IMAGES OF SYRIA'S NUCLEAR REACTOR

Syria is doing everything it can to make its bombed nuclear installation vanish.



Satellite Photos Show Cleansing of Targeted Syrian Site - William J. Broad and Mark Mazzetti
New commercial satellite photos show that a Syrian site that Israel bombed last month no longer bears any obvious traces of what analysts said appeared to have been a partly built nuclear reactor. A senior intelligence official said, "It doesn't lower suspicions; it raises them. This was not the long-term decommissioning of a building, which can take a year. It was speedy. It's incredible that they could have gone to that effort to make something go away." (New York Times)

Satellite Imagery Shows Israeli Target Inside Syria Similar to North Korean Reactor - Robin Wright and Joby Warrick
Independent experts have pinpointed what they believe to be the Euphrates River site in Syria that was bombed by Israel last month, and satellite imagery of the area shows buildings under construction similar in design to a North Korean reactor capable of producing nuclear material for one bomb a year. Photographs of the site taken before the Sep. 6 airstrike depict a tall, boxy structure similar to the type of building used to house a gas-graphite reactor. They also show what could have been a pumping station used to supply cooling water for a reactor, say experts David Albright and Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). "I'm pretty convinced that Syria was trying to build a nuclear reactor," Albright said in an interview. (Washington Post)

IAEA DIRECTOR AND NOBEL PEACE LAUREATE MOHAMED ELBARADEI IS A LITTLE EMBARASSED THAT HIS CRACK MONITORING FAILED TO DETECT SYRIA'S NUKE PROGRAM. WHOSE TO BLAME? NOT THE IAEA. NOPE. ISRAEL.... FOR NOT SHARING ITS INTELLIGENCE WITH THE IAEA.