The U.S. and Israel, allies for more than 70 years, are sometimes at odds on specific policies and actions. Yaakov Katz’s new book Shadow Strike:Inside Israel's Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power (St. Martin’s Press) details one such disagreement involving a high-stakes threat to Israel in 2007.
As Katz, editor of the Jerusalem Post, tells it, in mid-April of that year, the director of Israel Intelligence, Meir Dagan “… a short, bald and burly man with a limp and a cane walked into the West Wing of the White House” to meet with President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and members of the national security staff. He showed them photographs of a secret nuclear reactor in a remote part of Syria; it had been supplied by North Korea and was nearing an operational or “hot” stage.
The Mossad director also made it clear that Israel could never tolerate a hostile neighbor acquiring the capability to produce an atomic weapon. He did not need to remind the Americans that in 1981, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) destroyed a nuclear plant in Iraq.
As Katz, editor of the Jerusalem Post, tells it, in mid-April of that year, the director of Israel Intelligence, Meir Dagan “… a short, bald and burly man with a limp and a cane walked into the West Wing of the White House” to meet with President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and members of the national security staff. He showed them photographs of a secret nuclear reactor in a remote part of Syria; it had been supplied by North Korea and was nearing an operational or “hot” stage.
The Mossad director also made it clear that Israel could never tolerate a hostile neighbor acquiring the capability to produce an atomic weapon. He did not need to remind the Americans that in 1981, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) destroyed a nuclear plant in Iraq.
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