Amb. John Bolton

January 22 2008
8th Herzliya Conference Lecture Summary
www.herzliyaconference.org/Eng/_Articles/Article.asp?ArticleID=2028&CategoryID=248

The United States used to have a policy on Iran and recently there was a
new push to create a new policy but, sadly due to the direction American
Policy is going, it seems that for the next few years the United States will
be a bystander to the process.

Iran's two best buddies in the world are north Korea and Syria.

North Korea is a good buddy because they already have nuclear weapons. We
need to be focused on them almost as much as Iran. We have seen the
successful Israeli flight against a north Korea nuclear facility in Syria.

Both the Israeli and United States Governments kept the details of what
exactly was bombed a secret.

The general public still doesn't know the relationship between north Korea
and Syria and whether it was a joint effort, a trade of supplies or
something else.
Our governments however do know the details and I wonder if that censorship
and classification of information is necessary.

I, for one, am not bound by any of the Israeli laws of censorship while the
American first amendment stays with me.

I don't understand the reason for strong Israeli censorship in the news. The
Syrian and North Korea governments know the whole truth and the USA and
Israeli Governments know part of the truth. It's the citizens of all 4
countries who don't.

Due to its government censorship the people of Israel can know what it feels
like to be a citizen of north Korea.

The proliferation of nuclear weapons in the middle east will start with
North Korea.
It counterfeits money, sells narcotics, and it will do anything for hard
money.

That money goes to two causes. One is the continued support of Kim Jongs
reign and secondly for its nuclear program.
North Korea is also a maker of biological weapons and will be willing to
sell them for the right price.

North Korea talks about how it's willing to give up its nuclear weapons
program and, like Iraq, has many diplomatic talks about how they aren't
moving forward with their program.

This is part of North Korea's game plan. In 1998 North Korea launched a
ballistic missile into the pacific ocean near Japan. After a year North
Korea said that it promises that it wouldn't test such missiles anymore.

This was a double victory. First to launch the missile and it's testing and
secondly the political benefits of promising not to do so again.
This ballistic missile information was shared with Iran.

We don't know that they were working together in the past but we do know
that today it is getting more intensive.

Syria with its domination by Iran wouldn't be able to build a nuclear
facility without, at least, the acquiescence of Iran. Even with Iranian
permission Syria still has two problems. First they don't have the
capability; secondly they don't have the money. As a solution to this North
Korea could provide the capability while Iran, from its oil sales, could
provide the money.

In this case it's more than cooperation and more like a join effort. I feel
that it's clear that there is more here that needs to be disclosed.

I feel that there isn't any need for either Israeli or United States
governments to reveal how they came about the intelligence or about how they
knew of the facility. Nor do I believe that there is a need to disclose the
classified information about the operation.

What should not be withheld is what the facility actually was and why it was
withheld.

This inability to discuss a major strategic threat not to talk about the
raid and the aftermath. Now there won't be a Syrian retaliation and there
does seem to be North Korean involvement, so why not say so?

Why wouldn't the government of Israel want to take the credit for a
stunningly successful military strike. The reason why the Israeli government
isn't disclosing any information means that there is more occurring here and
this information is being withheld because of the possibly that North Korea
was violating their agreement of the 6 Party Talk and proliferating nuclear
arms against agreement.

North Korea is desperate to get off Americas list of states which
proliferates terror.

Japan is strongly against this because of North Korean kidnapping of
Japanese citizenry. This case seems to show clearly that North Korea was
part of the
acts of terror.

What would Iran say if North Korea got off the list and Iran and Syria
stayed on?

It's close to zero percent chance that the Bush administration will
authorize military action against Iran before leaving office. At the same
time in Teheran they took careful notice of how Israel got into Syria and to
prepare for such an action against Iran. Without American policy backing
anti Iraq action Israel should be willing to see themselves as a possible
last resort.

No one should be under any illusions about the United States part of the
Iranian situation in the coming year.

The questions come to Israel, whether it will use military force to stop
Iran