Israel attacked unfinished Syrian nuclear reactor
The air raid on Syria conducted by Israel last month reportedly targeted a site that Israeli and US intelligence specialists believe was a partly constructed nuclear reactor that may have been modeled after one in North Korea.
Citing unnamed US and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports, The New York Times said it appeared Israel carried out the September 6 raid to demonstrate its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state.
The administration of President George W. Bush was divided about the strike, and some senior policymakers still regard it as premature, the report said.
The facility that the Israelis struck in Syria appears to have been much further from completion than the Osirak nuclear reactor that Israel destroyed in Iraq in 1981, the paper said.
Officials said it would have been years before the Syrians could have used the reactor to produce the spent nuclear fuel that could, through a series of additional steps, be reprocessed into bomb-grade plutonium, according to The Times.
In Washington and Israel, the raid has been shrouded in secrecy and information restricted to few officials while the Israeli press has been prohibited from publishing information about the attack, the report said.
The officials did not say that the Bush administration had ultimately opposed the Israeli strike, but that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were particularly concerned about the ramifications of a pre-emptive strike in the absence of an urgent threat, the paper said.
Israel attacked unfinished Syrian nuclear reactor