In My Time - Dick Cheney [249]
The first question was, how good was the intelligence? Mike McConnell, the very professional director of national intelligence, said, “It’s about as good as it gets.” He noted the intelligence community had “high confidence” this was a nuclear reactor.
We discussed two possible paths of response. One was diplomatic. We would make news of the reactor public, go to the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and try to build international consensus to force the Syrians to shut the reactor down. I was skeptical. The UN and IAEA record on forcing rogue states to give up their nuclear programs was not impressive, and I had no reason to believe this approach would work here. The other option, which I favored, was military. Either we or the Israelis take the Syrian plant out.
Two days later Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was in town for meetings. I participated in his lunch with the president, and the prime minister asked to see me separately as well. He was staying in Blair House, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, and I joined him there for dinner on June 19, 2007. After dinner we kicked our staff members out and had a lengthy one-on-one meeting. He was very focused both on the threat from Iran and on the Syrian nuclear facility. The existence of a secret nuclear reactor in Syria posed an existential threat to Israel, and the proliferation involved in its construction was a direct threat to America’s national security. Olmert urged that the United States take military action to destroy the facility and made clear Israel would act if we did not.
At another session later that month with most of the National Security Council present, I again made the case for U.S. military action against the reactor. Not only would it make the region and the world safer, but it would also demonstrate our seriousness with respect to non-proliferation. It would enhance our credibility in that part of the world, taking us back to where we were in 2003, after we had taken down the Taliban, taken down Saddam’s regime, and gotten Qaddafi to turn over his nuclear program. But I was a lone voice. After I finished, the president asked, “Does anyone here agree with the vice president?” Not a single hand went up around the room. I had done all I could, and I’m not sure the president’s mind would have been changed if the others had agreed with me. He had decided to recommend to the Israelis that we take the diplomatic path. How, he asked, were the Israelis likely to respond to that decision? Secretary Rice told him she believed that the Israelis would accept the offer of diplomacy. She thought Prime Minister Olmert would go along with the idea of taking the information to the United Nations and working for multilateral action to shut down the facility.
I told the president that the Israelis would destroy the reactor at al-Kibar if we did not. Ehud Olmert, whom I had known for years, meant what he said about taking action. I also remembered 1981, when the Israelis had ignored world opinion and launched an air strike to destroy a nuclear reactor Saddam Hussein was building at Osirak in Iraq.
In mid-July the president placed a call to Prime Minister Olmert to tell him we wanted to go the diplomatic route. Olmert, disappointed, said that wouldn’t work for Israel. He could not place the fate of Israel in the hands of the UN or the IAEA. And time was growing short. The reactor had to be destroyed before it “went hot,” before the nuclear fuel was loaded, or there would be the potential for significant radioactive contamination.
Under cover of darkness on September 6, 2007, Israeli F-15s crossed into Syrian airspace and within minutes were over the target at al-Kibar. Satellite photos afterward showed that the Israeli pilots hit their target perfectly. There was not a single crater except where