Free Republic

North Korea is continuing its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs in the Middle East, according to a new UN report. The report for the UN Security Council stated that Pyongyang was intensifying exports of goods and technology for weapons of mass destruction programs in at least two Middle East countries. "It has continued to provide missiles, components, and technology to certain countries including Iran and Syria and has provided assistance for a nuclear program in Syria, including the design and construction of a thermal reactor at Dair Alzour," the report by the seven-member panel said. The 47-page report, distributed...

Several weeks ago, Israel accused Syria of providing Hezbollah with SCUD ballistic missiles. This sort of thing has been rumored for more than a year. With a range of several hundred kilometers, such missiles could hit any part of Israel with large (half ton) warheads. Syria and Hezbollah denied such a transfer, but recently, Hezbollah has been boasting that it has received longer range missiles that enable it to hit any part of Israel. Hezbollah used longer range rockets (not ballistic missiles) during the 2006 war, but not ones that could strike all of Israel. All this is apparently related...

The Syrian government claimed Israel is using the Scud ballistic missile transfer to try to create an excuse for launching a war. "Israel aims from this to raise tension further in the region and to create an atmosphere for probable Israeli aggression," the Syrian Foreign Ministry said in a statement The U.S., however, is not happy with the Syrian transfer of missiles to Lebanon - and an expert says Israel will have to take action. Prof. Eyal Zisser, head of the Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies in Tel Aviv University, told Arutz-7 that the news requires Israel to make...

Mideast: Israeli officials charge Syria with transferring ballistic missiles to the control of Iran's puppet militia, Hezbollah. It seems that another attempt to woo and appease a hostile power is not working. Last November we commented on reports in the Arab media in the Persian Gulf that Syria, apparently at the request of Iran, had turned about 300 long-range ballistic missiles over to Hezbollah control in Syrian territory. Hezbollah personnel were being trained to operate the Scuds. On Tuesday, Israeli President Shimon Peres confirmed these reports, publicly charging Syrian President Bashar Assad's government with transferring Scud missiles to the control...

Mideast: Iran tests an advanced warhead design as it gets caught shipping weapons to Hezbollah. Syria is reported to give the group operational control over Scud missiles. It's five minutes to midnight. Tyranny abhors a vacuum. While the U.S. and the West dither in Hamlet-like fashion over whatever we shall do in places such as Afghanistan and Iran, the Axis of Evil is in full swing in its plans to destroy Israel and threaten Europe and America. Israel last week seized what it said was the largest arms cache ever intercepted in the region. Israeli navy commandos boarded the Francop,...

Arab media in the Persian Gulf have been reporting that Syria, apparently on the orders of Iran, has turned over about 300 long range ballistic missiles to Hezbollah control. The missiles have apparently not left Syria (they would be hard to miss, being driven around southern Lebanon). The reports add that Hezbollah personnel are being trained to operate the missiles. Syria has underground storage and launch facilities for its arsenal of over a thousand SCUD missiles. Armed with half ton high explosive and cluster bomb warheads, the missiles have ranges of 500-700 kilometers. Syria also has some 90 older Russian...

Israel planned 1991 strike on NKorea-Syria ship: report Wed Jan 9, 2:47 AM ET Israeli agents prepared to strike a ship suspected of smuggling missiles from North Korea to Syria in 1991 but cancelled it at the 11th hour under US pressure, a Japanese newspaper reported Wednesday. Undercover agents of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency secretly attached a guidance system for an airstrike on a cargo vessel believed to be carrying 23 short-range Scud missiles to Syria, the Yomiuri Shimbun said. The Yomiuri, reporting from Jerusalem, said it spoke to one of the agents involved in the operation, whose name was...

The same North Korean ICBM efforts that throw a rock at Alaska can throw a large nuclear warhead at every ally the United States has in Northeast Asia. Japan and South Korea are not only close allies, they are critical trading partners. The risk of a war in this part of the world would inevitably threaten Chinese involvement in some form, and possible bloc trade with much of China for an extended period even if China did not become involved. Our troops and our bases in most of Asia would be at hazard as well. Americans need to stop thinking...

When it became clear that the Taepodong 2 missile North Korea test-launched early on July 4 had broken up less than a minute into flight and plunged into the Sea of Japan, many Americans felt a sense of relief. After all, the missile — belonging to a class that is thought capable of reaching the U.S. mainland — had failed, and Kim Jong Il had been embarrassed in the eyes of the world, if not those of the North Koreans who were told nothing of the test’s outcome. But an embarrassed menace is a menace nonetheless. Despite North Korea’s failure...

The US missile defense system was put to its first real test Tuesday and Wednesday with North Korea's launch of a long-range missile and a half dozen shorter range missiles. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he was on and off the phone with top US commanders almost continuously for days before the missile tests. "I received the notification of the launch of these missiles probably within of a minute of when they occurred," he told reporters before a meeting with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. Pentagon officials were circumspect, though, about how the multi-billion dollar missile defense system performed. "What...

TOKYO - A defiant North Korea test-fired a long-range missile Wednesday that may be capable of reaching America, but it failed seconds after launch, U.S. officials said. The North also tested four of shorter range in an exercise the White House termed "a provocation" but not an immediate threat. The audacious military tests by isolated communist nation came despite stern warnings from the United States and Japan — and carried out as the U.S. celebrated the Fourth of July and launched the space shuttle. None of the missiles made it as far as Japan. The Japanese government said all landed...

most things about North Korea, little is known for certain about the Taepodong 2 missile. But there is no doubt North Korea does have a very long standing and pretty sophisticated missile programme. North Korea's intentions are under the global spotlight In 1998, before it began observing a moratorium on tests, North Korea launched a Taepodong 1 missile which passed over northern Japan and surprised Western intelligence agencies by the use of three stages in the missile's propulsion system. What is striking about the Taepodong 2 is that it could well be North Korea's first genuine intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)...

<p>March 21, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix yesterday said Iraq violated its agreement with the United Nations if the missiles it fired at American troops were Scuds.</p> <p>"I'm very interested to know whether they used Scuds," Blix said in an interview with the Fox News Channel. "If they're firing [Scuds], of course that shows that there's a violation," he said.</p>

War Diary: Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2002Nov 19, 2002 Monday, Nov. 18, was the day that U.N. inspectors returned to Iraq to begin Security Council-mandated weapons inspections. It was also a day in which extraordinarily different understandings of the inspections process and timeline were expressed by some key parties. Mohamed el Baradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and one of the senior inspectors, said, "It will take at least six months to one year before we finish our work on Iraq. I therefore ask the international community to be patient and wait until we finish our work comprehensively."...