BICOM

Israel’s former Director of Military Intelligence Amos Yadlin said yesterday that Israel’s ten year silence about its operation to destroy a Syrian nuclear reactor reduced the likelihood of conflict between Israel and Syria.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) yesterday confirmed in published documents and photos that eight F-15 fighter jets bombed the facility in the Deir el-Zour region of eastern Syria on 5 September 2007.

Yadlin took to Twitter after the announcement to explain that, by not publicising the operation at the time, “Israel provided [Syrian President Bashar] Assad with deniability – and this decreased the likelihood of a Syrian retaliatory response that could have escalated to war”. Yadlin was one of the senior military officers involved in the operation in 2007.

Yadlin also compared the operation to Israel’s 1981 bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor northwest of Baghdad. He said that the Syrian strike received more international support “due to the fact that Israel kept its allies in the loop, as well as the strategy of providing Assad with the room for deniability”.

Israeli media have suggested that the IDF released details about the operation now because then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Ehud Barak are both about to publish autobiographies that contain their version of events and their respective roles in the operation. Writing in Haaretz, journalist and commentator Anshel Pfeffer said: “If early copies of the two books are anything to go by, we’re in for another bloody round of Ehud vs. Ehud battles”.

Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman criticised the “war of credits and wave of mutual slander” between the pair, adding that it “shames” the success of the military operation. “People simply broke through all the barricades and are simply letting information out, some of which could damage Israel’s security,” he told Haaretz.

Israeli Air Force (IAF) Commander Maj.-Gen. Amikam Norkin said the turmoil within Syria has vindicated the decision to launch the 2007 strike and called it “one of the most important decisions taken here in the last 70 years”.”Imagine what situation we would be in today if there was a nuclear reactor in Syria,” he added.