Standing before a plasma screen, he used a remote control to illuminate it. For the first time the pilots saw the target; a complex deep inside Syria almost one hundred miles northeast of Damascus. He explained there was “good and sufficient intelligence” to destroy the complex, which the Syrians were using to build nuclear bombs. He waited for the flicker of response then continued. Under the cover of being an agricultural research center, the complex was already engaged in extracting uranium from phosphates. Soon it would have weapons-enriched plutonium coming from North Korea. He told them the Israeli satellite Ofek-7, which had been launched only two months before, had been geo-positioned to watch the activities at the complex near the small Syrian city of Dayr az-Zawr. He indicated its position on the screen. No bombs must fall on civilians.
Shkedy then turned to the route in and out of the target area. The aircraft would fly up along the Syrian coast and enter its airspace at the last moment north at the port town of Samadogi and then follow the border with Turkey. At the point where the River Euphrates began its long journey south into Iraq, the attack force would swing south to the Syrian desert town of ar-Raqqah beyond which they would begin the bombing run. The way out would be a high-altitude straight run between the Syrian towns of Hims and Hamah to the Mediterranean. Over the coast of Lebanon they would turn south and return to base. The total mission time would be eighty minutes. In the event of an emergency, navy rescue launches would be positioned off the Syrian coast.
He ended the briefing by saying the attack would be in the early hours of the morning and would take place “soon.” For a moment longer the air force commander looked at the small group of pilots. Perhaps sensing their one concern, he added that every step would be taken to ensure Syria’s vaunted air defenses would be jammed. He did not say how and no one asked. It was a mark of the trust and respect they had for General Eliezer Shkedy.
The genesis for the operation ensued three years prior when a massive explosion on a North Korean freight train heading for the port of Namp’o occurred on April 22, 2004. Mossad agents had learned that in a compartment adjoining a sealed wagon were a dozen Syrian nuclear technicians who had worked in the Iranian nuclear program at Natanz, near Tehran, and had arrived in North Korea to collect the fissionable material stored in the wagon. The technicians died in the train explosion, and their bodies were flown home in lead-encased coffins aboard a Syrian military plane. By then a wide area around the explosion site had been cordoned off and scores of North Korean soldiers in anti-contamination suits had spent days recovering wreckage and spraying the entire area. Mossad analysts suspected they were recovering some of the estimated fifty-five kilos of weapons-grade plutonium North Korea possessed. Since the explosion—its cause never established—the intelligence service had tracked Syrian military officers and scientists on a dozen trips to Pyongyang where they met with high-ranking officials in the regime. The most recent meeting was shortly before the
It was Kamal’s report and photographic evidence of the arrival and unloading of the ship that was the focus of the meeting in General Shkedy’s headquarters on September 4, 2007. The air force commander’s briefing room was dominated by large plasma screens on two walls. One contained a blow-up of the ship and the covered crates being off-loaded and driven away. A second screen showed the town of Dayr az-Zawr. A third screen displayed a satellite image of a large square building surrounded by several smaller ones and a security fence. The area was identified by the word: “Target.”
Seated around the conference table with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were the other key players in the operation, codenamed “Sunburst.” For Olmert, it was further proof of his powers of survival. A year ago he had been close to being driven out of office after the debacle of the war in Lebanon when he was vilified as the most incompetent leader Israel had ever had. He had fought back, appointing Ehud Barak as his new defense minister and Tzipi Livni as foreign minister. Both now flanked him at the table giving Olmert the political support he needed for “Sunburst.” Beside them sat Benjamin Netanyahu, a former prime minister and now leader of the Likud Party. Like Barak, Netanyahu was experienced in the complexities of “black” operations. Barak had been a leader in Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s elite commando force who bore the same motto as Britain’s SAS: “Who Dares Wins.” Netanyahu had approved several Mossad missions while in office.
