North Korean Partners with Syria and Iran in New Mideast Mischief

Syria’s Assad Shakesup Officer Corp And Licks Iran and North Korea Boots.

North Korean nuclear technicians, likely paid by Iran, have recently returned to Syria this time working at installations scattered in different parts of the country. A year ago Israeli warplanes and agents destroyed Syrian’s North Korean built and Iranian funded plutonium making reactor. A month before General Mohammad Solieman believed to be the highest ranking Syrian officer in its nuclear weapons program was shot dead by a sniper.

Last weekend a powerful car bomb exploded outside of a Syrian security facility near Damascus killing 17 and injuring 14 others. The names of the casualties have not been released. Syria is said to suspect Israel but has been careful not to publicly say so. It is suspected that the bomb’s target was a high ranking Syrian officer involved in its covert nuclear bomb program.

The largest single purge in the annals of Syria’s armed forces was carried out on the orders of President Bashar Assad early in th summer. Forty percent of the staff officers with the general command in Damascus were dismissed or forced into retirement; half the Syrian divisional commanders in Syria and Lebanon relieved of their duties - laid off or assigned to minor staff positions in Damascus and elsewhere.

It has been Assad’s policy to rotate officers every couple of years but this was far more sweeping and really shook up Syria’s military. It is unclear how much of this was Assad’s paranoia; because of the apparent ease with which Israel has penetrated Syrian defenses or both.