6 September 2007. A non-descript building in the Syrian desert is destroyed in a midnight air strike by jets from the Israeli Air Force. In the days following the attack, the governments in Tel Aviv and Damascus say nothing.
24 April 2008. In a public statement, the Director of the CIA announces that the destroyed building contained a reactor that would have been capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. He adds that Syria had constructed the building with help from North Korea.
He was wrong. It was something worse.
