US says North Korea helps Syria

(What do we know about this video?) The Israelis used this video, obtained or taken somehow, to convince the administration last summer that the construction underway in Syria was in fact a nuclear reactor. Until today we hadn’t seen it. (How come?) I have never seen as much secrecy around an event as this Israeli strike in Syria. After the strike occurred on September 6th nobody would talk about it, what they hit, etc. (How much confirmation do we have now about that reactor and its purposes?) It’s blown up to smithereens, but Syrians haven’t allowed nuclear inspectors to go to the site. Instead they bulldozed the site and then built a new facility in exactly the same location. So the only evidence we’re going to have is the photographs from the inside of the building that the CIA is showing today and those show Korean workers and then also tell tale signs of a reactor. The next step you don’t want to leap to is that simply because they were building a reactor means they were building weapons capability. But what we’ve been told is this reactor is similar to North Korea’s Yongbyon reactor, which was used to produce plutonium. (And Syria is denying everything?) That’s right. (This seems to leave the US on the verge of something, right?) We’re now looking for what kind of effect this will have on North Korean negotiations. The second thing is the effect this will have on the Syrians, and the third is what kind of message will now be sent to the Iranians.