More than two months after Israeli warplanes conducted a mysterious raid in northeast Syria, there is a growing consensus among US government and independent analysts that the suspicious target was a nuclear facility. But the evidence they are relying upon — a series of satellite photos showing a building and an adjacent pumping station near the Euphrates River — is anything but definitive. With the exception of several highly classified one-on-one briefings about the incident to a handful of Congressional leaders, the George W Bush administration has kept mum.

Western analysts say a tall boxy building on the site may have contained a nuclear reactor under construction similar to North Korean design, but the structure itself was razed after the Sept. 6 air raid. They say that the secret nuclear reactor may be several years old. Whether or not the facility was nuclear, the episode — and Israeli, Syrian, and US silence over the issue — raises even more questions as to the actual threat posed by the facility, the timing of the raid, and what the unilateral action portends for the nuclear ambitions of Israel’s regional neighbours.

A UN watchdog inquiry into the suspected Syrian covert nuclear site may end inconclusively without more information than satellite pictures that are already available. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has asked to see the intelligence that prompted the attack, and is also seeking information from Damascus about its alleged programme.

“At the IAEA, we have zero, and I stress ‘zero’, information on the attack,” IAEA head Mohammad El-Baradei told the French newspaper Le Monde last week. “Frankly, I venture to hope that before people decide to bombard and use force, they will come and see us to convey their concerns. We would have gone there to check.” The air strike shows that the US and Israel have decided to circumvent the UN’s monitoring of nuclear proliferation situations in the Middle East, according to analysts.

“The Bush administration’s decision not to share its intelligence on the Syrian site with the IAEA, and thereby encourage and support the international agency’s aggressive inspection and evaluation of this alleged threat to peace, was another demonstration of the contempt in which the present US administration holds the UN,” said former CIA analyst Ray Close.

“It suggests, in effect, that the US intends to manage the international nuclear proliferation issue all by itself, independent of the rest of the international community — except for deputising Israel to be the nuclear policeman of the Middle East,” he said.

Israel’s actions also came as Secretary of State Rice shuttled about the Middle East in preparation for substantive peace negotiations between Israel and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, presumably the first time “final status” issues would be discussed between the two sides in seven years. It remains to be seen what impact Israel’s foray will have on the peace process.

“By its attack on Syria, the Israeli leadership has demonstrated that it attaches a higher priority to restoring the credibility of its military dominance over its neighbours than it does to supporting US diplomatic efforts to advance the peace process — on which Israel’s real security ultimately depends,” Close said. — IPS