MORE ON ISRAEL'S SYRIAN NUKE STRIKE

Something Far More Vicious than a Syrian Nuclear Reactor Targeted by Israel - Yossi Melman (Ha'aretz)
Ten weeks after the Israel Air Force attacked in Syria, the prevailing assumption is that the target was a 5-megawatt nuclear reactor under construction that would have enabled Syria to produce plutonium to manufacture a nuclear bomb.

But Prof. Uzi Even of Tel Aviv University, who until 1968 worked at Israel's Nuclear Research Center in Dimona, is challenging this conclusion. In the satellite photos of the structure in Syria there is no chimney, which is necessary for the emission of radioactive gases. No less strange is the fact that the "reactor" did not have cooling towers.

"In my estimation this was something very nasty and vicious, and even more dangerous than a reactor," says Even. "I suspect that it was a plant for processing plutonium, namely a factory for assembling the bomb."

In other words, Syria already had several kilograms of plutonium.

Satellite photos taken after the bombing clearly show that the Syrians made an effort to bury the entire site under piles of earth. "They did so because of the lethal nature of the material that was in the structure, and that can be plutonium," he said.

U.S. Provided Information about Syrian Air Defenses Before Israeli Attack - David A. Fulghum and Robert Wall (Aviation Week)
The U.S. provided Israel with information about Syrian air defenses before Israel attacked a suspected nuclear site in Syria on Sep. 6.

The main attack was preceded by an engagement with a single Syrian radar site at Tall al-Abuad near the Turkish border. The radar site was struck with a combination of electronic attack and precision bombs to allow the Israeli force to enter and exit Syrian airspace unobserved.

Subsequently, all of Syria's air-defense radar went off the air for a period of time that encompassed the raid, U.S. intelligence analysts said.

The analysts contend that network penetration involved both remote air-to-ground electronic attack and penetration through computer-to-computer links - evidence that a sophisticated network attack and electronic hacking capability is an operational part of the Israel Defense Force's arsenal of digital weapons.