Confirmation, finally

Update, October 17:

Now they’re saying it was a translator’s error. I guess I waited all that time but needed to wait one more day.

The United Nations on Wednesday blamed an interpreter’s error for an erroneous report that Syria claimed an Israeli airstrike hit a Syrian nuclear facility, a mistake that made headlines in the Middle East and heightened concerns over Damascus’ nuclear ambitions.

Syria denied on Wednesday that one of its representatives told the UN General Assembly’s committee that deals with disarmament on Tuesday that Israel had attacked a Syrian nuclear facility and added that “such facilities do not exist in Syria.”

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, SANA, quoting an unnamed Foreign Ministry source, said its representative was misquoted – and after more than seven hours of investigation the United Nations said that was indeed the case.

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For weeks I have been avoiding the story of the attack on Syria by Israel until some credible news appears from somewhere. The Israeli government has been relatively quiet about the matter and so has the Israeli press. The syrians have been sending out a number of different versions, and the international press kept providing information that could easily have been fed to them.

Today, Syria’s ambassador to the UN apparently admitted that Israel attacked a nuclear facility in Syria.

In its first admission by a state official, Syria’s ambassador to the UN confirmed that an air raid carried out by Israeli fighter jets deep in Syrian territory on September 6 was, indeed, an attack on a Syrian nuclear facility, Israel Radio reported Wednesday morning.

A senior source in the Foreign Ministry confirmed that the statement was made in New York by the Syrian official.

The Syrians were building a nuclear facility.

I can understand them keeping it quiet, just as I understand Israel bombing it. It also seems plausible that the North Koreans were the source of the technology. While I don’t want to sound like Bush’s speechwriters, the Iran-North Korea-Syria axis is no longer some mythical enemy but is a true source of friction, potential war and increasing threats to Israel. These threats now cover not only conventional warfare, as we saw with the arming and support for Hizbullah by Syria and Iran, but now unconventional technologies beyond the advanced chemical arsenal already in Syria’s possession. We are now in the true nuclear age. It isn’t just Iran that is developing nuclear technology. Egypt and Jordan are both seeking to develop nuclear capability and now Syria has admitted to doing so as well.

The problem the world faces is that nuclear technology is used in the first world, often as a source of energy and not always for military purposes. This makes the West’s cries about third world countries’ development of this technology appear hypocritical. This should not matter in this case. Iran is a theocracy that has expressed a desire to destroy another country, and has expressed severe anger at America. Egypt is a dictatorship where underlying Islamist forces such as the Muslim Brotherhood are waiting for a chance to pounce on the leadership and take power. Syria remains a dictatorship and an agitator in the region. Jordan is peaceful and has behaved reasonably, but remains a country where the majority of the population is different from the ruling class and king.

As long as those countries are not true democracies with peaceful values, they remain a threat to peace in the region and the world. Having theocracies, countries with the potential of becoming theocracies or politically unstable states control the technology for making nuclear weapons is dangerous and terrifying. The West must do everything in its power to prevent the development of these technologies in these countries. I am not advocating war, but that threat should hang over any talks because it is persuasive. While it is true that the US is in a quagmire, all of these leaders know that Hussein did not survive and neither did his family. That can be effective deterrence and the West should have the courage to make the threats if it will lead to an end of this pursuit of nuclear technology.

Otherwise, Israel, as the first and closest country to be threatened by the existence of these plants or weapons, will have to continue to launch these attacks against nuclear facilities. It is in everybody’s best interest to solve the problem diplomatically first, especially Israel’s.