Should the U.S. strike rogue nuclear sites?

U.S. satellite images of an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor site

The Associated Press

The U.S. government on Thursday released images of a site in Syria believed to be a nuclear reactor built with North Korean know-how. The image on the left shows the results of an Israeli airstrike.

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Should the U.S. strike rogue nuclear sites?

The United States has a message for would-be nuclear proliferators: We're watching you, and we see more than you think. That's the conclusion some experts draw from the U.S. government's unusual April 24 release of evidence that Syria may have been building a nuclear reactor with North Korea's assistance.

Israeli warplanes bombed the Syrian site on Sept. 6, 2007. This week, a U.S. delegation is in North Korea pressing the Pyongyang regime for a full accounting of all its nuclear activities, including aid for Syria or any other country. "This is very striking data to make public. It's clearly intended as a broader message to both the Syrian and North Korean governments," says Anthony Cordesman, a senior military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Should the United States take a harder line against rogue states such as North Korea, Syria and Iran? Is this deterrence? Or a prelude to more violence?

Ben likes: North Korea, Syria, and Iran

Gordon G. Chang/Commentary's Contentions

Today, U.S. intelligence officials will give closed-door briefings to members of Congress about North Korea’s role in building a reactor in Syria. (Israel, it’s been confirmed, destroyed that nuclear facility with their air-strikes last September.)

Why are the briefings taking place now? This morning the New York Times’s David Sanger speculated that Vice President Cheney is trying to scuttle the six-party disarmament talks by highlighting Pyongyang’s proliferant behavior. Others have floated more intriguing theories. For example, Jon Wolfsthal, an analyst from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, thinks the Bush administration is releasing the information at this time to rescue its tentative deal with the North Koreans by letting them off the hook. “If it turns out we have them dead to rights -- that we have enough information on our own -- then we can eliminate this as a point of contention,” he says. “Maybe we don’t need to negotiate transparency with North Korea because we already know enough.”

Joel likes: Links to reactor?

New York Times

Until now, the administration has refused to discuss the video or the attack, other than in a highly classified briefing for a few allies and crucial members of Congress.

The timing of the administration’s decision to declassify information about the Syrian project has raised widespread suspicions, especially in the State Department, that Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration hawks were hoping that releasing the information might undermine a potential deal with North Korea that would take it off an American list of state sponsors of terrorism.

“Making public the pictures is likely to inflame the North Koreans,” said one senior administration official who would not speak on the record because the White House and the State Department have declared there would be no public comment until the evidence is released. “And that’s just what opponents of this whole arrangement want, because they think the North Koreans will stalk off.”

Ambassador Christopher Hill has argued in private that the Syrian episode and the uranium enrichment are side shows, and that the critical issue is stopping North Korea from producing more plutonium and giving up what it has. But his State Department colleagues say that he has been told not to defend the deal, or even explain it.