Operation Orchard

Exterior view of the facility before and after the air raid

Interior view during the construction phase

Under the code name Operation Orchard ( Operation Obstgarten ) or Operation Outside the Box ( Hebrew מבצע מחוץ לקופסא Mivtza Michutz LaKufsa ), four Israeli Air Force ( F-15 I ) fighter planes flew an attack on the al-Kibar reactor in Syria on September 6, 2007 . The Israeli cabinet under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the US government ( George W. Bush administration ) justified the attack on the grounds that it was a nuclear facility for the production of radioactive substances for military use. The Syrian government denied this. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conducted an investigation. In their report, the IAEA experts spoke of a "significant number of anthropogenic (chemically processed) uranium particles that do not correspond to Syria's previously declared material." In its report from June 2009, the IAEA requested the government in Damascus to permit further inspections with access to three other Syrian plants that could have been related to Al-Kibar. Syria has not yet responded to this.

According to the IAEA report of May 24, 2011, a nuclear reactor was “very likely” in the destroyed facilities . The Israeli military leadership first committed to the operation on March 21, 2018.

Web links

• Syria apparently built a secret nuclear reactor ( memento from May 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), tagesschau.de , May 24, 2011.

Footnotes

1. ↑ Peter Beaumont: Was Israeli raid a dry run for attack on Iran? The Observer, September 16, 2007, accessed September 25, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Bret Stephens: Osirak II? (No longer available online.) The Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2007, archived from the original September 22, 2007 ; accessed on September 25, 2018 . 
3. ↑ Thomas Frankenfeld: Israel's mysterious "Operation Orchard". (No longer available online.) Hamburger Abendblatt , April 26, 2008, archived from the original on May 14, 2008 ; accessed on September 25, 2018 . 
4. ^ Ulrich Schmid: Israel's warning confession | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . March 21, 2018, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed on March 22, 2018]).
5. ↑ Alexandra Föderl-Schmid, Paul-Anton Krüger, Tel Aviv / Cairo: Old history as a fresh warning . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2018, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on March 22, 2018]).
6. ^ Safeguards Reports on Iran and Syria Circulated. June 5, 2009. Retrieved September 25, 2018 . 
7. ↑ Der Spiegel No. 45, November 2, 2009: "Operation 'Obstgarten', p. 123.
8. ↑ Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Syrian Arab Republic. (PDF) IAEA report GOV / 2011/30. International Atomic Energy Agency , May 24, 2011, accessed September 25, 2018 . 
9. ^ After a decade Israel admits: We bombed Syria nuclear reactor in 2007 . In: The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com . (English, jpost.com [accessed on March 22, 2018]).