Joshua Landis har en intressant teori om varför Israelerna har de aktiva överflygningar över Syriskt territorium där den senast även ledde till att syrierna sköt missiler mot de Israeliska stridsflygplanen.
Läs även mer i haaretz
Israeli planes were on a ”‘reconnaissance mission when they got caught by Syrian defenses and were forced to drop their bombs and extra fuel tanks,’ said a Western diplomat in Syria’s capital Damascus. He declined to be named. Military analysts said Israel has conducted reconnaissance flights over Syria to probe its defenses. Witnesses said several planes crossed deep into Syrian territory and flew over the oil centre of Deir al Zor on the Euphrates river.”John Bolton wrote this in the WSJ on Aug. 31 under the title, ”Axis of Evil: Pyongyang’s Upper Hand.” Here are the last paragraphs, which speculate that Syria is providing ”safe havens for North Korea’s nuclear weapons development.”
President Bush has stressed that we must also deal with Pyongyang’s biological, chemical and ballistic missile programs. We must address these programs, especially the missiles, soon. Failure to make explicit the important connection between weapons and delivery systems will certainly come back to haunt us, and we are on the verge of allowing this point to slip away entirely.
Finally, we need to learn the details of North Korean nuclear cooperation with other countries. We know that both Iran and Syria have long cooperated with North Korea on ballistic missile programs, and the prospect of cooperation on nuclear matters is not far-fetched. Whether and to what extent Iran, Syria or others might be ”safe havens” for North Korea’s nuclear weapons development, or may have already participated with or benefited from it, must be made clear.
For our own safety’s sake, and that of allies like Japan and South Korea, there can be no compromises on these points.
My hunch is that Israel is taking a closer look at industrial sites outside of Deir al-Zur to see if they can see if anything looks Korea-like and what is going on with missile and weapons development.
This is speculation, but Western intelligence agencies have been suspicious for some time that Korean technology is working its way to Syria. September 2006, Interpol had Cypriot authorities search a ship coming from Korea to Latakia only to find ballistic missile components and not weapons. Here is the report.
Cyprus finds air defense systems on Syria-bound ship: Washington Post. Interpol told Cypriot authorities the ship, the Gregorio I, which had been loaded in China and North Korea and was destined for Latakia, was carrying ballistic missile components. Cyprus searched the ship only to discover that it contained air defense systems and not weapons. They are trying to figure out what to do with it now. This is the first indication of the power of UN resolution 1701.
In 2004, there were some weird reports that Syrian officials had visited North Korean weapons facilities, where they had been involved in a train crash. See: Syrians With Secret CBW Material On Korean Train That Exploded? This report came as Bolton was trying to make the case that Syria had reactivated its nuclear program. See my post on this, here. The intelligence community in the US was divided over Bolton’s claims.
Bolton is not making all this stuff up. Right wingers in the agencies are feeding him with this stuff because they know he is rash enough to go out on a limb to make noise about it and push the issue. He has been pushing the issue for years. My hunch is that some new bit of intelligence has come in to reanimate Bolton and the debate over Syria’s weapons capabilities. The Israelis went on their ‘reconnaissance mission’ to see if they could get to the bottom of it.
