Der Spiegel on the Al Kibar Strike (or Axis, Schmaxis, Part 10)

Der Spiegel has printed a very extensive story on the Syrian nuclear reactor at Al-Kibar, the Israeli air strike that destroyed it, and the aftermath. I haven’t had time to get through the whole thing, but one thing I can say is how much more soundly I sleep knowing that all that “axis of evil” nonsense is finally behind us:

According to information SPIEGEL has obtained from sources in Damascus, Assad has been considering taking a sensational political step. He is believed to have suggested to contacts in Pyongyang that he is considering the disclosure of his “national” nuclear program, but without divulging any details of cooperation with his North Korean and Iranian partners. Libyan revolutionary leader Moammar Gadhafi reaped considerable benefits from the international community after a similar “confession” about his country’s nuclear program.

The reaction from North Korea was swift and extremely harsh: Pyongyang sent a senior government representative to Damascus to inform Syrian authorities that the North Koreans would terminate all cooperation on chemical weapons if Assad proceeded with his plan. And this regardless whether he mentioned Pyongyang in this context or not.

Tehran’s reaction is believed to have been even more severe. Saeed Jalili, the country’s leading nuclear negotiator and a close associate of Iran’s supreme religious leader, apparently brought along an urgent message from the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in which Khamenei called Assad’s plan “unacceptable” and threatened that it would spell the end of the two countries’ strategic alliance and a sharp decline in relations. [Der Spiegel]

The article goes on to discuss the missed opportunity for a grand bargain with Syria that would have involved the exchange of the Golan Heights and plenty of cash and trade benefits for Syria’s cooperation in our non-proliferation efforts. To be sure, there were uncertainties, starting with Syria’s general history of duplicity and its preliminary insistence on continuing to support Hezbollah. Yet if our diplomats had managed to talk the Syrians out of their support for terrorism in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories, it would have been a windfall of tectonic significance to our interests in the region. Certainly some factions in Israel would have protested, but provided there were means to assure that Syria kept its end of the bargain, and entered into a verifiable non-aggression treaty that prevented it from planting any guns or rockets on the Heights, an end to Syrian support for Hamas and Hezbollah would have been a net gain for Israel’s security. After all, it was Israel that had the chutzpah to shut al-Kibar down to begin with.

Syria has since allowed the IAEA to visit the al-Kibar site, by the way, and despite Syria’s efforts to blanket the rubble in concrete, inspectors found “a significant number of anthropogenic natural uranium particles (i.e. produced as a result of chemical processing)” which were “of a type not included in Syria’s declared inventory of nuclear material.” The IAEA has demanded access to additional suspicious sites. So far, Syria has refused. I wouldn’t completely give up hope that the IAEA will send the Syrians a very angry letter, but at this point — even factoring in Dimona — I’d credit the Israeli Air Force as a far more effective institution at preventing proliferation.

That North Korea was involved in building the reactor isn’t news anymore, though I’ve already found many interesting tidbits here, including the fact that North Korea’s involvement was first revealed when a general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard defected and began talking to the CIA.

All of this, of course, happened as Chris Hill was negotiating Agreed Framework II with the North Koreans, and continued long after the agreement was signed. For months after the Israeli strike, as rumors of North Korean involvement swirled among almost unprecedented secrecy in Washington, Hill withheld intelligence about the strike from Congress’s key foreign relations and intelligence oversight committees, and more understandably, from the IAEA. It eventually took a furious Wall Street Journal Op-Ed to get Hill to let the cat out of the bag. For a while thereafter, it was rumored that Hill would resign. Instead, he was exiled to a sleepy backwater where he couldn’t possibly do any more harm to American interests.

One wonders if Syria might have done a Qaddafi had Hill — with the full assent of President Bush and Condoleezza Rice — not hushed up the al-Kibar story, and had the Bush Administration generally been thinking strategically and taking advantage of such opportunities by then. Add this to all that Hill’s short-sighted duplicity has cost our interests overseas, although I fear we’re not done tabulating those costs.