose surveillance Israel was spending vast amounts of money.

The operation was the finest hour of a prime minister who just a year earlier had led Israel into a failed war in Lebanon and who less than two years later would be compelled to resign before going on to serve a prison term for crimes of corruption. And it was also the start of the intense hostility between that prime minister and his defence minister, which took root during that summer of 2007, and of the impassioned war over who among the top brass in the military organizations deserved the credit.

It is especially surprising that this is also the story of a secret that was maintained for a long time here in Israel despite the considerable personal interests of a number of those who are now involved in its publication. Only now, more than a decade later, has the military censor allowed the Israeli media to report the history of this affair – and even that, still with restrictions.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exz3FY6clrg

The Haaretz investigation of the bombing of the nuclear reactor is based on conversations with 25 of the individuals who were involved in the operation and in the events connected to it, in Israel and in the United States. One of the key figures who led to the decision to bomb the Syrian reactor, the head of the Mossad at the time, Meir Dagan, died in March last year.

"Many of the people involved in the action deserve to get credit and also demand it," said one person who played a key role in planning the operation. "Ultimately, however, the bombing of the reactor would not have happened without three people who believed in the mission and pushed the operation forward, unstintingly, throughout: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Israel Air Force commander Eliezer Shkedi."

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/MAGAZINE-no-longer-a-secret-how-israel-destroyed-syria-s-nuclear-reactor-1.5914407

The Cube

A large, cubical building that was still under construction in the heart of the Syrian desert, not far from Deir al-Zour, was a focus of the Israeli defense establishment starting from the end of 2006. Very quickly, it was given a name: the Cube. As the months went by, the suspicion grew that beneath the broad roof of the building hid President Bashar Assad’s secret flagship project: a nuclear reactor produced in North Korea, intended to provide the younger Assad with the achievement that had eluded his father, Hafez Assad, on the battlefield and between wars – and to lead toward a point of strategic balance that could cancel out Israel’s clear military and technological advantage.

The first indication of the Syrian regime’s interest in purchasing nuclear research facilities came to the notice of Israel and the Western countries in the late 1990s, toward the end of the elder Assad's rule. However, Israel began to pay serious attention to that inclination only after the discovery of a serious intelligence gap in another country: Libya.

"On December 19, 2003, a Saturday morning, I turned on the radio and heard on a news broadcast that the Americans and the British had persuaded Libya to dismantle its nuclear program," says Amnon Sufrin, who was then head of the intelligence division at the Mossad. "The next morning I assembled my people and I said we had experienced two total failures here: We'd had absolutely no idea that such a program even existed and, second, we didn't know that negotiations to dismantle it had been going on for eight months. We started to back-analyze the Libyan program and try to figure out where else in the region similar programs could be hiding."

According to Sufrin, after a month and a half of investigating, the Mossad research team concluded that Syria was working on a nuclear program of its own. The Mossad intelligence division distributed a document with an assessment to that effect in February 2004. Meir Dagan was skeptical about the findings; Syria was not a top priority for Mossad activity and the assessment did not constitute a breakthrough in the gathering of substantial proof.

A similar possibility regarding Syria was also considered during those years at the research branch of Military Intelligence. In 2005, Col. (today reserve brigadier general) Eli Ben Meir had taken up the position of head of the technology field in the research branch. "Iran was the focus of our interest," Sufrin says now, “but we delegated a team of researchers to examine the possibility of a nuclear program in Syria. All the intelligence people who knew Bashar told me: It's not like Bashar. But when you put researchers on a project, if there's something they will find it."

In the course of the examination, the researchers identified the Cube. At a distant and isolated site called Al Kibar, less than a kilometre west of the Euphrates River, the Cube aroused their interest in particular. It was a square building with an area of about 1,600 square meters (more than 17,200 square feet), which was 20 meters (close to 66 feet) high. "We had satellite pictures of a large building in the middle of the desert, with no explanation," says the MI chief at the time, Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin.

According to Sufrin, "The Koreans and the Syrians built a camouflage structure on top of the reactor that made it look like a factory from the outside. You don’t see what is happening inside. It is far from any settlement. There is no reason for anyone to be in this area except for herdsmen. We began to suspect that there, in broad daylight, a reactor was hiding."

Rubble was scattered around the building and the place looked fairly neglected, perhaps intentionally so. There was not much traffic in the area. The people who were seen nearby mostly arrived on motorcycles; it looked as though the structure stood empty at night. No security arrangements – fences or guards – were visible there nor had batteries of ground-to-air missiles been stationed there for defense from air strikes.

The first research breakthrough occurred in November 2006. Major Y., a researcher in MI's technology branch, composed a document headed "An Issue for Examination.” This is a well-known procedure in MI whereby, with the approval of the head of the organization and the head of the research division, a researcher is permitted to publish a dissenting assessment, even if it is not accepted by the chain of command, in order to prompt examination of a new hypothesis. Until then MI had been focusing on the more accepted channel of countries working their way toward a nuclear project – an installation for enriching uranium, based on centrifuges. Y. reached the conclusion that they were looking in the wrong place. Assad was building a plutonium nuclear reactor, he argued. The 20-page document was distributed to top defense officials. At the Mossad they remained skeptical.

In January 2007, a pipeline leading from the Cube to the Euphrates was identified in satellite photos. The researchers believed that this was the sign of the existence of a cooling system, an essential element in a reactor. At both MI and the Mossad, they started to act to confirm or refute the hypothesis proposed by Major Y. The Mossad led several overseas operations as part of that intelligence gathering. "Dagan assigned us the task of finding out whether or not there was a nuclear project," says Rami Ben-Barak, a senior Mossad official at that time. "The approach was: confirm or rule out. There is no in-between. Meir Dagan was very determined. A lot of people told him that it wasn't possible that there was a reactor, and that it would be a pity to waste the resources and the time. However we, under his orders, did not let go of it for a long time."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmdTVGE8_9s