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Analysis: Murmurs of a New Nuclear Axis

Council on Foreign Relations

September 26, 2007
Prepared by: Eben Kaplan

Shortly after North Korea blasted its way into the ranks of the “nuclear club” last October, President Bush issued a stern warning about the prospect of Pyongyang as a proliferator: “The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable.” Nearly a year later, a mysterious Israeli air strike (NYT) on Syria September 6 raised speculation that North Korea may be doing just that. The United States has not commented on the issue; President Bush repeatedly refused to discuss the matter when pressed by reporters.

What occurred on September 6 remains unclear, but the most prominent (WSJ) theory suggests Israel destroyed a nascent Syrian nuclear facility built with North Korean assistance. According to a widely cited account in the Times of London quoting Israeli defense sources, Israeli commandos nabbed nuclear material from a secret Syrian compound in advance of the strike to prove its North Korean origin. The air strike went ahead, the report claims, after the evidence satisfied skeptics in Washington. In an interview with Newsweek, Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha claims the Israeli strike fell on “wasteland” and calls allegations of North Korean nuclear support “ridiculous and untrue.” Little public evidence exists to confirm any account of the incident. For its part, Israel has remained tight-lipped about the air raid, in stark contrast to its jubilation after a similar raid (BBC) in 1981 on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. The United States, which offered early confirmation that a strike of some kind occurred, had said little since, though the Washington Post reports the two nations shared intelligence on the alleged Syrian site in advance of the strike.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.