The final report of the International Atomic Energy Agency Wednesday, Nov. 19, says the Syrian complex bombed by Israel 14 months ago bore features resembling those of an undeclared nuclear reactor. “Significant” amounts of man-made uranium particles were found in situ. Those features include the proximity of the site to the adequate pumping capacity of cooling water required by a reactor.
This report will be submitted the nuclear watchdog board meeting in Vienna on Nov. 27-28. Damascus is accused of failing to produce requested documentation to support its declaration about the nature of the building and refusing follow-up IAEA visits to three other locations suspected of harboring possible evidence linked to Israel’s target.
DEBKAfile was the only publication to report that the Israeli attack targeted more than one Syrian site. Washington says that the site was a nascent reactor meant to produce plutonium for atomic bombs.
The nuclear watchdog asks Syria for more cooperation and to show debris and equipment whisked away from the site demolished by Israel for further examination.
DEBKAfile’s military sources stress that the IAEA report attests to one of the most formidable feats of Israel’s external intelligence agency Mossad in conjunction with the US CIA.

Syrian president Bashar Assad is now confirmed as having been in the process of building nuclear weapons intended for attacking Israel.

UN nuclear watchdog publishes written report on alleged Syrian nuclear site bombed by Israel last year for first time since probe began, suggesting evidence of nuclear activity may have been found

The UN nuclear watchdog is drafting an investigative report on Syria for the first time, suggesting to Western diplomats the agency has found some sign of undeclared activity at a site bombed by Israel last year.

Moreover, Syria has been made an official agenda item at the year-end November 27-28 meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors, unlike previously when IAEA officials said initial inquiries were inconclusive.
The IAEA has been probing Syria since May over US intelligence allegations that it was close to completing a plutonium-producing nuclear reactor with North Korean help before Israel flattened the site in an air strike.

Syria denies pursuing nuclear energy for atomic bomb purposes in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It says the unverified US intelligence was fabricated.
A restricted copy of the 35-nation meeting’s agenda said Syria was added to address a pending report by IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei, similar in format to those issued quarterly on an agency probe into Iran’s secretive nuclear program.
“The agency clearly thinks it has something significant enough to report to put Syria on the (nuclear safeguards) agenda right after North Korea and Iran,” said a senior diplomat with ties to the Vienna-based UN watchdog.
“We do not have firm word on what the inspectors found (at the site), only that the findings suggest there are more questions to pursue,” said another senior diplomat accredited to the agency.

ElBaradei told an IAEA board meeting in September that preliminary findings from test samples taken by inspectors granted a visit in June to the desert location hit by Israel bore no traces of atomic activity.

Diplomats said the IAEA apparently had now evaluated all the environmental swipe samples but exactly what the sleuths found remained unclear and would be laid out in the report.
Syria says all that was there was a disused military building, not a clandestine nuclear complex of North Korean design that could have yielded plutonium for atomic bomb fuel as Washington has maintained.

It told the IAEA in September it was cooperating fully with the IAEA inquiry but would not go as far as opening up military sites because this would undermine its security.
ElBaradei said then that Syrian cooperation had been “good” but Damascus needed to show “maximum cooperation” for the agency to draw conclusions.
Diplomats close to the IAEA say Syria has ignored agency requests to check three military installations that may have harbored materials connected to the alleged reactor site.

Syrian president says Russia’s conflict with Georgia underlines need for Moscow and Damascus to tighten their defense cooperation

Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Wednesday he will use a visit to Russia to expand military ties with Moscow, whose arms sales to the Middle Eastern state have angered Israel and the United States.
He told Russia’s Kommersant newspaper that Russia’s conflict with Georgia, in which Moscow says Georgia used Israeli-supplied equipment, underlined the need for Russia and Syria to tighten their defense cooperation.
Assad is expected to have talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during his visit this week.
“Of course military and technical cooperation is the main issue. Weapons purchases are very important,” he said. “I think we should speed it up. Moreover, the West and Israel continue to put pressure on Russia.”

Russia’s military said this week Israel supplied military vehicles and explosives to Georgia and helped train its army.
Israel says it does not supply arms to other countries as a government but private firms conduct equipment sales and training with the defense ministry’s approval.
Assad said Israel’s role would only encourage countries like Syria – a US foe and ally of Iran – to step up cooperation with Russia.
“I think that in Russia and in the world everyone is now aware of Israel’s role and its military consultants in the Georgian crisis,” Assad told Kommersant.
“And if before in Russia there were people who thought these forces can be friendly then now I think no one thinks that way.”
Israel has long urged Russia not to sell weapons to Syria. Damascus was a Moscow ally during the Cold War and is now key to the Kremlin’s ambitions to reviving its Soviet-era role in the region.
The West and NATO have sharply criticized Russia over its military action in Georgia this month. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Russia was turning into an outlaw in the conflict and accused Moscow of targeting civilians in Georgia.

The conflict between Georgia and Russia erupted when Georgia tried to re-impose control over the breakaway, pro-Russian South Ossetia region earlier this month. Russia responded with a counter-attack that overwhelmed Georgian forces.
Russia then moved troops beyond South Ossetia and a second separatist region, Abkhazia, and deep into Georgian territory.

Again Joel C. Rosenberg is right!
Let’s pray for Israel and his goverment

Published:     08.20.08, 10:29 / Israel News

Syria test-launched a series of ground to ground missiles in recent months, Channel 2 reported Monday.

The SS-21, or ‘Scarab’, a short-range Soviet made ballistic missile. Syria is believed to own dozens of the unit.

According to data released by the military censor, Damascus has been testing rockets over a period of time, and the tests have been detected by Israeli radar systems, including the systems linked to Israel’s missile defense systems.

