The Axis of Evil Throws A Spoke

Ed Morrissey writes, “The Times of London believes that the Axis of Evil just ‘threw a spoke’ after an Israeli attack demolished a joint Syrian-North Korean nuclear weapons project”:

Three days ago, I wrote that Israel had conducted a second Osirak, and that appears confirmed at this point. Syria has been relatively quiet after its initial complaint about Israeli overflights, and Israel has refused to deny that they conducted a mission in Syria, which basically acts as a passive confirmation. Intel shows that North Koreans had been in Syria up to that time and that a new facility on the Euphrates had more than just agriculture on its mind.

This operation had been planned since the spring, when the facility first came to the attention of the Israelis. The Syrians had apparently bought North Korean technology and materiel at about the time that Kim Jong-Il had started to cooperate with the West on nuclear disarmament. Analysts believe that Kim either hoped to hide his work by sharing it with the Syrians or just get as much hard currency as he could grab through proliferation. No one doubts that the Syrians would love to have nukes, nor does anyone doubt where those weapons would go — and Israel, as they did with Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak, decided to eliminate the threat before it reached fruition.

As Ed notes, “The greater threat of Syrian nukes was not an all-out attack, which would have generated a devastating American response, but of a terrorist attack using smuggled Syrian nukes, for which Syria could claim no responsibility. That’s why Israel had to act before Syria could put those weapons in the hands of its proxy terrorists.”