Israel Bombs Iraq's Osirak Nuclear Research Facility

By Donald Neff

It was 14 years ago, on June 7, 1981, that 16 U.S.-made Israeli warplanes bombed and destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear research facility near Baghdad, more than 600 miles from Israel's borders.¹ Prime Minister Menachem Begin claimed the reactor was about to go into operation and was a threat to Israel because it could produce nuclear weapons. Begin's claims were contradicted by a number of experts, but there was considerable circumstantial evidence that Iraq indeed hoped eventually to develop a nuclear weapon. ² However, Israel's critics pointed out that Iraq was a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allowed international inspections of the nuclear facility, while Israel itself refused to sign the treaty, refused inspections of its nuclear facility, and was widely believed to have a large nuclear arsenal. ³

The Attack's Deeper Meaning

Thus the deeper meaning of the attack was that it amounted to a declaration of war against the Arab world's efforts to enter the atomic age. The attack was Israel's way of declaring that only the Jewish state would be allowed to participate in advanced technology, while the Arabs would be consigned to non-nuclear technology and second-class economies.

Israel was universally condemned. The White House advised Congress that a "substantial" violation of the Arms Export Control Act prohibition against the use of U.S. weapons except in self-defense "may have occurred" in Israel's bombing of Iraq's nuclear facility.⁴ It was the third time the act had been invoked against Israel, the first two occurring during the Carter administration because of Israeli attacks on Lebanon.⁵ But, as in the prior cases, Congress declined to take any action.⁶

Moreover, President Ronald Reagan soon found extenuating circumstances for Israel's conduct. Reagan said: "Israel might have sincerely believed it was a defensive move," adding: "It is difficult for me to envision Israel as being a threat to its neighbors."⁷ While Washington joined in a unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution "strongly" condemning Israel, privately U.S. officials made it known that the United States would veto any article that called for sanctions against Israel. As a result of this pressure, council Resolution 487 stopped short of imposing sanctions and Israel's aggression was let go with a slap on the wrist. ⁸

Bobby Inman, the No. 2 man at the Central Intelligence Agency, was less forgiving. He realized that the Israeli warplanes could not have flown to their target without having been guided by aerial photographs supplied by U.S. spy satellites. Under a secret arrangement worked out with Israeli intelligence by Director of Central Intelligence William J. Casey, Israel had been granted access to U.S. satellite photography.⁹ However, Inman knew that access was to be limited to areas posing potential "direct threats" to Israel, in Inman's words. When he discovered Israel had drawn material on such far-away areas as Iraq, Libya and Pakistan, he made a decision to limit its access to photographs covering areas no farther than 250 miles from Israel's border, thereby reducing Israel's satellite intelligence to its immediate neighbors. ¹⁰

Only the Jewish state would be allowed to participate in advanced technology.

This decision infuriated Israel's supporters, and nearly 13 years later came back to haunt Inman when he was nominated by President Bill Clinton as secretary of defense. Israel's supporters, in particular columnist William Safire of the New York Times, took advantage of the occasion to launch harsh personal attacks against Inman, convincing him he could not effectively run the Pentagon amid such powerful criticism. Inman declined the nomination.¹¹

Actually, Israel's aggressive intentions toward Iraq should have come as no surprise to anyone, particularly the CIA. Since at least 1979 it had been waging a secret war aimed at disrupting Iraq's nuclear program. The campaign was carried out by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency under the name Operation Sphinx.¹² The operation began at least as early as April 6, 1979, when three bomb explosions in the nuclear facility of the French firm of Constructions Navales et Industrielles de la Méditerranée in La Seyne-Sur-Mer near Marseilles blew up reactor cores about to be shipped to Iraq's facility, setting back Iraq's program by at least half a year. ¹³

On June 13, 1980, Dr. Yahya Meshad, an Egyptian nuclear physicist working for Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission, was killed in his Paris hotel room. Meshad had been in France checking on highly enriched uranium that was about to be shipped as the first fuel for Iraq's reactor and, according to Mossad defector Victor Ostrovsky, was the victim of Mossad agents.¹⁴ Two months later, starting Aug. 2, a series of bombs exploded at the offices or residences of officials of Iraq's key suppliers in Italy and France: SNIA-Techint, Ansaldo Mercanico Nucleare and Techniatome. The three firms were supplying Iraq with a reactor and hot cells and their officials and workers were harassed by threatening letters. ¹⁵

An Earlier Terror Campaign

The terror campaign against Iraq was similar to one carried out by Israel 19 years earlier against West German scientists working on Egypt's rocket program. That campaign was called Operation Damocles and involved kidnapping and letterbombs which caused the deaths of at least five persons in 1962-63.¹⁶ By the time Israel halted its campaign against the German scientists, it had already become clear that, in the words of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's biographer, they "were a group of mediocre scientists who had developed antiquated missiles. The panic that had overtaken the country's leadership...was highly exaggerated." ¹⁷ But the damage was done. Not only did the victims suffer directly, but the operation convinced Egypt's leadership of Israel's unyielding hostility.

