The Israeli airstrike that destroyed the Syrian nuclear reactor in Deir ez-Zor in September 2007 was a great achievement for Military Intelligence, Brig. Gen. Dror Shalom, head of Military Intelligence's Research Division, said Wednesday after the IDF for the first time confirmed its responsibility for the strike.
At the time, Shalom headed Military Intelligence's Syrian department.
"The Syrian reactor saga didn't start in 2007, but rather in 2003 to 2004, which is possibly a detail only a few people knew about," he said.
"Intelligence officers in the Research Division became suspicious of unusual developments in the Syrian sphere and raised the possibility that [Syrian President Bashar] Assad was pursuing a nuclear program.
"This sounded outrageous at first, as it was based on bits and pieces of information, but ahead of 2006, this suspicion became stronger. There was no proof, but there were all sorts of signs and bits of information that needed to be analyzed further. With this in mind, we embarked on an endless intelligence-gathering mission meant to ascertain whether this nuclear program existed or not. This later led to the Mossad [intelligence-gathering] operation that yielded the 'smoking gun.'
"This was a significant achievement for Military Intelligence. The suspicion that Syria had a nuclear program was no trivial thing. This is what we call intelligence without content. I always say, in places where there is no activity, look for what's there anyway."
Acknowledging the efforts by Military Intelligence "is necessary for historical accuracy and mainly for my people, some of whom have already left [the IDF]," Shalom said.
"There's a great achievement here in the fact that MI pointed at something, almost nothing, and it was propelled into a very successful intelligence operation. All in all, this was a very big achievement for Israel, for the political echelon, the Mossad, and the defense establishmen,t including the Israeli Air Force, the military's Operations Directorate and Military Intelligence. There is enough credit to go around."
Shalom said that "from the moment we understood that Syria was building a reactor, it was a race to get a completely different intelligence picture. We provided the IAF with microtactical technological intelligence, explaining where the bomb should be dropped. This was a very complex mission, because you don't want to just bomb a site, you need to do something very specific and inflict very specific damage."
One of the bigger challenges was trying to predict how Assad would react to the reactor's destruction.
"We also set in motion a process of trying to understand how Assad would respond, if at all," he said.
"We had to conceptualize terms like 'sphere of deniability' and 'sphere of containment.' We had quite a lot of intelligence about Assad, but from an intelligence standpoint, this is the type of event where you focus a lot of information – technological, strategic, military, political and otherwise – and present it to the decision-makers.
"Had Assad retaliated and war had broken out, they [the political echelon] would have said that there was an intelligence failure. In effect, this was a very great intelligence achievement. We understood that Assad made a big mistake with his nuclear program and that he wouldn't want to admit it. We believed that if Assad could deny having a nuclear program, he would contain the strike because he is very deterred by Israel.
"The fact that Israel didn't claim responsibility for this for so many years was part of the story. At the time, I joked that it was virtually illegal for Israel not to take credit for something so big and heroic. But as we kept silent, it allowed Assad not to retaliate," he said.
Recalling the night of the operation, he said, "We went down to the IDF's bunker war room and waited. I believed Assad would not respond, but maybe we were wrong. You don't presume anything until the very last moment. The second the pilots confirmed we had an 'alpha' [a direct hit], everyone looked at the intelligence [officers] and asked if we were right. We started looking for any possible piece of information to see of if anything had changed in the Syrian military [deployment], if Assad was retaliating. This was a tense situation, but we were quite confident."
In the hours following the strike, the Research Division verified the results to see if the reactor had indeed been destroyed.
"When we heard 'alpha' we already knew we were right, but hours afterward we understood that they didn't have a reactor," Shalom said.
"We saw the process of denial and it led us to believe that in all probability, Assad was not going to retaliate. To say that the following day I was calm – no. You always have to check and verify. We kept on checking to see if the Syrians were planning a surprise for us. This takes time.
"Israeli intelligence is a strong instrument that generates deterrence. Used correctly and accurately, it can help prevent war and deter the enemy. Our enemies do not need to hear from the media what we do to them because they experience it firsthand.
"Today the trio of head of Military Intelligence's Research Division and the heads of the IDF's and IAF's operations directorates have the ability to formulate a plan, in a very short time, to strike something accurately, surgically and quietly.
"We, as well as other bodies in the intelligence community, do important work that at the end of the day wards off war. Always, every time we go down to the bunker, we check ourselves. The success of the reactor strike in Syria in 2007 will not necessarily be the success of tomorrow," he said.
