Was Israeli raid a dry run for attack on Iran?

Mystery surrounds last week's air foray into Syrian territory. The
Observer's Foreign Affairs Editor attempts to unravel the truth behind
Operation Orchard and allegations of nuclear subterfuge

Peter Beaumont
The Observer (UK) Sunday September 16, 2007
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2170188,00.html

The head of Israel's airforce, Major-General Eliezer Shkedi, was visiting a
base in the coastal city of Herziliya last week. For the 50-year-old
general, also the head of Israel's Iran Command, which would fight a war
with Tehran if ordered, it was a morale-boosting affair, a meet-and-greet
with pilots and navigators who had flown during last summer's month-long war
against Lebanon. The journalists who had turned out in large numbers were
there for another reason: to question Shkedi about a mysterious air raid
that happened this month, codenamed 'Orchard', carried out deep in Syrian
territory by his pilots.

Shkedi ignored all questions. It set a pattern for the days to follow as he
and Israel's politicians and officials maintained a steely silence, even
when the questions came from the visiting French Foreign Minister, Bernard
Kouchner. Those journalists who thought of reporting the story were
discouraged by the threat of Israel's military censor.

But the rumours were in circulation, not just in Israel but in Washington
and elsewhere. In the days that followed, the sketchy details of the raid
were accompanied by contradictory claims even as US and British officials
admitted knowledge of the raid. The New York Times described the target of
the raid as a nuclear site being run in collaboration with North Korean
technicians. Others reported that the jets had hit either a Hizbollah
convoy, a missile facility or a terrorist camp.

Amid the confusion there were troubling details that chimed uncomfortably
with the known facts. Two detachable tanks from an Israeli fighter were
found just over the Turkish border. According to Turkish military sources,
they belonged to a Raam F15I - the newest generation of Israeli long-range
bomber, which has a combat range of over 2,000km when equipped with the drop
tanks. This would enable them to reach targets in Iran, leading to
speculation that it was an 'operation rehearsal' for a raid on Tehran's
nuclear facilities.

Finally, however, at the week's end, the first few tangible details were
beginning to emerge about Operation Orchard from a source involved in the
Israeli operation.

They were sketchy, but one thing was absolutely clear. Far from being a
minor incursion, the Israeli overflight of Syrian airspace through its ally,
Turkey, was a far more major affair involving as many as eight aircraft,
including Israel's most ultra-modern F-15s and F-16s equipped with Maverick
missiles and 500lb bombs. Flying among the Israeli fighters at great height,
The Observer can reveal, was an ELINT - an electronic intelligence gathering
aircraft.

What was becoming clear by this weekend amid much scepticism, largely from
sources connected with the administration of President George Bush, was the
nature of the allegation, if not the facts.

In a series of piecemeal leaks from US officials that gave the impression of
being co-ordinated, a narrative was laid out that combined nuclear
skulduggery and the surviving members of the 'axis of evil': Iran, North
Korea and Syria.

It also combined a series of neoconservative foreign policy concerns: that
North Korea was not being properly monitored in the deal struck for its
nuclear disarmament and was off-loading its material to Iran and Syria, both
of which in turn were helping to rearm Hizbollah.

Underlying all the accusations was a suggestion that recalled the bogus
intelligence claims that led to the war against Iraq: that the three
countries might be collaborating to supply an unconventional weapon to
Hizbollah.

It is not only the raid that is odd but also, ironically, the deliberate air
of mystery surrounding it, given Israel's past history of bragging about
similar raids, including an attack on an Iraqi reactor. It was a secrecy so
tight, in fact, that even as the Israeli aircrew climbed into the cockpits
of their planes they were not told the nature of the target they were being
ordered to attack.

According to an intelligence expert quoted in the Washington Post who spoke
to aircrew involved in the raid, the target of the attack, revealed only to
the pilots while they were in the air, was a northern Syrian facility that
was labelled as an agricultural research centre on the Euphrates river,
close to the Turkish border.

