On January 10, the German weekly Der Spiegel "disclosed" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's "secret nuclear plans". According to Western intelligence services, Syria's dictator has not abandoned his dream of a nuclear bomb and, according to Spiegel journalist Erich Follath, "the Syrian atomic weapon program has continued in a secret, underground location".
As proof of this "explosive" news, he presented a satellite image of the alleged covert nuclear plant just west of the city of Qusayr, close to the border of Lebanon, and speculated in detail about the site's function.
So far, so bad. Because the story is far off-base. None of the alleged evidence - or even just hints - support Follath's central
thesis of Assad having built a secret
nuclear facility. With the exception of his references to intercepted
phone calls - codename "ZamZam" - all of Follath's claims can be refuted
by alternative explanations that have been verified many times and do
not leave room for alarmist speculation. Not surprisingly, the director
of the Institute for Science and International Security, David Albright,
called the story "perplexing".
Albright is right on the mark. The satellite image of the "clandestine nuclear facility at Qusayr" shows a facility that intelligence services know about for years - and which can be viewed via "Google Earth". In August 2012 Jane's Intelligence Review carried an article describing the Qusayr facility as a storage site for Scud missiles. Similar facilities exist elsewhere in Syria, and they usually serve as ammunition sites.
Of course, Follath knows all this. However, he tries to create the impression that over the past years the Qusayr facility had been substantially modified in order to serve more ambitious functions. Yet this is not the case. Albright, who is considered an authority on interpreting such images, concluded that "up to now we cannot detect anything nuclear-specific".
It is therefore doubtful that Follath's sources have even been close to the Qusayr facility. But this is of secondary importance, because the real story is about what may be going on inside the site. Here Follath indulges in pure speculation. Without a single piece of evidence he piles up one guess after another in order to prove this "development of incalculable geopolitical consequences".
Follath's account starts with allegations about the fate of the 8,000 fuel rods that had once been supplied by North Korea to build the reactor at Al Kibar. That reactor had been destroyed by an Israeli air attack in 2007. Since then, there has been much speculation as to where these fuel rods were located. According to Follath's sources, they are stored at Qusayr. Maybe, maybe not.
In the view of Follath, who describes the odyssey of the fuel rods through various Syrian sites, the rods were not stored at Qusayr to keep them safe, but rather with the aim of building a "nuclear factory". Alas, there is not a single shred of evidence to support this thesis. But Follath needs this supposition in order to support his central claim that "most probably a new reactor or a new enrichment facility" had emerged in Qusayr.
Not so. If such an enrichment facility had indeed been built, it would make little sense. Follath tries to give credibility to his story about an enrichment facility by claiming that the 8,000 fuel rods, once having been "enriched further", could be turned into three to five nuclear weapons.
However, this is nuclear nonsense. The rods consist of natural uranium. They cannot be enriched further unless they have been converted into uraniumhexafluoride gas. This is a highly complex process. And there is no such conversion facility anywhere in Syria. In other words, even if the 8,000 fuel rods were indeed stored in an enrichment facility in Qusayr, this does not amount to a viable nuclear option. It is simply impossible to use an enrichment facility and turn fuel rods made from natural uranium into a weapon. Thus, Follath's alarmist conclusions are meaningless from a scientific perspective.
Follath's alternative scenario - a nuclear reactor - is equally flawed. Only a gas-graphite reactor could use the 8,000 fuel rods, since such rods are tailored to specific types of reactors. Yet there is no evidence that such a reactor exists. Nor does Follath produce any information from someone who might have been inside the alleged reactor building.
No one has ever built an underground gas-graphite reactor. The challenges would be immense, not least the problem of water management. Indeed, Follath mentions a "deep well which connects the facility with Zaita Lake, four kilometers away" and opines that such a connection was "unnecessary for a conventional weapons cache, but ? essential for a nuclear facility".
Leave aside the fact that some experts question whether the object on the satellite image is actually a well: both Albright and Olli Heinonen, the former chief inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency, have observed that the absence of large pipes that would be essential to supply a reactor with large amounts of water undermines Follath's conclusion. After all, there is a reason why such reactors are built near rivers.
Follath's statement that a well would be unnecessary for a mere ammunition site is equally bewildering. Whatever function Qusayr may have, there are people inside who probably prefer to enjoy their tea in a liquid rather than solid state.
Assuming that Qusayr hosts a nuclear reactor, experience from similar reactors in North Korea and Al Kibar suggests that construction would take eight to 10 years. Given that Qusayr is within the range of routine Israeli reconnaissance overflights, it seems utterly implausible that such a construction process, which involves transporting huge amounts of materiel, would have been missed for a decade.
In a Christian Science Monitor article published on January 11, the journalist Nicholas Blanford dryly remarked that the best proof of the dubious character of the Spiegel story was that fact that Qusayr still existed, and, unlike the real reactor in Al Kibar, had not been destroyed by the Israeli Air Force.
Follath, however, has a different view. He believes that Israel, the US and the rest of the world have simply missed the conversion of Qusayr into a "nuclear factory". Hence, he argues that it is now too late, since Israel has no longer any acceptable military option to destroy the reactor. Unlike the destruction of Al Kibar in 2007, Israel would have to employ bunker-busting ammunition, "with unforeseeable consequences for the environment".
Again, this is nonsense. Israel would indeed have to use bunker-busters, yet the environmental damage would only occur if the reactor were already running. But it is not. If it were, it would emit various gases that would give it away. Hence, "Israel's hardliners", whom for Follath seem to represent all evil, will not have to take the "irresponsible decision" to attack the Qusayr facility. For there is nothing that would warrant such an attack - at least no reactor or enrichment facility.
What about Follath's "clearest proof" that Qusayr is a "nuclear facility", namely radio traffic intercepted by Western intelligence agencies? Again, the information revealed by Follath does not lead to the conclusion he draws. The fact that Qusayr may have been given a code name ("ZamZam") reminds one of oriental fairy tales rather than hard facts.
At this point, the reader can no longer analyze the facts at hand - he must simply believe in the infallibility of a prominent Spiegel author who wants to prove to the whole world that an imminent nuclear threat from Syria has been irresponsibly missed and that we have had to live with this "development of incalculable geopolitical consequences".
It may not bother Follath that the expert community has demolished his "evidence". Perhaps he thinks that the authority of the Spiegel is sufficient to make his story credible. Even Spiegel's authority cannot overcome the fact that his article is not even intelligent speculation. It is just a big, fat hoax.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-01-130215.html
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