Michael Ross
According to a forner Mossad agent, DPRK avoided answering for its missile exports due to diplomatic issues surrounding Israel's vulnerability and Syria's participation during the Gulf War.
The plan was said to have been worked out just after the Gulf War began on Jan. 17, 1991. Ross received a directive from Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv to install an electronic tracking and targeting device on a freighter suspected to carry at least 23 Scud-C missiles (with a firing range of about 500 kilometers), he said.
Ross, who was active in Europe, and another Mossad agent arrived in Casablanca, Morocco, posing as shipping agents in early February that year. Their target was the freighter Al Yarmouk, jointly owned by Jordanian and Syrian companies, that was bound from North Korea for a Syrian port on the Mediterranean Sea via the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa.
When the freighter anchored at Casablanca for refueling, the pair worked together to plant a palm-sized electronic device weighing about 1 kilogram on the stern of the vessel's hull about one meter below the waterline.
Ross stood watch while his fellow agent dived and completed the job in about 20 minutes, Ross recalled. They had poured whisky over their clothes and intended to pose as drunks if discovered by guards, but they finished the job without being found.
An air strike or missile attack was supposed to be made within two days of the tracking device being installed, but Ross received a message from the Mossad headquarters immediately after the scheduled date for the bombing that the plan had been canceled at the order of Israel's then Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Ross said.
The freighter arrived at the Syrian port of Latakia in March that year via Cyprus.
Why was the plot canceled so abruptly?
Ross said that Shamir might have abandoned the plot out of consideration for the United States, saying that Washington had called on Israel to exercise restraint despite Iraq's missile attacks on Israel during the Gulf War to drive a wedge in anti-Iraq coalition that the United States sought to form with Syria and other Arab countries.
No mention of nukes.
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