40 years ago - Operation Opera: Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear program and saved the West

• Date: 08 June 2021
• Published date: 08 June 2021
• Author: Jeff Dunetz
• Publication title: Israel National News (Israel)

Israel prevented a nuclear Iraq

Just like Iran today, Iraq protested that its interest in nuclear energy was peaceful. At the time, Iraq was a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), placing its reactors under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. Some experts remained unconvinced that the IAEA monitoring program was sufficient to guarantee that weapon research was not being conducted. They also claimed that an Osiris class reactor was not particularly useful to countries with no established reactor programs, but capable of producing plutonium.

Israel first pursued a diplomatic solution to the situation. The villain of the Temple Mount and Israel's foreign minister Moshe Dayan went to the United States for help. However, Israel failed to obtain assurances that the reactor program would be halted.

In meetings with Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger and Secretary of State Alexander Haig, there was agreement about the Israeli assessment regarding the Iraqi nuclear threat. American representatives even verified Israeli assessments that Iraq was working to reach nuclear capability and exploit the ability to influence and destroy Israel. Despite the American consensus, the Americans refused to act. Perhaps because they did not truly grasp the danger or did not want to upset Iraq, which was fighting America's enemy, Iran.

"Yitzchak Shamir, negotiated with French presidents Valery Giscard-D'Estaing and his successor François Mitterand. The French proved intransigent, looking out for their own economic interests as Iraq was by far their top customer for military hardware. The payments to France came mostly in the form of oil. [Then as now the French Government couldn't care less about dead Jews]

"According to Shamir, French Minister for Foreign Affairs Claude Cheysson told him that there were only two major Arab powers: Iraq and the PLO. Despite Shamir's personal affinity toward the French, as they had sheltered him while he was a member of the pre-state uprising against the British occupation of Israel, he was extremely disappointed when he realized that France was unwilling to cooperate and prevent Saddam Hussein's Iraq from becoming a nuclear state, despite urgent and emotional pleas by the Israelis that Iraq was preparing a nuclear holocaust against Israel and the Jewish people.". (Source: Yitzhak Shamir, "The Failure of Diplomacy," Israel's Strike Against the Iraqi Nuclear Reactor 7 June, 1981, Jerusalem: Menachem Begin...