Israel (UPDATED)

One 3-day Yom Tov later and Israel's flight over Syria is still in the news. This story just keeps getting better:

Ten days after the jets reached home, their mission was the focus of intense speculation this weekend amid claims that Israel believed it had destroyed a cache of nuclear materials from North Korea.

The story has sinister motives:

But why would nuclear material be in Syria? Known to have chemical weapons, was it seeking to bolster its arsenal with something even more deadly?

Alternatively, could it be hiding equipment for North Korea, enabling Kim Jong-il to pretend to be giving up his nuclear programme in exchange for economic aid? Or was the material bound for Iran, as some authorities in America suggest?

And hi-tech:

According to an Israeli air force source, the Israeli satellite Ofek 7, launched in June, was diverted from Iran to Syria. It sent out high-quality images of a northeastern area every 90 minutes, making it easy for air force specialists to spot the facility.

At least there are some areas where Israel prefers action to diplomacy:

By its actions, Israel showed it is not interested in waiting for diplomacy to work where nuclear weapons are at stake.

It's a start.

UPDATE: AllahPundit writes that this is not something new:

This doesn’t get talked about very much, but it’s not the first time we’ve heard of this little courtship. From 2004:

A North Korean missile shipment to Syria was halted when a train collision in that Asian country destroyed the missile cargo and killed about a dozen Syrian technicians.

U.S. officials confirmed a report in a Japanese daily newspaper that a train explosion on April 22 killed about a dozen Syrian technicians near the Ryongchon province in North Korea. The officials said the technicians were accompanying a train car full of missile components and other equipment from a facility near the Chinese border to a North Korea port.

A U.S. official said North Korean train cargo was also believed to have contained tools for the production of ballistic missiles. North Korea has sold Syria the extended-range Scud C and Scud D missiles, according to reports by Middle East Newsline.

Also see:
Investor's Business Daily--Then There Was Syria
Allison Kaplan Sommer has a post in Pajamas Media on what the media is now saying.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Syria.