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Pakistani Scientist AQ Khan Led Israel to Syrian Nuclear Sites
(Times of Israel) Amir Bar Shalom - Brig.-Gen. (res.) Dr. Amnon Sofrin, the head of the Mossad's intelligence division in the mid-2000s, revealed in an interview the story of Israel's discovery that Syria had secretly built a nuclear reactor and was close to bringing it online. "In December 2003, the British and Americans announced that...they managed to convince [Libyan leader] Gaddafi to give up his plans for nuclear weapons....With the American announcement, we realized that the Pakistanis were heavily involved in Libya. We started researching and the name of Dr. [A.Q.] Khan immediately came up, the father of Pakistan's first Muslim bomb." "We understood that he came to Libya with his people for a turnkey project. He distributed centrifuges and facilities throughout Libya. I looked at the data and said to myself, 'Wait. If Dr. Khan is the project manager, let's see where else he has been in the Middle East.'...Regarding Syria, I immediately had a concern." In March 2007, according to an investigation by the New Yorker, Mossad agents broke into the Vienna hotel room of Ibrahim Othman, the head of Syria's Atomic Energy Agency, cloned his PC, and left without a trace. The photographs from the PC showed a plutogenic reactor ready for operation. It was an exact copy of the nuclear reactor in North Korea. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appealed to the Americans to attack the site, but President George W. Bush refused. On Sep. 6, 2007, the IDF bombed the Syrian reactor, demolishing the site.