A Still-Open Nuclear File

On September 6, 2007, Israel bombed the al-Kibar site, a small industrial complex in north eastern Syria, near the town of Deir al-Zour. What precipitated Israel's daring operation was, apparently, the looming delivery of nuclear fuel to a clandestine reactor on the site, designed to produce weapons-grade plutonium, and which by then was almost operational.

Details about the compound's real purpose became public knowledge in April 2008, when a U.S. intelligence briefing revealed that al-Kibar was a North Korean-built, gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor almost identical to the one North Korea built in its own Yongbyon facility to produce weapons-grade plutonium. The briefing offered conclusive evidence of collusion between North Korean and Syrian scientists, confirmed that North Korea had built the Syrian reactor, for cash, and hinted at the trigger for Israel's raid – the reactor's readiness.

More than three years later, this past spring, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that al-Kibar was a nuclear reactor similar to that at Yongbyon and declared Syria to be in noncompliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is now up to the UN Security Council to decide whether to punish Syria for its failure to declare the reactor's existence and for its cover-up both before and after the raid, which did “irreparable damage” to the facility.

Israeli security sources speaking off-the-record say that the Syria nuclear file is not a closed case. There are good reasons to agree.

Syria's ability to quickly develop a nuclear program on its own soil was surprising. The late Hafez Assad never pursued nuclear weapons as a deterrent against Israel because he knew his country lacked the financial resources, the industrial infrastructure, the intellectual prowess and the wherewithal to develop such a program. Instead, Assad relied for most of his career on other nonconventional weapons for deterrence. Hence, his change of course, which took place in 1997, and which was vigorously pursued by his son and heir Bashar after the father's death, raises questions. After all, the basic facts of Syria's scientific and industrial backwardness have not changed significantly of late. A Syrian nuclear program could come online only because it was a turnkey project: built, fueled and possibly operated by North Korea.

But nuclear weapons need more than weapons-grade fissile material. And while in April 2008, U.S. intelligence was adamant that the reactor's purpose was “to create fuel for a nuclear weapons program,” it had no conclusive evidence of the kind of additional components needed to weaponize plutonium – namely, a reprocessing facility and a weapons-design program. Nor does Syria have indigenous supplies of uranium.

This elicits several questions:

• Where was the reactor's fuel supposed to come from?

• If Syria was about to start producing weapons-grade plutonium, why is there no trace of the other pieces of a nuclear jigsaw puzzle?

• Why take the risk and incur the costs of such a project, if there is no way to dispose of the nuclear fuel?

In short, if this reactor was built in Syria for Syria, where was the rest of the program?

One possible answer to all these questions is that the program was built in Syria for Iran. Ronen Bergman's 2008 book, “The Secret War with Iran,” suggests that al-Kibar was clandestinely developed with Iran's financial support. A 2009 Spiegel piece, quoting diplomatic sources in Vienna, agreed, citing revelations by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' former general Ali Reza Asgari to Western intelligence agencies. Asgari, a former deputy defense minister, disappeared in Istanbul in February 2007 after a visit to Syria, possibly defected to the West, and may have revealed Iran's funding of al-Kibar.

According to the same article, in 2005, Mohsen Fakrizadeh, the shadowy IRGC official in charge of Iran's nuclear military program, visited Damascus, very likely in order to forge an agreement on the terms of Iranian funding for Syria's nuclear program. That may explain why there is no trace of Syrian reprocessing activities: Al-Kibar was built by North Korea and financed by Iran, in order to sustain Iran's plausible deniability about its nuclear program.

Skeptics could rightly object that Iran does not have known reprocessing facilities either, but it has a reactor in Arak designed for plutonium production – so why the need for surrogate production lines elsewhere? The answer may be that, with its covert nuclear activities in Arak exposed in 2002, Iran may have sought an alternative that could ensure a supply of weapons-grade plutonium even under the increased scrutiny of the international community. Besides, Iran's program hit many technical hurdles. According to the U.S. 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's program, “Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015.”

With such a lengthy timetable, IAEA inspectors roaming Iran, and American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, Tehran may have chosen to outsource plutonium production to Syria – a safer option, because al-Kibar was still undetected, and a faster one, because by then North Korea was technologically ahead of the game.

Syria's violations would be grave enough if al-Kibar reflected a Syrian attempt to build nuclear weapons for its own arsenal. They would be even graver if Syria did it to share the plutonium with Iran. And they constitute a threat, given that Assad, earlier this week, threatened “surprises” if Syria was attacked by foreign forces, in reference to Syrian military capabilities.

Though the Security Council is currently deadlocked on how to respond to Syria's ferocious domestic repression, come September, it must punish Syria's proliferating activities.

Whether Iran's involvement can be proven is immaterial: Syria's nuclear file is far from closed, and leaving it open is a risk the international community, mindful of the cruelty of the regime in Damascus, cannot afford to take.

Emanuele Ottolenghi is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of the forthcoming “The Pasdaran: Inside Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps” (FDD Press, September 2011 ).