According to this version of events, a North Korean ship, officially
carrying a cargo of cement, docked three days before the raid in the Syrian
port of Tartus. That ship was also alleged to be carrying nuclear equipment.

It is an angle that has been pushed hardest by the neoconservative hawk and
former US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. But others have
entered the fray, among them the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice,
who, without mentioning Syria by name, suggested to Fox television that the
raid was linked to stopping unconventional weapons proliferation.

Most explicit of all was Andrew Semmel, acting deputy assistant Secretary of
State for nuclear non-proliferation policy, who, speaking in Rome yesterday,
insisted that 'North Koreans were in Syria' and that Damascus may have had
contacts with 'secret suppliers' to obtain nuclear equipment. 'There are
indicators that they do have something going on there,' he said. 'We do know
that there are a number of foreign technicians that have been in Syria. We
do know that there may have been contact between Syria and some secret
suppliers for nuclear equipment. Whether anything transpired remains to be
seen.

'So good foreign policy, good national security policy, would suggest that
we pay very close attention to that,' he said. 'We're watching very closely.
Obviously, the Israelis were watching very closely.'

But despite the heavy inference, no official so far has offered an outright
accusation. Instead they have hedged their claims in ifs and buts,
assiduously avoiding the term 'weapons of mass destruction'.

There has also been deep scepticism about the claims from other officials
and former officials familiar with both Syria and North Korea. They have
pointed out that an almost bankrupt Syria has neither the economic nor the
industrial base to support the kind of nuclear programme described, adding
that Syria has long rejected going down the nuclear route.

Others have pointed out that North Korea and Syria in any case have also had
a long history of close links - making meaningless the claim that the North
Koreans are in Syria.

The scepticism was reflected by Bruce Reidel, a former intelligence official
at the Brookings Institution's Saban Centre, quoted in the Post. 'It was a
substantial Israeli operation, but I can't get a good fix on whether the
target was a nuclear thing,' adding that there was 'a great deal of
scepticism that there's any nuclear angle here' and instead the facility
could have been related to chemical or biological weapons.

The opaqueness surrounding the nature of what may have been hit in Operation
Orchard has been compounded by claims that US knowledge over the alleged
'agricultural site' has come not from its own intelligence and satellite
imaging, but from material supplied to Washington from Tel Aviv over the
last six months, material that has been restricted to just a few senior
officials under the instructions of national security adviser Stephen
Hadley, leaving many in the intelligence community uncertain of its
veracity.

Whatever the truth of the allegations against Syria - and Israel has a long
history of employing complex deceptions in its operations - the message
being delivered from Tel Aviv is clear: if Syria's ally, Iran, comes close
to acquiring a nuclear weapon, and the world fails to prevent it, either
through diplomatic or military means, then Israel will stop it on its own.

So Operation Orchard can be seen as a dry run, a raid using the same heavily
modified long-range aircraft, procured specifically from the US with Iran's
nuclear sites in mind. It reminds both Iran and Syria of the supremacy of
its aircraft and appears to be designed to deter Syria from getting involved
in the event of a raid on Iran - a reminder, if it were required, that if
Israel's ground forces were humiliated in the second Lebanese war its
airforce remains potent, powerful and unchallenged.

And, critically, the raid on Syria has come as speculation about a war
against Iran has begun to re-emerge after a relatively quiet summer.

With the US keen to push for a third UN Security Council resolution
authorising a further tranche of sanctions against Iran, both London and
Washington have increased the heat by alleging that they are already
fighting 'a proxy war' with Tehran in Iraq.

Perhaps more worrying are the well-sourced claims from conservative
thinktanks in the US that there have been 'instructions' by the office of
Vice-President Dick Cheney to roll out support for a war against Iran.

In the end there is no mystery. Only a frightening reminder. In a world of
proxy threats and proxy actions, the threat of military action against Iran
has far from disappeared from the agenda.