THAT SYRIAN REACTOR - AT 4:43 P.M. ET:   From AP:

GENEVA - A top-ranked Iranian defector told the United States that Iran was financing North Korean moves to make Syria into a nuclear weapons power, leading to the Israeli air strike that destroyed a suspected secret reactor, a report said Thursday.

The article in the daily Neue Zuercher Zeitung goes into detail about an Iranian connection and fills in gaps about Israel's Sept. 6, 2007, raid that knocked out Syria's nearly completed Al Kabir reactor in the country's eastern desert.

Ali Reza Asghari, a retired general in Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards and a former deputy defense minister, "changed sides" in February 2007 and provided considerable information to the West on Iran's own nuclear program, said the article, written by Hans Ruehle, former chief of the planning staff of the German Defense Ministry.

COMMENT:  This seems pretty solid and well sourced.  Three countries were thus involved in the Syrian reactor - North Korea, Iran, and Syria.  President Obama has pledged to cozy up to all three, hoping for some miraculous transformation made possible by the sheer force of his personality and splendid physical condition.  Place your bets.

March 19, 2009