While Israel's suspicions against Iraq may have been more realistic, its disregard of the significant diplomatic effects of its violent action was similarly myopic. Although Israel repeatedly congratulated itself during the 1991 war against Iraq that its attack represented an early blow to Saddam's militancy, there can be little doubt that one result of the attack was to further radicalize the Iraqi leader and add to his suspicions of the West and his determination to build up Iraq's war machine.¹⁸

There can be no certainty, of course, that diplomacy would have stemmed Saddam's ambitions. But there can be no doubt that once Israel attacked Iraq with U.S.-made warplanes, Saddam would do whatever he could to harm America and its Persian Gulf friends like Kuwait. The culmination of Saddam's hatred came a decade later when a half-million American military personnel had to be rushed to the Gulf area to war against Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

RECOMMENDED READING:

Bar-Zohar, Michael, Ben-Gurion: A Biography, New York, Delacorte Press, 1978.

Ben-Gurion, David, Israel: A Personal History, New York, Funk & Wagnalls, Inc., 1971.

*Green, Stephen, Living by the Sword: America and Israel in the Middle East, 1968-87, Brattleboro, VT, Amana Books, 1988.

*Hersh, Seymour M., The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy , New York, Random House, 1991.

Nakhleh, Issa, Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem, New York, Intercontinental Books, 1991.

*Neff, Donald, Warriors for Jerusalem: The Six Days That Changed the Middle East, New York, Linden Press/Simon & Schuster, 1984, and Brattleboro, VT: Amana Books, 1988.

Ostrovsky, Victor and Claire Hoy, By Way of Deception, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1990.

*Raviv, Dan and Yossi Melman, Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel's Intelligence Community, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990.

Spector, Leonard S., Nuclear Proliferation Today, New York, Vintage Books, 1984.

Steven, Stewart, The Spymasters of Israel, New York, Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1980.

Tillman, Seth, The United States in the Middle East: Interests and Obstacles, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1982.

Weissman, Steve and Herbert Krosney, The Islamic Bomb: The Nuclear Threat to Israel and the Middle East, New York, Times Books, 1981.

Woodward, Bob, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1987.

NOTES:

¹Tillman, The United States in the Middle East, p. 38; also see Green, Living by the Sword, pp. 135-52; Hersh, The Samson Option, pp. 8-10; Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, pp. 25-52.

²Spector, Nuclear Proliferation Today, pp. 167-75; George Lardner Jr., and R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post, 12/16/92. Also see Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, 11/30/92; Jack Anderson and Michael Binstein, Op-ed, "Iran's Nuclear Ambitions," Washington Post, 12/20/92.

³Tillman, The United States in the Middle East, pp. 38-9.

⁴Ibid. , p. 39, and Institute for Palestine Studies, International Documents on Palestine, 1981, pp. 181-91.

⁵The earlier uses were on April 5, 1978 and Aug. 6, 1979.

⁶New York Times, 8/18/81, and Report by the Comptroller General, "U.S. Assistance to the State of Israel," General Accounting Office, GAO/ID-83-51, June 24, 1983, pp. 24-5.

⁷Institute for Palestine Studies, International Documents on Palestine, 1981, p. 206.

⁸Ibid., p. 210.

⁹Woodward, Veil, p. 160.

¹⁰Transcript, Inman press conference, Austin, TX, 1/18/94; excerpts are in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, February/March 1994.

¹¹Transcript, Inman press conference, Austin, TX, 1/18/94.

¹²Ostrovsky and Hoy, By Way of Deception, pp. 1-28, and Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince, pp. 250-2.

¹³In addition to Ostrovsky and Hoy, and Raviv and Melman, see Weissman and Krosney, The Islamic Bomb, pp. 227-8, and Spector, Nuclear Proliferation Today , p. 176.

¹⁴Ostrovsky and Hoy, By Way of Deception, p. 23.

¹⁵Spector, Nuclear Proliferation Today, pp. 176-7.

¹⁶Steven, The Spymasters of Israel , pp. 145-7l Also see Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion, pp. 301-2; Nakhleh, Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem, p. 832; Neff, Warriors for Jerusalem, pp. 101-2; and Raviv and Melman, Every Spy a Prince , pp. 122-5. Also see Insight Team, the Sunday Times of London, 9/23/72, for a history of Israel's introduction of the use of letterbombs in the Middle East.

¹⁷Bar-Zohar, Ben-Gurion, pp. 301-2.

¹⁸Donald Neff, "The U.S., Iraq, Israel and Iran: Backdrop to War," Journal of Palestine Studies, Summer 1991.

*Available from the AET Book Club

Donald Neff is author of the Warriors trilogy on U.S.-Middle East relations and of the unpublished Middle East Handbook, a chronological data bank of significant events affecting U.S. policy and the Middle East on which this article is based. His books are available through the AET Book Club.