Facing Assad

It did not take long for the pendulum to swing from the Iraq Study Group’s endorsed policy of engaging the Syrian regime to beginning a policy of confrontation. We of the Reform Party of Syria, a Washington-based group that seeks regime change in Syria and monitors Syrian behavior, believe it is not a moment too soon.Even before President Bush spoke last week about disrupting attacks in Iraq from Syria- and Iran-supported terrorists, Washington had taken important first steps this new year. On January 5, America announced sanctions against 24 foreign entities, including Russian, Chinese, and North Korean firms, for allegedly selling banned weapons to Iran and Syria. A day earlier, the Treasury Department had blocked the financial assets of three Syrian institutions suspected of spreading weapons of mass destruction.The most dangerous of the three is the Scientific Studies and Research Center, the nucleus of the regime’s chemical, biological, and missile WMD program. Center scientists regularly travel to Iran to coordinate with their counterparts in Amir Kabir University of Technology for critical support in the fields of chemical weapons and ballistic missile research. The center is also behind the super-secret Syrian Air Force chemical weapons arm, Unit 417, which has held test launches of short-range ballistic missiles equipped with chemical warheads. One such test occurred in the summer of 2006 when fighting between Israel and Hezbollah had reached a peak, and another occurred as recently as October. Furthermore, the center runs a high-tech covert biological laboratory in a barren rural strip of land in northwest Syria known as the Dubaya Center.The CIA sent a report to Congress in 2004 outlining Syria’s arms proliferation and interaction with A.Q. Khan, the scientist considered the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear program who confessed to running an illegal nuclear proliferation network. The report, which covered only the 2004 period, confirmed Syrian WMD research at the Dubaya facility.The American sanctions could not have come at a better time. Based upon our contacts in the Lebanese opposition who have observed Hezbollah’s increasingly sophisticated tactics in that country, we believe that Russia has been advising Iran and Syria, which in turn guide Hezbollah, on how to transport and avoid detection of weapons. Moreover, pursuing President Putin’s vision of a neo-Soviet revival, the Russians have agreed to supply Syria with advanced anti-aircraft and anti-armor weapons systems, while pledging to help thwart a U.N. tribunal investigating the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. In exchange, the Syrians are allowing more Russian advisers — reaching Cold War levels — in the port of Tartus, a potential strategic staging ground for Russian nuclear submarines in the Mediterranean. Iran has offered to pay Syria’s tab, amounting to billions of dollars.We at the Reform Party also are aware of three Syrian nuclear scientists working on a Syrian nuclear program: Ibrahim Othman, Mustapha Hamolella, and Faris Al-Asfari. Mr. Othman headed the Atomic Energy Commission of Syria, an organization established in 1979 by Hafez al-Assad for, as stated in disclosures to the International Atomic Energy Agency, peaceful use of nuclear technology for power plants. Mr. Othman attends all IAEA annual meetings in Vienna, and, our Lebanese sources inform us, he was in contact with Mr. Khan.Moreover, our sources report that 12 Iraqi nuclear scientists and their families were transported to Syria before the collapse of Saddam’s regime. The Iraqis, who brought with them compact discs crammed with research data on Saddam’s nuclear program, received new identities, including Syrian citizenship papers and falsified birth, education, and health certificates.It is not surprising that Iran and Syria are drawing the battle lines in the Middle East. Both have weathered a series of half-measures by America and the European Union. Syria continues to get away with a brutal crackdown on internal dissidents while working to topple the Western-aligned Lebanese government. Iran likewise has faced nothing more than a diplomatic pinprick as it moves forward with its nuclear program and as its Revolutionary Guards train and equip hostile Shiite militias in Iraq. In short, they are winning — on every level and in every way.If America doesn’t act to stop the Damascus dictator, Bashar al-Assad, it will only embolden him to tighten his tie to Iran and accelerate his WMD agenda. If anything, history teaches us that an inchoate reaction to an aggressive and determined enemy is an assured recipe for defeat. America held several meetings with the Syrian opposition but has yet to take serious action against the Assad regime. Warning shots are useless if they are not backed by a commitment to use the real thing. Likewise sanctions are useless without resolute action against these regimes.Mr. Ghadry is president of the Reform Party of Syria, a Washington-based group that seeks regime change in Damascus.

Facing Assad

Facing Assad

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