But it was aimed at this particular airfield for a reason, because we could trace this murderous attack back to that facility.". You have done your bit for the people of Israel.. There, his deputy had already convened the men of the General Staff. Until then MI had been focusing on the more accepted channel of countries working their way toward a nuclear project an installation for enriching uranium, based on centrifuges. It is a plutogenic reactor, the head of the Mossad told Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. When the F-16I crew reported Arizona, it was 12:25 A.M., Israel time, on Friday, September 6. Othmans negligence turned out to be the worst security offense in the history of Syria. I was very much in agreement with the decision to attack, even though it was with a heavy heart., Ashkenazi went back to the General Command building in Tel Aviv. If the IDF had to prepare for the pessimistic scenario of Assad retaliating massively and a war breaking out how could that be accomplished without preparing the units in advance, thereby revealing the secret and enabling the Syrians to prepare to thwart the bombing of the reactor? At the cabinet meeting, Ashkenazi presented the various alternatives and recommended attacking. Russia is reported to have used Shayrat as a base for its Mil Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships, The US said these were the paths of the Syrian Air Force jets that bombed Khan Sheikhoun, The Russian defence ministry claimed that only 23 Tomahawk missiles reached Shayrat, This photograph taken after the missile strike appears to show a damaged hangar at Shayrat, The secret mine that hid the Nazis' stolen treasure. The Syrian conflict began unfolding 11 years ago, in early March 2011. [d], Later, on 19 June, Chief of Staff al-Hariri led a high-ranking delegation that included Prime Minister al-Bitar, Aflaq and Education Minister Sami Droubi to Algeria for a state visit. The prime minister, who managed to take a two-hour nap, went on to Tel Aviv to follow the operation from the air force underground command post together with Barak, Livni, the chief of staff and the air force commander. Why now? Salah Jadid bicycled into the city that morning, and captured the Bureau of Officers' Affairs, which later became his personal fiefdom. [15] The establishment and the dissolution of the UAR was a catastrophe for the Ba'ath Party as it divided among those who supported the UAR, those who opposed it and those who opposed or supported the traditional leaders of the party. One of the American media organizations had asked the Pentagon a question about the presence of a nuclear installation in Syria. WebThe United States stands with Burundi in the face of al-Shababs May 3 attack on Burundian soldiers serving at the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) base in Ceel The external imposition of arbitrary state boundaries on Syria with no corresponding popular acceptance led to discontent. We had to figure out an answer on the spot. A Syrian military statement did not give details about the WebShelling and a rocket attack killed at least nine people and wounded dozens of others in Al-Bab, Aleppo Governorate, Feb. 2. In July 1953, Israel began construction of an intake for its National Water Carrier at the Daughters of Jacob Jordan Bridge in the demilitarized zone north of the Sea of Galilee. WebBy ALBERT AJI and BASSEM MROUE October 20, 2021. Syrian nuclear reactor attack: Step by step, The Intelligence Failure Surrounding the Syria Strike, The Real Fallout From Israel's Attack on Syrian Reactor. The weather along the way surprised us in a number of places. Barak also thought an attack could embroil Israel in a war with Syria, in which it would again become clear that the IDF and the home front were not properly prepared. The group was successful, and they promised al-Hariri that "If we succeed, you can become chief of staff. It certainly started as an uprising of Syrian citizens. I cant remember him ever hugging me on any other occasion but this time he was all smiles. In this matter, the Mossad concurred with the Military Intelligence assessment. The war is referenced in the famous US antiwar 1965 song "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire with the line "And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin'". The prime minister was imbued with a sense of urgency and a desire to act. Control of water resources and Israeli military attacks against the diversion effort are considered among the factors which led to the Six-Day War in June 1967. However, the Military Committee, which had expanded its membership with five new members[note 1], ensured that the Ba'athists controlled the real levers of powers. Amos Yadlin. The traditional elite that took power in Syria when the country gained independence had come to power during the Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon. We made certain five times that it was all systems go., Even today, he remembers the moment of impact. On 17 April a new stage-based unity agreement was reached that would include the three states in a federal union with Nasser as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. US military officials told NBC News that the radar systems picked up flashes on the ground, indicating that ordnance had been dropped on the rebel-held town. One of the key figures who led to the decision to bomb the Syrian reactor, the head of the Mossad at the time, Meir Dagan, died in March last year. In the air force it was decided to brief only the top command in each of the two operational squadrons about the nature of the target that was to be attacked. And that is after the missiles we had absorbed in the Lebanon War and even before we had an interception system like Iron Dome. Rubble was scattered around the building and the place looked fairly neglected, perhaps intentionally so. Assad was building a plutonium nuclear reactor, he argued. Shkedi, a man of profound historical awareness, went up to Olmert at the end of the meeting and said to him: Mr. The military committee did not look