NYT: It Was a Reactor

Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.  [N.Y. Times, David Sanger and Mark Mazzetti]

Even among other journalists who cover this story and the White House, Sanger is well known for having good sources in this administration.  So what else does this tell us?   The appropriate degree of skepticism with which to view any  conclusion by North Korea apologist expert  Leon Sigal:

The news of a possible nuclear connection between North Korea and Syria is “complete nonsense. …  This is another one of those games that the Boltons of the world play when they see the negotiating track getting serious,” Sigal explained, “which is they throw some threat on the table to try to derail talks that turns out not to be quite the threat they made of it.  “From what I have seen, there is simply no evidence what so ever of any North Korean nuclear connection to Syria. My guess is that at the end of the day we will learn the Israelis found something quite different.   [Daily NK]

Uh huh.  Now, returning to the Times story, here’s what we don’t know:

Many details remain unclear, most notably how much progress the Syrians had made in construction before the Israelis struck, the role of any assistance provided by North Korea, and whether the Syrians could make a plausible case that the reactor was intended to produce electricity. In Washington and Israel, information about the raid has been wrapped in extraordinary secrecy and restricted to just a handful of officials, while the Israeli press has been prohibited from publishing information about the attack.

Apparently, the reactor was in its early stages.  To some in the White House, that was a good reason to leave it alone and let it build, which is probably the same thinking other administrations engaged in with respect to North Korea in 1991 and Iran in 1998.  This softly-softly approach eventually and reliably brought us to major international security crises with each country’s advanced nuclear weapons program because year after year, we assumed that eventually, each would be reasonable enough to be cajoled into a diplomatic disarmament.  Or, we were simply in denial.  But now read this:

“There wasn’t a lot of debate about the evidence,” said one American official familiar with the intense discussions over the summer between Washington and the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. “There was a lot of debate about how to respond to it.

Any nuclear technology or material transfer would be a violation of U.N.S.C.R. 1718, but would not directly violate the vague February 13, 2007  deal or the even more vague September 19, 2005 deal,  except maybe for this part of the former:  “The Parties reaffirmed that they will take positive steps to increase mutual trust. . . .”  To which I say:  if North Korea felt itself free to engage in nuclear proliferation — said to be a “red line” before any deals were inked — then the worthlessness of these deals is already apparent.   

Republicans in Congress are sensing the opportunity to propogate the obvious, as their rebellion against their president comes into the open.  In the October 7, 2007 Washington Times, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee writes:

Mr. Kim’s latest demand is to have his regime removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. If granted, this coup would remove sanctions that deny North Korea access to development loans from international financial institutions. It would also make foreign investment more attractive since Pyongyang’s stigma as a charter member of the “axis of evil” would be replaced with a U.S. seal of approval.

Removing North Korea from the terrorist list would not only be morally wrong, but harmful to our efforts to dismantle that country’s nuclear weapons.

A resolution of the tragic issue of Japanese nationals taken forcibly to North Korea, including that of a 13-year-old girl, remains a prerequisite for all Japanese. But Pyongyang refuses to explain or make amends for these past actions.

To reward North Korea without a full accounting of these and other cases would be to remove its incentive to cooperate and thereby undermine Japan’s willingness to consider a broader agreement.

Unresolved kidnappings are but one reason to keep Pyongyang on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Far more serious is the possibility it continues proliferating nuclear technology and weapons. The Times of London reported the Syrian complex recently destroyed by Israeli air strikes contained materials linked to a North Korean ship that were “labeled as cement but suspected of concealing nuclear equipment.” If true, this would not be the first such incident, as Pyongyang’s connections to the A.Q. Khan nuclear black market are well-documented.

What has the State Department reaction been to the unsettling events in Syria? Chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill, in a news conference last month, said “the issue does not change the goal of what we’re aiming for,” namely denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. His response, however, is one of closing the barn door after the horse is out. In addition to ending the direct threat to the U.S. from North Korea, our goal must be to eliminate the possibility North Korea will sell nuclear weapons to rogue regimes and terrorists. That may be just what Pyongyang is doing with the Syrians.

True, but remember that the State Department isn’t a self-governing autonomous zone.  President Bush is responsible for its actions. 

Kim Jong-il counts on our impatience for an agreement of any type to secure the deal he wants, to have his regime propped up by the West, and to survive. But based on his past behavior, there is no reason to assume he will voluntarily give up all his weapons, regardless of any piece of paper he might sign. He must be forced to do so.

If we are to have any confidence of truly ending North Korea’s nuclear threat, we must change our deal-at-any-cost approach to the negotiations and stop making unilateral concessions to the regime. Instead, we must insist on Pyongyang’s taking complete, verifiable and irreversible steps to dismantle its nuclear program. North Korea should earn its rewards, or it will simply come to view them as its by right.  [Washington Times]

We’ll see what decisions get made, if any,  in December.

See also:

*   Japanese diplomatic sources are now whispering to reporters that the United States will not stand with them in securing the release of Japanese hostages before North Korea is removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.  Does our diplomatic class understand just how broad and deep Japan’s emotions run on this issue?   There are plenty of reasons, simple and complex, why America is hated in so many places,  most of them related to being big, conspicuous, and the object of envy.   One  reason we often can’t avoid is the expectation by almost every nation that we intercede on its behalf against some hated neighbor.  In this case, where Japan’s specific grievance is so legitimate, and our support had been so strong so recently, I suspect we’re buying ourselves decades of unpopularity in Japan  for no good reason. 

*   Don’t forget:   LiNK’s fundraiser gala is coming up on October 24th.

*   One cost of doing business with North Korea is accepting its censorship.  In September, President Bush spoke to the U.N. General Assembly and said, “In Belarus, North Korea, Syria, and Iran, brutal regimes deny their people the fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration.”  Bush’s words were a transparent reach for people like  myself who no longer believe he means those words, and since we’re so often expected to pay no  heed to what North Korea says — see recent comments by VanMidd — North Korea should have recognized as much and understood that Bush’s words were both meaningless and his prerogative to speak.  It’s not as though the Rodong Sinmun has stopped with its anti-American diatribes.  Instead,  KCNA announces:  “The DPRK cannot overlook the brazen-faced remarks made by the U.S. chief executive against his dialogue partner on the international arena.”

*   China is feeling wounded about the fracas between its police and South Korean diplomats in Beijing.  The first question is whether the Chinese should be in the business of arresting North Korean refugees in the first place.  Their signature on the Refugee Convention answers that.

*   More worrying rumors are filtering out about North Korea’s food situation.  It looks like the weather system that brought last summer’s floods to the country’s rice bowl were quite literally the perfect storm.  And because less food can now be shipped to the traditionally food-deficient provinces of the North and East, everyone will share in the misery.

*    Targeted U.S. raids  are reducing the Mehdi Militia, our  second-most dangerous enemy in Iraq, into a poorly led and increasingly unpopular collection of street thugs, according to the New York Times.  Good intelligence and skillful execution have allowed us to  pluck Sadr’s best commanders out of his network and defenestrate him, and that turns out to have been a much wiser option than killing him outright.   My other reading leads me to believe that other, smaller  Mehdi cells are still very competent, dangerous, and well trained, but  not capable of commanding nearly as much influence with the  population as they could a year ago.  The favorable shift in Iraq  remains politically  fragile, as the government is still based on the very different political conditions that existed two years ago.  Would this not be a good time to call for new elections?  On their conclusion, the Iraqi government ought to convene a nationwide reconciliation conference  where the tribal leaders can sit down, make their  deals, and agree to sew their national patchwork back together.