At Hafez Al-Assad’s funeral in June 2000, his son and successor, Bashar Al-Assad, met with another North Korean delegation. The two parties secretly discussed the construction of a nuclear facility in Syria, to be overseen by the Syrian Scientific Research Agency. In July 2002, another secret meeting was held in Damascus, with the participation of senior officials from Syria, Iran, and North Korea, at which a tripartite agreement was reached. North Korea would construct a nuclear reactor in Syria, to be financed by Iran. The cost of the entire project, from the drawing board to the production of weapons-grade plutonium, was estimated at $2 billion.
For the next five years, despite small scraps of information that trickled from Damascus, neither the CIA nor the Mossad were aware of the Syrian project. Several warning lights had flashed sporadically, but had been ignored. The American intelligence services failed to grasp the meaning of the information that had accumulated, while the Mossad and Aman were misled by their own estimates that Syria had neither the capability nor the desire to obtain nuclear weapons. And no one sought to challenge that misconception, although evidence was there: in 2005, the cargo ship Andorra, a ship carrying cement from North Korea to Syria, sank close to the Israeli coastal town of Nahariya; in 2006, a second North Korean cargo vessel, sailing under a Panamanian flag, was detained in Cyprus with another cargo of cement and a portable radar station; in both cases, the “cement” was evidently equipment for the nuclear reactor. Finally, in late 2006, Iranian nuclear experts visited Damascus to inspect the progress of the construction of the facility. The Israeli and American intelligence services knew of this visit but failed to realize that it was linked to the Dir Al-Zur project.
The Syrians took extreme precautions to protect the secrecy of the project. They imposed a total communications blackout on all the staff working at the site. Possession of cell phones and satellite devices was strictly forbidden; all communications were taken out by messengers, who carried letters and messages and delivered them by hand. The activity at the site could not be identified from space, even though American and Israeli satellites kept passing overhead.
And then, suddenly, on February 7, 2007, a passenger alighted from a plane at Damascus Airport. He was Ali Reza Asgari, an Iranian general and a former deputy minister of defense, who had been one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Guards (see chapter 2). He stayed at the airport until he received confirmation that his family had left Iran. He then flew on to Turkey. Soon after landing in Istanbul, he vanished.
A month later, it was learned that Asgari had defected to the West in an operation masterminded by the CIA and the Mossad. He was interrogated and debriefed at an American base in Germany, where he revealed the existence of the Syrian-Iranian nuclear plans and the agreement between North Korea, Iran, and Syria. He told his interlocutors that Iran was not only financing the Dir Al-Zur project but was exerting strong pressure on Syria to complete it as soon as possible. He supplied the CIA and the Mossad with a wealth of detail about the progress of the project, and identified the key officials in both Syria and Iran, who were involved in it.
This new information shocked the Mossad into action and it immediately switched into an operational mode. Since 2002, the ramsad was Meir Dagan, who had replaced Efraim Halevy (see chapter 1). According to foreign sources, Dagan assigned units and agents to verify the Asgari report. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert convened a meeting of the army chiefs of staff, the Ministry of Defense, and the intelligence services. They unanimously agreed that an urgent operation was called for, so as to obtain solid and irrefutable information about the Dir Al-Zur facility. Israel could not accept the transformation of Syria, its most implacable and aggressive foe, into a power with the potential to manufacture nuclear weapons.
It was just five months after Asgari’s defection that the Mossad agents achieved their major breakthrough—the laptop of the Syrian official. The heads of the Mossad and Aman could now present Prime Minister Olmert with the definitive evidence the government needed.
Soon after, Dagan allegedly pulled off another coup. In a bold and creative operation, a Mossad case officer managed to recruit one of the scientists employed at the reactor itself. He photographed the reactor extensively, both inside and out, and even made a video of the structures and equipment inside them. These were the first images the Mossad had received of the reactor, taken at ground level. They revealed a large cylindrical structure with thin but solid fortified walls. Other pictures showed an external scaffold designed to strengthen the reactor’s outer walls. There were also photos of a second, smaller building equipped with oil pumps, and several trucks could be seen parked around it. A third structure was apparently a tower that supplied water for the reactor.
The Mossad kept the Americans fully briefed at every step and furnished them with copies of all reports and photos, including satellite pictures and transcripts of phone calls between Syria and North Korea. Under relentless pressure from Israel, the United States put its own satellites on the case. Both the satellite pictures and electronic tracking of the exchange of phone calls indicated that the Syrians were constructing at breakneck speed.
In June 2007, Prime Minister Olmert flew to Washington with all the material Israel had collected. He met with President Bush and told him Israel had decided that the Syrian reactor had to be destroyed. Olmert suggested that the United States carry out an air strike against the reactor, but the American president refused. According to American sources, the White House responded that “the U.S. chooses not to attack [the reactor].” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates tried to persuade Israel “to confront [the Syrians] but not attack.” Bush and National Security Adviser Steve Hadley expressed their support for military action in principle, but asked that any operation be delayed until more clearly threatening intelligence could be obtained.
