Nearly 2 months on, all parties are silent on Syrian air strike

Nearly eight weeks have passed, and all is remains quiet regarding a Sept. 6 Israeli air strike on a Syrian military facility.  Many players have a lot at stake, including Syria, Israel, the US and North Korea.  Washington Post Deputy Editor Jackson Diehl spells out the diplomatic quandry in his editorial today:

“Now Israeli and U.S. officials are quietly debating whether to go on the record and allow those shock waves to explode across the Middle East and beyond. At stake are not only Israel’s tense relations with Syria, which so far has chosen not to retaliate, but a host of other pressure points: Israeli-Palestinian negotiations; the integrity of the International Atomic Energy Agency; Western leverage over Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad; and — not least — the fragile U.S. nuclear bargain with North Korea, which is believed to have aided the secret construction.”

Read the entire editorial here-

IAEA chief criticizes Israel for strike on Syria

Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, criticized  Israel in a CNN interview for it’s Sept. 6 airstrike on a facility in Syria, saying that Israel’s pre-emptive strike “is very distressful because we have a system.  If countries have information that the country is working on a nuclear-related program, they should come to us.”

ElBaradei told CNN that the IAEA has not received any information about secret nuclear activity in Syria and that Israel’s strike will make it more difficult to investigate or resolve any suspicions.

Photos said to show Israeli strike site

U.S. security analysts say they believe they have satellite photos of the site in northeastern Syria which was the target of a Sept. 6 Israeli airstrike.

Both U.S. and international experts said the site is similar to that of a nuclear facility in North Korea. The photos depict a compound with a tall chamber that could possibly house a gas-graphite reactor.

Syria has consistently denied any rumors that it is developing nuclear technology, stating only that the site is an out-of-use military facility.

Syria meets with North Korean official

Admidst the speculation surrounding the Sept. 6 airstrike on a military facility in northeastern Syria, Syrians officials met with a North Korean official as planned.  Both countries say they are meeting to discuss ways of furthering the relationship between the two countries. Many countries suspect that North Korea may be assisting Syria in developing nuclear capabilities. North Korea has provided military technology to the country in the past.

UN Agency investigates satellite photos of Syrian site

UN experts admitted to the AP that they received satellite photos of the Syrian military facility that was attacked on Sept. 6, and are investigating the photos for signs that it is a nuclear facility.

The Washington Post on Friday cited anonymous American officials as saying the site in Syria’s eastern desert near the Euphrates River had characteristics of a small but substantial nuclear reactor similar to North Korea’s facility.

Other news outlets report another theory. The Raw Story reported other American officials as indicating that the target was not a nuclear facility as Israel claims, but a stockpile of North Korean missiles.