Vol. 72/No. 19      May 12, 2008

Israeli warplanes bombed a site in Syria last September after Tel Aviv shared surveillance footage with Washington. The White House went public April 24 with videos of what it claims was a plutonium reactor under construction in Syria. The design of the facilities and personnel at the site shown in the video, U.S. officials say, point to north Korean involvement.

The UN International Atomic Energy Agency, while criticizing the bombing and the withholding of information for seven months, has pledged to investigate the claims.

The governments of Israel and the United States were silent about the airstrike when it happened; the press was low-key. At the time, the U.S. government was pressing north Korea to rapidly dismantle a reactor there, disclose more information, and concede to inspections. Tel Aviv was involved in its own pressure campaign against Syria. The site was cleared since and another building constructed in its place.

The Israeli government has presented no evidence that Damascus had, or planned to acquire nuclear fuel to run a reactor. The Syrian government denies the site was for nuclear purposes.

Washington has been leading a campaign of harsh economic sanctions and threats against north Korea to try and force the government to abandon its nuclear program. While U.S. officials condemn Pyongyang for sharing its technology, the U.S. government benefits from nuclear technology sharing deals with other countries, including Brazil, Israel, India, and Japan.

The United States, which currently has about 5,400 nuclear warheads, restarted production of nuclear weapons last year and is moving ahead to develop a ballistic missile shield in order to be able to use its nuclear arsenal unchecked. Washington is also the only government to have ever used nuclear weapons when it bombed the densely populated Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, killing hundreds of thousands.

Under the imperialist-led pressure campaign, the north Korean government agreed to end its nuclear program last February. The DPRK shut down and began to decommission its nuclear reactor in July.

Under the terms of the agreement, the governments of the United States, Japan, south Korea, Russia, and China agreed to provide north Korea 1 million tons of fuel oil. Washington also said it would start the process of normalizing diplomatic relations with the DPRK, begin removing Pyongyang from the list of “terrorist” organizations, and end some sanctions.

Washington has made no moves to live up to any part of its end of the deal. The new accusations come amid debates within the U.S. ruling class on how best to maximize economic and political pressure against the DPRK, including whether to follow through with funding for the fuel and the other agreed-to terms.  
 
 
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