This has become almost a routine occurrence in the region: A Syrian target is bombed in the wee hours of the night. Fighter jets stealthily make their way there and fire missiles from a distance. The target — be it an ammunition depot on the outskirts of an airport, a missile stockpile in a coastal city, a weaponry convoy bound for Beirut from Damascus or a nuclear reactor built in a desert area — is smoothly destroyed. No one claims responsibility.
The usual rumors point at Israel, which, of course, keeps mum. Then the United States comes along, spilling the beans. This is done either officially (in his memoirs, former US President George W. Bush explicitly said that Israel had bombed the Syrian reactor at Deir ez-Zor in 2007), less officially or implicitly. But invariably, Israel is sacrificed to the international media by its greatest ally.