Mick Hartley

An article in Middle East Times by Olivier Guitta, a “foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant in Washington DC”:

Israel has been providing intelligence and satellite images to the U.S. about a secret Syrian nuclear program for several months, according to media reports. Discussions between Israel and the United States took place last summer regarding a possible strike. But…Israel found the matter so pressing that when they realized the U.S. was not ready to act, on September 6 they attacked a Syrian nuclear site. Hence the question: what is Syria really up to or more to the point what is Iran up to?

First, let’s start with an underreported explosion that occurred in a Syrian military base outside Aleppo on July 26. Jane’s Defense Weekly reported, citing Syrian defense sources, as saying the explosion took place during a test to fit a “Scud C” missile with a mustard-gas warhead. It quoted the sources as saying the explosion occurred when fuel caught fire in the missile production laboratory.

But there might be another explanation. Kuwait’s Al Seyassah newspaper recently reported that a Shiite Lebanese religious cleric claimed the Iranians were allegedly supervising a chemical weapons manufacturing program and that tens of Iranian experts and engineers died as a result of that explosion. He also said Israelis attacked the base. He added that Western officials told him they received proof from Israel on the Syrian chemical weapons program. Even if Israel’s involvement is not proven, what remains sure is that it must be very happy that a chemical weapons facility in Syria has been partly destroyed. […]

The Syrian story is far from over: in fact, on October 23, Al Seyassah ran a story about potential new secret nuclear sites in Syria. According to Western sources cited by the paper, it is possible that Syria is developing other nuclear sites with the help of North Korea, Iran and Iraqi experts, the latter who fled their country at the start of the Iraq war in 2003. In fact, observation satellites have allegedly located in Syria at least two other sites similar to the one destroyed by Israel last month.

Iran’s handwriting is all over the wall from the chemical to the nuclear arms program in Syria. Indeed, in research conducted last year as part of an article published in Washington’s The Examiner, this reporter delved into Syrian’s secret nuclear program, making the point that Syria might actually be “Plan B” for Iran. By helping develop nuclear sites in Syria, strikes on Iran might turn out to be useless. This was a smart strategy until Israel bombed the Syrian nuclear site on September 6 and made the world notice.

Here’s a piece by the same author in FrontPage, from January, where he discusses Syria’s secret nuclear program, and makes that point about “Plan B” for the regime in Tehran. Yes, I know…FrontPage…David Horowitz…a not uncontroversial source. It looks like he got it right about Syria, though, and in the absence of much other information on that Israeli attack, this strikes me as interesting.