More on the Syrian Nuclear reactor....

The Israelis landed a team a month before they bombed it...

An Israeli commando unit carried out a reconnaissance mission at an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor that was later destroyed by the Israel Air Force, the Swiss daily Neue Zuercher Zeitung reported Thursday.

The 12-man unit was dropped by two helicopters onto the site, according to the report, where they proceeded to take soil samples and photographs.

The clandestine operation reportedly took place in August 2007, about a month before the IAF strike on the al-Kabir reactor in the country's eastern desert, said the article. The piece was written by Hans Ruehle, former chief of the planning staff of the German Defense Ministry.

Ruehle also reported that 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.

The article goes into detail about an Iranian connection and fills in gaps about Israel's September 6, 2007, raid that is said to have knocked out Syria's reportedly nearly-completed reactor.

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, the paper reported.

The biggest surprise, however, was his assertion that Iran was financing a secret nuclear project of Syria and North Korea, he said. No one in the American intelligence scene had heard anything of it. And the Israelis who were immediately informed also were completely unaware.