In July 2007, Israel carried out high-altitude air sorties and programmed its Ofek-7 spy satellite to take detailed photographs of the reactor. These photos, when analyzed by American and Israeli experts, established clearly that Syria was building a reactor identical to North Korea’s nuclear facility at Yongbyon. A video that Israel shared with the United States showed that the cores of both reactors were identical, including the way in which the uranium rods were placed inside the structure. Other videos even showed the faces of North Korean engineers working inside the reactor. Additionally, the Aman intercept department, Unit 8200, produced full transcripts of hectic exchanges between Damascus and Pyongyang.
All this evidence was relayed to Washington, but the United States still demanded irrefutable proof that the facility was indeed a nuclear reactor and that radioactive materials were actually in place. Israel felt it had no choice but to obtain this information as well.
In August 2007, Israel came up with the ultimate proof that the facility at Dir Al-Zur was a nuclear reactor. It was obtained by an elite commando unit, Sayeret Matkal, in an operation that risked the lives of scores of Israeli soldiers. Sayeret Matkal commandos flew to Syria by night in two helicopters. They were wearing Syrian Army uniforms. Bypassing populated areas, military bases, and radar stations, they landed undetected close to Dir Al-Zur, then approached the reactor site and collected soil samples from the earth surrounding the reactor. Upon analysis back in Israel, these samples were found to be highly radioactive, proving irrefutably that radioactive substances were indeed on site.
This new evidence was presented to Steve Hadley. Once his experts had checked the soil samples, he realized that the matter was deadly serious. He summoned his closest aides, and their conclusions were brought before President Bush at Hadley’s daily briefing at the Oval Office. Hadley then held talks with Dagan, and concluded that the reactor indeed posed a clear and present danger. The United States now accepted that the Syrian reactor had to be eliminated, and code-named the Dir Al-Zur operation “The Orchard.” In his memoirs, George W. Bush wrote that he considered for a while attacking the reactor, but after discussing the opti
ons with his national security team, he finally decided against it. He felt that “bombing a sovereign country with no warning or announced justification would create severe blowback.” He also ruled out a covert raid by U.S. soldiers.
Nevertheless, Olmert phoned President Bush and asked him to destroy the reactor. During the phone conversation, Bush was in the Oval Office, surrounded by his closest aides: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney, Steve Hadley and his deputy Elliott Abrams, and others. In the preliminary consultations, Rice had convinced them to reject Israel’s demand.
“George, I’m asking you to bomb the compound,” Olmert said.
“I cannot justify an attack on a sovereign nation,” Bush replied, “unless my intelligence agencies stand up and say it’s a weapons program.” Bush recommended “using diplomacy.”
“Your strategy is very disturbing to me,” Olmert bluntly said. “I’ll do what I believe necessary to protect Israel.”
“This guy has balls,” Bush later said. “That’s why I like him.”
According to London’s Sunday Times, Prime Minister Olmert met with Minister of Defense Ehud Barak and Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzippi Livni. The three of them, together with the heads of the defense and intelligence communities, discussed the new evidence, as well as the possible repercussions of a military strike. Finally the die was cast: the Syrian reactor would be eliminated. The prime minister briefed opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu and received his wholehearted support.
The date for the attack was set for the night of September 5, 2007.
The previous day, according to a later report in the Sunday Times, another elite commando unit, Shaldag (Kingfisher) had reached the Dir Al-Zur area. The men spent almost a day in hiding close to the reactor. Their mission was to illuminate the reactor with laser beams the following night so the air force jets could home in directly on the target. At eleven P.M. on September 5, ten F-15 aircraft took off from the Ramat David Air Force Base and headed west, over the Mediterranean. Thirty minutes later, three of the planes were ordered to return to base. The other seven were instructed to head for the Turkish-Syrian border, and turn south toward Dir Al-Zur. On the way, they bombed a radar station, crippling the Syrian air defense’s ability to identify the approach of foreign aircraft. Minutes later, they reached Dir Al-Zur; and from a carefully calculated distance, they launched Maverick air-to-surface missiles and half-ton bombs, hitting their target with precision. The Syrian reactor, intended to build atomic bombs for Israel’s destruction, was obliterated in seconds.
Prime Minister Olmert, anxious to avoid a Syrian military reaction, established urgent contact with the prime minister of Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan, and asked him to convey a message to President Assad. Israel had no intention of going to war with Syria, Olmert emphasized, but could not accept a nuclear Syria on its doorstep. But Olmert’s reassurance proved unnecessary. On the morning after the bombing, the reaction from Damascus was total silence. Not a word was uttered by government spokesmen. Only at three o’clock that afternoon was an official statement issued by the Syrian news agency. It stated that Israeli aircraft had penetrated Syrian air space at one A.M. “Our air force forced them to retreat, after [they had] dropped ammunition over a deserted area. There was no damage to people or equipment.”
The world media was desperate to learn how the Mossad had managed to obtain photos and even videos from the interior of the Syrian reactor. ABC Television reported that Israel either had planted an agent inside the Syrian reactor or the Mossad had recruited one of the engineers who had supplied it with the pictures of the facility.
