It began on September 3, 2007, when the early morning sun caught the rust-stained hull of a 1,700-ton cargo ship as it slowly steamed into the busy Mediterranean port of Tartous in Syria. From its mast flew the flag of South Korea and the stern plate identified the al-Hamed as being registered in Inchon, one of the country’s major ports.
Watching the ship manoeuvring into its berth from a distance was a man with the swarthy skin of a Kurd or one of the Marsh Arabs of Iraq. He was fluent in both their languages as well as some of the dialects of Afghanistan. He was, in fact, a Turkish-born Jew who had eschewed the life of a carpet seller in the family business in Istanbul to go to Israel, serve in its army as a translator and finally achieve his life’s ambition to work in Mossad.
Fifteen years later, he was recognised as one of its most brilliant operatives. In that time, he had operated in a dozen countries under as many aliases, using his linguistic skills and chameleon-like characteristics to observe and be absorbed into whichever community he had been sent.
Now, for the moment, he was code-named Kamal with a perfectly faked Iranian passport in his pocket. Mossad’s chief, Meir Dagan, had stressed to him the importance of his mission: to confirm the role of al-Hamed in the dangerous relationship which the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad had formed with North Korea.
The whole piece has more detail about Israel’s raid on Syra’s nuclear site than I have seen anywhere else. Somebody is either making things up or talking about things they should keep quite about. (H/T The Belmont Club)