This week's confirmation by Israel that it indeed carried out the strike on the Syrian nuclear reactor in Deir Ez-Zor on the night of Sept. 6, 2007 raises questions about the intentions behind the disclosure.
Reports over the past decade have all but confirmed that the attack was Israeli, with the only thing missing being official confirmation by the Israeli government.
In a detailed investigative report titled "The Silent Strike" in the Sept. 17, 2012 issue of The New Yorker, Middle East scholar David Makovsky interpreted the reports on the Syria strike as a declaration of intent and a warning by Israel over Iran's nuclear complexes.
It can be assumed that, more than anything else, this is once again what Israel intended this week in its official confirmation that it was responsible for the 2007 strike.
It is interesting to contrast the details released now with those in Makovsky's report. Makovsky revealed that for Israel, the point of no return was in March 2007, when Mossad head Meir Dagan presented Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with a certain "piece of information."
"I knew from that moment, nothing would be the same again," Makovsky quotes Olmert as saying. "The weight of this thing, at the existential level, was of an unprecedented scale."
Olmert promised to destroy the reactor as soon as possible. Just as in 1981, when Israel attacked the Osirak nuclear reactor built by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the window of opportunity to destroy the reactor was closing. It was feared that once the reactor became operational, destroying it would likely contaminate the nearby Euphrates River, which runs through Deir ez-Zor.
One issue that Israel faced was the Bush administration, which began to express reluctance following the failures of the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Here a fundamental matter of principle in Israel-U.S. relations came under question: the level of Israel's credibility.
Following the IDF's failure in Lebanon in 2006, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "thought that the Israeli military was unreliable and that they were no longer the 10-foot giants that we had grown up with," a source close to Rice was quoted as saying.
This was apparently one of the main reasons the Americans expressed apprehension at the possibility that Israel would bomb the Syrian reactor. Another Middle Eastern war breaking out while the U.S. was deeply mired in both Iraq and Afghanistan worried them.
Another factor from the 2007 strike still relevant today is the fact that the reactor was North Korean, identical to a reactor North Korea built on its own soil. At the time, diplomatic efforts to resolve the Korean nuclear issue were in full swing between the U.S., Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Russia and China.
Meanwhile, it is known that the Iranians are finding it difficult to bring accurate guided missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Instead, they are attempting to build factories there to produce the missiles and obtain some level of immunity. It is also very likely Israel has also not yet completely abandoned the military option against Iran to destroy its nuclear infrastructure.
In addition, the strike's confirmation comes at a complicated time in Israel's situation on the Syria-Lebanon front. The relatively good period for Israel over the past seven years may be over now that Russia crossed red lines in its relations with the West. Following Russia's alleged nerve gas assassination of double agent Sergei Skripal in the U.K., the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is of one mind concerning its obligations to Britain. American officials perceive Israel as an important factor in Russian President Vladimir Putin's strategy in Syria because of the silent system of understandings between the two countries.
For this reason, Israel is being called upon to unequivocally align itself with the American-British alliance, just like in the Cold War. Putin himself said that the West is attempting to drag Israel into anti-Russian hysteria. The possibility that the situation will get out of hand has significantly grown.