favourably on the civilian leadership led by Michel Aflaq, objecting to his dissolution of the Ba'ath Party during the UAR years. Is climate change killing Australian wine? This is the story of a single night more than a decade ago, and a daring, hair-raising operation executed by the Israeli air force, army and intelligence In Israel they saw this mendacious statement without many details as reinforcement of the assessment that Assad intended to show restraint. There were no political considerations behind his recommendations. Why now? However, there were no doubts about the decision itself. The Syrian regime completed the destruction of the building. In mid-June, Olmert arrived in the United States for a meeting with Bush. The prime minister dwelled in particular on the meaning of life in Israel under the shadow of a nuclear threat and warned that this was a condition that was liable to cause profound demoralization of Israels populace. Even after the reactor was bombed, ripples in the Syrian-Iranian axis continued, with the incessant involvement of Hezbollah. In one plane, a problem was solved, after [it had become clear that] not all the systems were working. We said to Barak: For every baby who is born in the next 200 years along the Euphrates with a deformity or a genetic defect, they will blame us straightaway. In a meeting on August 1, Barak forbade head of the IDF Planning Directorate Ido Nechushtan (who two years later would replace Shkedi as commander of the air force) to screen a presentation that reviewed the strategic picture and recommended a swift attack. Israel was still grappling with its disappointment after the Second Lebanon War. [21] The Damascus faction was the enemy of the military committee because of their support for Nazim al-Kudsi's Government and the Hawranist were considered as rivals because of their stance against pan-Arabism. The US military has defended as "legitimate" an air strike attack which killed dozens of people in Syria in 2019. WebThe US bombed Syria on Friday, April 13, 2018, in retaliation for the Assad regimes use of chemical weapons. There is no reason for anyone to be in this area except for herdsmen. The national struggle was shaped by ideologies such as Arab nationalism, pan-Islamism and Greater Syrianism. Some 59 cruise missiles were fired at the Syrian Air Force facility in response to what President Donald Trump said was a chemical weapons attack on a rebel-held town three days before. When the intelligence people analyzed the material from Vienna, they were appalled. We were over the target for two or three minutes. The Committee's virtual ousting of al-Hariri was to the chagrin of al-Bitar, who viewed al-Hariri as the last military counterweight able to check the Committee's domination over his government. According to the report, Ibrahim Othman, head of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission, had come to Austria to participate in the deliberations of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Ultimately, however, the bombing of the reactor would not have happened without three people who believed in the mission and pushed the operation forward, unstintingly, throughout: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Israel Air Force commander Eliezer Shkedi., >> Ten years of silence on Syria strike. The prime minister chose to ignore this suggestion. Rights groups have said the suspected Russian bombing of chicken farms and water stations in Idlib, one of Syria's last rebel-held areas, is meant to push out displaced locals. F-15 pilot talks about striking the Syrian nuclear reactor. Everything goes according to the advance briefing. WebA U.S. service member suffered a concussion injury from Monday's attack by the terrorist group al-Shabab at a U.S. military airfield in Somalia, according to U.S. Africa Command Now there are only exclamation points. The prime minister breathed a sigh and asked: What do we do with this? We said to him: We destroy. (In Olmerts circle, as often happens in such cases, they remember an opposite course of events. We set out around 10:30 P.M., recalls Amir. [19], In 1962, the military committee of the Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party spent most of its time planning to take power through a conventional military coup. AP Photo/Hassan Ammar. However, said the president, he had decided to send an envoy to Syria to pose an ultimatum to Assad to demolish the reactor, under international supervision. I said to him: The air force did what it was assigned to do., The prime minister celebrated the achievement by raising a toast. Saber Falhout, a Druze who was later known as "the poet of the revolution", wrote and announced the first communique of the plotters. [24], On 8 February 1963, the Iraqi Regional Branch, led by Ali Salih al-Sa'di, took power in Iraq by overthrowing Abd al-Karim Qasim. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was recommending a diplomatic move to thwart the reactor by means of applying pressure on Assad. Hariri was appointed chief of staff. WebThe Bombing of Shallal occurred on 23 January 1965 during the War over Water when the Israeli Air Force bombed the Syrian water pumping station at Shallal to prevent the A U.S. airstrike targeting facilities used by Iran-backed militias in Syria appears to be a message to Tehran delivered by a new American administration still figuring out its approach to the Middle East. Even the liberal and democratic-inclined founding leaders were partial to forceful takeover, citing the corrupt electoral process. Shortly thereafter Olmert phoned call President Bush, who was on a visit to Australia that week. WebA bomb attack on a military bus in central Damascus has killed 14 people, Syrian state media say. Concurrently, the preparations began in the IDF for the possibility of things going sour, but in order to maintain the secrecy of the operation, it was necessary to tailor a false narrative for most of the commanders, and later also for the public and the media. Half a year later, the commander of the shadow army was attending a banquet