Israel admits it bombed Syrian reactor in 2007

JERUSALEM — Israel’s government on Wednesday publicly confirmed for the first time that it had carried out a 2007 strike against a reactor in Syria that could have produced nuclear weapons fuel, lifting a decade of secrecy surrounding the episode.

The country’s leaders used the occasion to warn that, if necessary, Israel would not hesitate to launch similar strikes again.

“The government of Israel, the IDF and the Mossad prevented Syria from developing a nuclear capability,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces and the country’s spy agency. “Israel’s policy has been and remains consistent — to prevent our enemies from arming themselves with nuclear weapons.”

International tension has been mounting over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which were supposed to have been contained by a 2015 agreement with the United States and its European allies. Netanyahu has criticized that deal as a historic mistake and Israel has set off alarms about Iran’s growing influence in Syria, where it is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the country’s seven-year civil war.

During that conflict, Israel has carried out scores of other covert strikes in Syria against advanced weapons convoys and stores.

President Donald Trump has said that unless the European nations agree to make the deal stricter, he will back out of it May 12, renewing suspended sanctions on Tehran.

Accounts of the strike appeared long ago in international news media and former President George W. Bush wrote of it in his memoir, published in 2010. Though Israeli news organizations had fought for years to be able to report on it, they were barred from doing so until now.