Where there's smoke...

There was much speculation that the air strike carried out by Israel in Syria was on nuclear facilities or materiel provided by North Korea. Much skepticism surrounds this theory since one of its most vocal proponents is the controversial former UN Ambassador John Bolton. Bolton who made it his personal crusade to stem what he believed was the proliferation of WMD in the Middle East, became something of a pariah when it became clear that no WMD would be found in Iraq.

However, al Jazeera recently reported that the North Korean government hosted a Syrian delegation. North Korea was extremely quick to condemn the air strike by Israel and almost equally quick in denying providing Syria with nuclear materiel or technology. It is strange, therefore, that they would invite the Syrian delegation which can only endanger its position before the upcoming resumption of talks regarding the dismantling of its nuclear programme. Lacking hard evidence, intelligence agencies have been cautious about claiming North Korea is liquidating its nuclear programme in Syria and/or Iran. Syria has been on the United States' nuclear watch list since Syria began investigation uranium deposits found inside the country.

There remains no confirmation of the nature of the target, however anonymous Israeli military and government sources quoted in Haaretz claim the target was either a conventional weapons factory, nuclear enrichment facility, or nuclear materiel shipments. One doubts if we will ever know the actual identity of the target, but as the title of this entry states: where there's smoke, there's fire...