at his holiday home in the Syrian seaside town of Latakia when he was shot by snipers from a boat. The extremist organization has not held territory in Syria since 2019, but it continues to represent a threat with sleeper cells, mostly hiding in Syrias expansive desert. Its a story that ended well, says Amos Yadlin. Very quickly, it was given a name: the Cube. Mass pro-union rioting in Aleppo, Damascus, Hama and other parts of the country followed. There are things you dont talk about. Several branches had not followed orders and had not dissolved during the UAR years. The potentially hostile unit stationed in Qatana, south-west of Damascus, did not intervene probably because Widad Bashir had taken control over communications in the Damascus area. Some of its planes had been ordered to bomb rebel positions. Barak, shouting, argued that he had not authorized the presentation. In the underground hangar that our plane returned to, Brig. [40][41] The Army Headquarters, personally defended by al-Hafiz, and the broadcast station were attacked, and the ensuing battle left hundreds of people dead, including several civilian bystanders. The move was denied by the Russian defence ministry, but further satellite images taken at the end of March 2016 showed several Ka-52 Alligator and Mi-28N Night Hunter attack helicopters had also arrived, according to IHS Jane's. There was a crazy high all around him, said one of those who were present. We began to suspect that there, in broad daylight, a reactor was hiding.. We had a big hug. Amir says he never told his wife about that night in eastern Syria. On Tuesday, September 4, the air force conducted its last mock maneuver in advance of the attack. The leading members of the military committee throughout the planning process and in the immediate aftermath of taking power were Muhammad Umran, Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad, who belonged to the minority Alawite community. The military committee's alliance with the Nasserists led to the establishment of secret contact with Colonel Rashid al-Qutayni, the head of the military intelligence, and Colonel Muhammad al-Sufi, the commander of the Homs Brigade. But when you put researchers on a project, if theres something they will find it.. Shallal Shallal is a village in Shallal is situated close to the villages El Mazyunat Khaddzh Khasan and Jubb as Safa. The prevailing conspiracy theory held that Barak was waiting for the final version of the Winograd commission investigative report on the second Lebanon war, which was to be published within a few months, in the expectation that the commission would obligate Olmert to resign. Moreover, this time careful attention was paid to the procedures of the discussions and decision-making, for the neglect of which Olmert was severely chastised in the interim report. The Nasserists became allies of the Ba'ath, even while they supported Gamal Abdel Nasser and the reestablishment of the UAR. However, you must avoid aerial dogfights with enemy planes. At that same time, hundreds of people on the ground began suffering symptoms consistent with reaction to a nerve agent, according to the doctors and nurses who treated them. For me, today it connects with our ability to remove threats in distant countries in the third circle [meaning, Iran]. If you dont do it, we will, he said. The operation was the finest hour of a prime minister who just a year earlier had led Israel into a failed war in Lebanon and who less than two years later would be compelled to resign before going on to serve a prison term for crimes of corruption. The squadron commander and his deputy take the ones on whom they agree hands down will get the bombs to the target.. Why Now? To go in with two kinds of planes, with different kinds of armament, because every plane is vulnerable to blocking in a different way, but this way, the second kind could compensate. To make sure the reactor would be destroyed, it was necessary to deploy tremendous firepower, in the form of a relatively extensive aerial bombardment. Two explosive devices attached to the vehicle blew up as it passed under Jisr With high certainty, one of the two types would reach the target.. The company's analysts said the work and the presence of newly deployed helicopters suggested the base was gaining importance for the Syrian government and Russia as they sought to counter jihadist militants from so-called Islamic State (IS) in Homs province. The explanation that was offered was concern about the possibility of hostilities breaking out over mutual miscalculations: Israel and Syria are suspicious of each other and exchanging threats in the context of the results of the last war in Lebanon. In the air force, they characterized the release of the fuel tank into Turkey as an operational error, although tactically it was possible to have justified the crews considerations. [19] Without the peasantry there could not have been a Ba'athist revolution in Syria. We started to back-analyze the Libyan program and try to figure out where else in the region similar programs could be hiding.. According to Sufrin, The Koreans and the Syrians built a camouflage structure on top of the reactor that made it look like a factory from the outside. In January 2007, a pipeline leading from the Cube to the Euphrates was identified in satellite photos. This was a breathtaking drama, and unfortunately it played out in front of the top military commanders.. The Israeli leadership began to converge on the decision bombing of the reactor in the near term and the selection of the more limited action by the air force. For combat pilots to hear a thing like that it is completely contrary to their intuition and ethos.. But the flight to the target was relatively calm, without our getting discovered and without any direct threat. When the IAEA wanted to visit the site, following reports of the attack and leaked allegations that it had actually been a nuclear reactor, the Syrians claimed there was nothing to see because there had been nothing there.
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