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Assessing Nuclear Activity in Syria and Iran

[Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University] Emily B. Landau - The U.S. officials who briefed lawmakers on Syria's covert nuclear reactor believed that the reactor was intended to produce nuclear weapons. It was clearly not for producing electricity, and it was ill-suited to be a research reactor. Moreover, Syria had acted suspiciously, rushing to destroy the remains of the reactor after the attack. Determined proliferators are well aware that states are looking for smoking guns, and they put tremendous efforts into hiding their activities. Connecting the dots of weapons-related nuclear activity should be carried out in the realm of strategic analysis, where hard evidence of so-called smoking guns is but one important component. Something is amiss when intelligence officials have to bend over backwards to explain an estimate that doesn't concur with what they believe to be the actual nature of a state's nuclear activity based on their overall analysis and powers of deduction.
2008-05-05 01:00:00
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