Air Strike at Osirak
Rumors have been circulating for years that Israel was getting ready to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s emerging nuclear weapons capability. The speculation intensified as Iran prepared to move its uranium enrichment plant into a hardened mountain bunker. Iran continued to resist diplomatic and economic pressures to cease its quest for an atomic bomb.
There were inevitable comparisons to a situation with marked similarities 40 years ago, when the Israeli Air Force wiped out a nuclear reactor in Iraq just before it was to be activated. This is the story of the air strike at Osirak.
In the fall of 1980, Israeli military intelligence reported that the Osirak nuclear reactor, 12 miles southeast of Baghdad, would become operational between July and November of 1981. Iraqi dictator Sad...