Most of Syria’s long-range missiles are based on the Scud design, Channel 2 reported.

While Syria’s arsenal of missiles is based mainly on antiquated soviet ware upgraded and improved in Syria, the missiles - with a range of 300-700 km. - can still reach any target in Israel.

Syria is believed to hold chemical warheads in its arsenal and is also suspected to have experimented with biological warheads.

However, the inaccurate and heavy Scud missiles - of which Syria has about 1,000 - only supplement dozens of batteries of smaller rockets with a shorter range but also greater accuracy.

According to the Channel 2 report, Israel is more concerned with Syria’s arsenal of smaller medium range rockets.

The Syrian doctrine has changed following the Second Lebanon War, which Damascus has been watching and analyzing closely, and the Syrian army has been aping tactics used by Hizbullah in recent drills and exercises.

By JPOST.COM STAFF

By BARRY RUBIN

I’ll bet you didn’t know that Israel has a strategy. After all, given politicians’ maneuvering, the difference between what is said in public and private, the partisan sniping and so on, it’s easy to miss the underlying coherence of policy. This is not to suggest that politicians are thinking great ideas and putting them into effect; rather it is the set of interests, threats and opportunities that push people into a coherent structure.

There is no solution; the enemy is not going away, nor will it moderate. The world wants to hear that Israel is seeking peace and doing everything possible, and it will.

Yet the fact that these expectations are wrong is also an essential part of the idea package.

Total military triumph is also not a way to solve the problems, as far as ending them is concerned. Attacks can be deterred, reduced in number and made less effective, but actual peace is beyond reach.

If, however, the threats and their effect can be minimized, life goes on and the country does well. So far this year, unemployment has hit a 20-year low, the economy is doing incredibly well and tourism has hit an all-time high. Morale is high despite contempt for the current prime minister. Things are pretty good.

This does not mean people are naïve, even compared to the levels of hope in the 1990s. Lessons have been learned. So here’s what underlies what’s happening.

ISRAEL IS facing threats on four fronts. In each case, there is an effort under way to neutralize, or rather reduce, those problems.

# To the north is Hizbullah. The Lebanese radical Islamist group will never accept Israel’s existence. If it thinks such actions are profitable Hizbullah will attack, at least through cross-border raids. The prisoner exchange has not sated its appetite; instead, it has produced more bragging. But it has also contributed to undercutting one of its most compelling means of incitement.

Hizbullah’s main problem, however, is two-fold. Its top priority is securing the bulk of power within Lebanon and at least doing well in next May’s election. Fighting Israel right now is a distraction from that goal. In addition, Hizbullah reduced its popularity in 2006 with just such a war and has not been able to rehouse many of its supporters after two years, despite lavish promises.

Aside from the cost of the attack, Israel’s tactic is to warn Lebanon that now with Hizbullah back in the government, any aggression will result in all of Lebanon being a target. Israel’s deterrence on this front should not be underestimated, and it is likely to remain relatively quiet for a while.

# To the northeast is Syria, with whom the government is currently negotiating. Virtually no one in the leadership expects an agreement. But aside from domestic politics, the immediate goal is to give Syria an incentive to keep Hizbullah on a leash. The attack on Syria’s nuclear installation, probable involvement in assassinating a high-ranking Hizbullah official allied to Syria and a possible part in killing a Syrian general also signalled Damascus that Israel can hit it hard if necessary.

A key aspect is the humiliating nature of these three incidents. The IAF showed its planes could attack anywhere in Syria. and that a high-ranking terrorist was not safe even in Damascus’s most secure area. That sent a clear message.

So Syria is constrained from attacking directly or indirectly. But there is another element of Israeli policy towards that country that is little understood: the looming confrontation with Iran over nuclear weapons. If Israel some day attacks Iran, it wants to minimize the extent to which Syria or Hizbullah would retaliate. By providing them incentives to remain quiet - reinforced by deterrence power - these two forces are less likely to attack, or would do so at a lower level. A similar pattern exists on the eastern front, with the Palestinian Authority, and southern one, with Hamas.

# Regarding the PA, Israel wants to see Fatah remain in power: Hamas would be worse, and the PA does do a bit to block terrorism. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are eager either to reach an agreement in principle with the PA (nowadays called a shelf agreement) or pretend to have done so to claim great success. At the same time, though, there is little illusion about possible peace and no better real alternative than maintaining the status quo.

# In the short term, the Hamas front is the most potentially volatile. Through the cease-fire, Hamas has been given incentive not to go to all-out war if its patron Iran is attacked. Of course, Hamas frequently violates the cease-fire, either directly or by tolerating attacks - but at a low level. For Israel, the decision posed is what amount of violations (or in the longer run, Hamas military buildup) should trigger an offensive. There are also few illusions about a military attack “ending” the problem or stopping rocket firing completely. Virtually nobody thinks Hamas will make peace or even a long-term, reliable cease-fire. Yet again the status quo is about the best that can be accomplished.

THE EFFORTS on these four fronts will not necessarily diminish the response to a future attack on Iran, but they could and are - for other reasons as well - basically worth trying. This doesn’t mean all politicians would implement this strategy the same way or that the current government’s actions are brilliant - in general terms, the current leadership gives up more than is advisable or necessary - but the gap isn’t huge.

The bottom line is that being prepared to focus on the Iranian front, the relatively good domestic situation, internal politics, the lack of attractive alternatives, the intransigence of opponents, the weakness and doubtful moderation of potential negotiating partners and international passion for the mirage of peace have created a strategy based on a relative consensus across the political spectrum. It looks messy and certainly poses a range of problems, yet is neither terrible nor irrational.