Commentary: Israel's 1981 attack on Iraqi nuclear reactor only fuelled Saddam Hussein's desire for nukes

CNA

6 hours ago

LOS ANGELES: Israel, with the assistance of US military hardware, bombs an adversary's nuclear facility to set back the perceived pursuit of the ultimate weapon. We have been here before, about 44 years ago.
In 1981, Israeli fighter jets supplied by Washington attacked an Iraqi nuclear research reactor being built near Baghdad by the French government.
The reactor, which the French called Osirak and Iraqis called Tammuz, was destroyed. Much of the international community initially condemned the attack.
But Israel claimed the raid set Iraqi nuclear ambitions back at least a decade. In time, many Western observers and government officials, too, chalked up the attack as a win for nonproliferation, hailing the strike as an audacious but necessary step to prevent Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from building a nuclear arsenal.
But the reality is more complicated. As nuclear proliferation experts assess the extent of damage to Iran's nuclear facilities following the recent US and Israeli raids, it is worth reassessing the longer-term implications of that earlier Iraqi strike.
THE OSIRAK REACTOR
Iraq joined the landmark Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970, committing the country to refrain from the pursuit of nuclear weapons. But in exchange, signatories are entitled to engage in civilian nuclear activities, including having research or power reactors and access to the enriched uranium that drives them.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is responsible through safeguard agreements for monitoring countries' civilian use of nuclear technology, with on-the-ground inspections to ensure that civilian nuclear programmes do not divert materials for nuclear weapons.
But to Israel, the Iraqi reactor was provocative and an escalation in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Israel believed that Iraq would use the French reactor – Iraq said it was for research purposes – to generate plutonium for a nuclear weapon. After diplomacy with France and the United States failed to persuade the two countries to halt construction of the reactor, then Prime Minister Menachem Begin concluded that attacking the reactor was Israel's best option.
That decision gave birth to the Begin Doctrine, which has committed Israel to preventing its regional adversaries from becoming nuclear powers ever since.
In spring 1979, Israel attempted to sabotage the project, bombing the reactor core destined for Iraq while it sat awaiting shipment in the French town of La Seyne-sur-Mer. The mission was only a partial success, damaging but not destroying the reactor.
France and Iraq persisted with the project, and in July 1980 – with the reactor having been delivered – Iraq received the first shipment of highly enriched uranium fuel at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center near Baghdad.
Then in September 1980, during the initial days of the Iran-Iraq war, Iranian jets struck the nuclear research center. The raid also targeted a power station, knocking out electricity in Baghdad for several days. But a CIA situation report assessed that 'only secondary buildings' were hit at the nuclear site itself.
It was then Israel's turn. The reactor was still unfinished and not in operation when on Jun 7, 1981, eight US-supplied F-16s flew over Jordanian and Saudi airspace and bombed the reactor in Iraq. The attack killed 10 Iraqi soldiers and a French civilian.
REVISITING THE "SUCCESS" OF ISRAELI RAID
Many years later, former US President Bill Clinton commented: 'Everybody talks about what the Israelis did at Osirak in 1981, which I think, in retrospect, was a really good thing. You know, it kept Saddam from developing nuclear power.'
But nonproliferation experts have contended for years that while Saddam may have had nuclear weapons ambitions, the French-built research reactor would not have been the route to go. Iraq would either have had to divert the reactor's highly enriched uranium fuel for a few weapons or shut the reactor down to extract plutonium from the fuel rods – all while hiding these operations from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
As an additional safeguard, the French government, too, had pledged to shut down the reactor if it detected efforts to use the reactor for weapons purposes.
In any event, Iraq's desire for a nuclear weapon was more aspirational than operational. A 2011 article in the journal International Security included interviews with several scientists who worked on Iraq's nuclear programme and characterised the country's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability as 'both directionless and disorganised' before the attack.
IRAQ'S PROGRAMME BEGINS IN EARNEST
So what happened after the strike? Many analysts have argued that the Israeli attack, rather than diminish Iraqi desire for a nuclear weapon, actually catalysed it.
Nuclear proliferation expert Malfrid Braut-Hegghammer, the author of the 2011 study, concluded that the Israeli attack 'triggered a nuclear weapons program where one did not previously exist'.
In the aftermath of the attack, Saddam decided to formally, if secretively, establish a nuclear weapons programme, with scientists deciding that a uranium-based weapon was the best route. He tasked his scientists with pursuing multiple methods to enrich uranium to weapons grade to ensure success, much the way the Manhattan Project scientists approached the same problem in the US.
In other words, the Israeli attack, rather than set back an existing nuclear weapons programme, turned an incoherent and exploratory nuclear endeavour into a drive to get the bomb personally overseen by Saddam and sparing little expense even as Iraq's war with Iran substantially taxed Iraqi resources.
From 1981 to 1987, the nuclear programme progressed fitfully, facing both organisational and scientific challenges.
As those challenges were beginning to be addressed, Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, provoking a military response from the United States. In the aftermath of what would become Operation Desert Storm, United Nations weapons inspectors discovered and dismantled the clandestine Iraqi nuclear weapons programme.
Had Saddam not invaded Kuwait over a matter not related to security, it is very possible that Baghdad would have had a nuclear weapon capability by the mid-to-late 1990s.
Similarly to Iraq in 1980, Iran today is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. At the time President Donald Trump withdrew US support in 2018 for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, colloquially known as the Iran nuclear deal, the International Atomic Energy Agency certified that Tehran was complying with the requirements of the agreement.
In the case of Iraq, military action on its nascent nuclear programme merely pushed it underground – to Saddam, the Israeli strikes made acquiring the ultimate weapon more rather than less attractive as a deterrent.
Almost a half-century on, some analysts and observers are warning the same about Iran.