A suspicious North Korean freighter that re-flagged itself as South Korean before off-loading an unknown cargo at the Syrian port of Tartous is at the centre of efforts today to investigate Israel’s recent air strike on Syria.
An Israeli on-line data analyst, Ronen Solomon, found an internet trace for the 1,700-tonne cargo ship, Al Hamed, which showed the vessel started to off-load what Syrian officials categorised as “cement” on Sept 3.
This was three days before Israeli jets attacked a site in the north eastern desert of Syria, not far from its border with Iraq.
North Korea is famous for its exports of concrete.
In other news, I think Israel has taken a step up with their new defenses minister Ehud Barak. He made some calls when he was a prime minister that might seem questionable to conservative types. But his decisions as defense minister are at least understandable. That is more then you can say for his predecessor.
As an example, read this article in The Times….
Early in the summer Ehud Barak, the defence minister, had given the order to double Israeli forces on its Golan Heights border with Syria in anticipation of possible retaliation by Damascus in the event of air strikes.
Sergei Kirpichenko, the Russian ambassador to Syria, warned President Bashar al-Assad last month that Israel was planning an attack, but suggested the target was the Golan Heights.
Israeli military intelligence sources claim Syrian special forces moved towards the Israeli outpost of Mount Hermon on the Golan Heights. Tension rose, but nobody knew why.
At this point, Barak feared events could spiral out of control. The decision was taken to reduce the number of Israeli troops on the Golan Heights and tell Damascus the tension was over. Syria relaxed its guard shortly before the Israeli Defense Forces struck.
That is an exercise in deception that you would expect from a guy who dressed as a woman in order to assassinate people in downtown Beirut while it was controlled by PLO.
You could argue he should have kept the troops on the border just in case. But I can understand not wanting to do anything to jeopardize the air strike if it was really a nuclear target. Israel can handled Syrian conventional forces in almost any conceivable situation. But if you flub an attack on a weapon of mass destruction, you might not get a second chance.
In that context, making it look like Israel was backing down was probably the right decision. You don’t expect an enemy who is withdrawing troops from your border to attack you.
H/T The Belmont Club which also has satellite photos of possible targets. Apparently, Syria’s nuclear research agency is big on doing agricultural research