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Break the Silence on Syria's Nuclear Program
Graham Allison and Olli Heinonen - The U.S. has joined other major powers in a dangerous conspiracy of silence on Syria's nuclear program. Syria foreswore nuclear weapons when it ratified the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1969 and signed a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1992. Yet Syria was able to secretly buy a nuclear reactor from North Korea. If Israel had not bombed the Al-Kibar reactor site in September 2007, it would be producing plutonium by now for Syria's first nuclear bomb. It is by no means certain that Damascus has given up its nuclear ambitions. Since November 2008, nine IAEA reports (the latest released last month) have documented Syria's noncompliance with its requests for more details about its nuclear program. While Syria stalls, the authority of the whole nonproliferation regime is eroding. This sets another unwelcome precedent for future proliferators. Mr. Allison is director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School. Mr. Heinonen is a former deputy director of the IAEA and now a senior fellow at the Belfer Center.