In April 2008, some seven months after the destruction of the reactor, the American administration finally announced that the Syrian facility had been a nuclear reactor built with North Korean support and that “it was not designed for peaceful uses.” George W. Bush thought Olmert’s “execution of the strike” against the Syrian reactor had restored the confidence he had lost in the Israelis during their 2006 war against Lebanon, which Bush felt was bungled.
Officials in the U.S. intelligence community showed amazed congressmen and senators slides that made clear the similarity between the Syrian reactor and the North Korean Yongbyon reactor; a slide show with the satellite photos, drawings, and plans—as well as the videos—established the provenance of these materials.
Israel succeeded in keeping the secret for just two weeks, during which it denied it had attacked the reactor. But then opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, interviewed on a live newscast, declared: “When the cabinet takes action for Israel’s security, I give it my full backing . . . and here, too, I was a partner in this affair from the first moment and I gave it my full support.”
A final episode in the Syrian nuclear project took place eleven months later, on August 2, 2008. That evening, a convivial dinner party was taking place on the spacious veranda of a beach house at Rimal El-Zahabiya, north of the Syrian port of Tartus. The house, close to the water, had a spectacular view of the Mediterranean. The veranda, facing the dark waves, was a welcome refuge from the humidity of the Syrian coast. A soft sea breeze cooled the stifling midsummer heat. The guests, seated at an oblong table, were close friends of the villa’s owner, General Muhammad Suleiman, who had invited them for a relaxing weekend.
Suleiman was President Assad’s closest adviser on military and defense matters. He had supervised the building of the reactor and managed its security. In the highest circles of power in Syria he was regarded as Assad’s shadow. His office was in the palace, adjacent to that of the president, yet he was known only to a select few both inside and outside the country.
His name was never mentioned in the Syrian media, but the Mossad knew of him and had followed his activities closely. The forty-seven-year-old Suleiman had studied engineering at Damascus University, where he had met and befriended another student, Bassel Al-Assad, the favorite son and heir apparent of President Hafez Al-Assad. When Bassel was killed in a road accident in 1994, Assad introduced Suleiman to his younger son, Bashar. Assad died of cancer in 2000 and Bashar replaced him as president, and then appointed Suleiman his confidant and trusted aide.
Suleiman soon became one of the most powerful men in Syria. President Assad charged him with supervision of all sensitive military matters. He became the senior liaison between the president and the Iranian intelligence services, especially on matters concerning their secret cooperation with terrorist organizations in the Middle East. He was also the primary Syrian contact with Hezbollah and maintained a close relationship with that organization’s military chief, Imad Mughniyeh. After Israel had withdrawn from the security zone in South Lebanon, in May 2000, Suleiman took charge of the transfer of weapons from Iran and Syria to Hezbollah, especially the delivery of long-range rockets. During the Second Lebanon War in 2006, one such rocket scored a direct hit on the Israeli railway workshops in Haifa, killing eight workers. Later on, Suleiman supplied Hezbollah with Syrian-manufactured surface-to-air missiles, thus jeopardizing Israel’s air activities in Lebanon.
And Suleiman held another, unique and top-secret position: he was a senior member of the Syrian Research Committee that dealt with the development of long-range rockets, chemical and biological weapons, and nuclear research. He had overseen the liaison with North Korea, coordinated the shipment of reactor parts to Syria, and directed the security measures isolating the North Korean technicians and engineers working on the construction of the reactor.
Israel’s destruction of the reactor was a heavy blow for Suleiman. After recovering from the initial shock, he started planning another reactor, the location of which was yet to be decided. But Suleiman’s life had become more difficult. He knew now that he was wanted by both the American and Israeli secret services. So, before embarking on plans for his next stage, he took a few days leave at his home in Rimal El-Zahabiya. A quiet weekend with good friends and excellent food seemed the best way to alleviate his stress.
From the center of his la
rge table, Suleiman watched the waves rolling toward the beach. But he failed to notice two motionless figures crouching in the water some 150 yards away. They had swum in from the sea, where a boat had dropped them off about a mile from Suleiman’s home. Israeli naval commandos and expert sharpshooters, they carried scuba equipment and had made their way under water to the beach opposite the house. As their feet touched bottom, they stood and picked out Suleiman’s home. They studied the house and the veranda, looked at all the people seated at the table, and focused on their target: the general sitting between his guests.
At nine P.M., the sharpshooters calibrated their sights and adjusted the range. The veranda was crowded, and the two uninvited guests in their black diving suits wanted to make sure they could fire at the general without harming anybody else. They emerged from the water and took a few steps, then aimed their weapons equipped with silencers at Suleiman’s head. An electronic signal beeped in their earphones and they fired simultaneously. The shots were fatal. Suleiman’s head flew back and he collapsed forward, onto the food-laden table. The guests at first did not grasp what had happened. Only when they noticed the blood oozing from Suleiman’s head did they understand he had been shot. All hell broke loose on the veranda; some trying to come to their host’s aid, others crouching in fear or aimlessly running around, shouting and yelling. In the uproar, the two sharpshooters disappeared.
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