{"id":3224,"date":"2025-06-25T23:58:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T23:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/?p=3224"},"modified":"2025-06-26T00:00:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T00:00:20","slug":"israel-bombed-an-iraqi-nuclear-reactor-in-1981-%e2%88%92-it-pushed-program-underground-and-spurred-saddam-husseins-desire-for-nukes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/israel-bombed-an-iraqi-nuclear-reactor-in-1981-%e2%88%92-it-pushed-program-underground-and-spurred-saddam-husseins-desire-for-nukes\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 \u2212 it pushed program underground and spurred Saddam Hussein\u2019s desire for nukes"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeffrey Fields, Professor of the Practice of International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Israel, with the assistance of U.S. military hardware, bombs an adversary\u2019s 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<\/a> being built near Baghdad by the French government.<\/p>\n

The reactor, which the French called Osirak and Iraqis called Tammuz, was destroyed. Much of the international community initially condemned the attack<\/a>. But Israel claimed the raid set Iraqi nuclear ambitions back<\/a> at least a decade. In time, many Western observers and government officials, too, chalked up the attack as a win<\/a> for nonproliferation, hailing the strike as an audacious but necessary step to prevent Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from building a nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n

But the reality is more complicated. As nuclear proliferation experts<\/a> assess the extent of damage to Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities following the recent U.S. and Israeli raids, it is worth reassessing the longer-term implications of that earlier Iraqi strike.<\/p>\n

The Osirak reactor<\/h2>\n

Iraq joined the landmark Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

The International Atomic Energy Agency<\/a> is responsible through safeguards agreements for monitoring countries\u2019 civilian use of nuclear technology, with on-the-ground inspections to ensure that civilian nuclear programs do not divert materials for nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

But to Israel, the Iraqi reactor was provocative and an escalation in the Arab-Israeli conflict.<\/p>\n

Israel believed that Iraq would use the French reactor \u2013 Iraq said it was for research purposes \u2013 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, Prime Minister Menachem Begin concluded that attacking the reactor was Israel\u2019s best option. That decision gave birth to the \u201cBegin Doctrine<\/a>,\u201d which has committing Israel to preventing its regional adversaries from becoming nuclear powers ever since.<\/p>\n

In spring 1979, Israel attempted to sabotage the project<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

France and Iraq persisted with the project, and in July 1980 \u2013 with the reactor having been delivered \u2013 Iraq received the first shipment of highly enriched uranium fuel at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center near Baghdad.<\/p>\n

Then in September 1980, during the initial days of the Iran-Iraq war<\/a>, Iranian jets struck the nuclear research center. The raid also targeted a power station, knocking out electricity in Baghdad for several days. But a Central Intelligence Agency situation report<\/a> assessed that \u201conly secondary buildings\u201d were hit at the nuclear site itself.<\/p>\n

It was then Israel\u2019s turn. The reactor was still unfinished and not in operation when on June 7, 1981, eight U.S.-supplied F-16s flew over Jordanian and Saudi airspace and bombed the reactor in Iraq<\/a>. The attack killed 10 Iraqi soldiers and a French civilian.<\/p>\n

Revisiting the \u2018success\u2019 of Israeli raid<\/h2>\n

Many years later, U.S. President Bill Clinton commented<\/a>: \u201cEverybody 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

But nonproliferation experts<\/a> have contended for years<\/a> 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\u2019s highly enriched uranium fuel for a few weapons or shut the reactor down to extract plutonium from the fuel rods \u2013 all while hiding these operations from the International Atomic Energy Agency.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In any event, Iraq\u2019s desire for a nuclear weapon was more aspirational than operational. A 2011 article<\/a> in the journal International Security included interviews with several scientists who worked on Iraq\u2019s nuclear program and characterized the country\u2019s pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability as \u201cboth directionless and disorganized\u201d before the attack.<\/p>\n

Iraq\u2019s program begins in earnest<\/h2>\n

So what happened after the strike? Many analysts have argued that the Israeli attack, rather than diminish Iraqi desire for a nuclear weapon, actually catalyzed it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nuclear proliferation expert M\u00e5lfrid Braut-Hegghammer<\/a>, the author of the 2011 study, concluded that the Israeli attack \u201ctriggered a nuclear weapons program where one did not previously exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the attack, Saddam decided to formally, if secretively, establish a nuclear weapons program, 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<\/a> scientists approached the same problem in the U.S.<\/p>\n

In other words, the Israeli attack, rather than set back an existing nuclear weapons program, turned an incoherent and exploratory nuclear endeavor into a drive to get the bomb personally overseen by Saddam and sparing little expense even as Iraq\u2019s war with Iran substantially taxed Iraqi resources.<\/p>\n

From 1981 to 1987, the nuclear program progressed fitfully<\/a>, facing both organizational and scientific challenges.<\/p>\n

As those challenges were beginning to be addressed, Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990<\/a>, provoking a military response from the United States. In the aftermath of what would become Operation Desert Storm<\/a>, U.N. weapons inspectors discovered and dismantled the clandestine Iraqi nuclear weapons program.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> by the mid-to-late 1990s.<\/p>\n

Similarly to Iraq in 1980, Iran today is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. At the time President Donald Trump withdrew U.S. support in 2018<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

In the case of Iraq, military action on its nascent nuclear program merely pushed it underground \u2013 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<\/a> about Iran.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This article written by Jeffrey Fields, Professor of the Practice of International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences<\/strong> and is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jeffrey Fields, Professor of the Practice of International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Israel, with the assistance of U.S. military hardware, bombs an adversary\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":3225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"inline_featured_image":false,"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[2278,2277,2292,2283,2284,2285,2270,2279,2271,2287,2275,2288,2280,2281,2293,2282,2291,2290,2274,2272,2276,2286,2289,2273],"class_list":["post-3224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editorials","tag-1981-israeli-bombing-iraq-nuclear","tag-begin-doctrine-nuclear-policy","tag-effects-of-osirak-bombing-on-iraq-policy","tag-historical-nuclear-proliferation-case-studies","tag-impact-of-bombing-nuclear-reactors","tag-international-atomic-energy-agency-safeguards","tag-iran-nuclear-program-comparison","tag-iran-vs-iraq-nuclear-development","tag-iraq-nuclear-program-history","tag-iraq-nuclear-weapon-program-timeline","tag-israel-airstrike-on-osirak-reactor","tag-israeli-military-intervention-nuclear-sites","tag-jeffrey-fields-international-relations","tag-joint-comprehensive-plan-of-action-history","tag-middle-east-nuclear-arms-race-history","tag-military-strikes-on-nuclear-facilities","tag-nonproliferation-treaty-violations-and-consequences","tag-nuclear-deterrence-and-regional-stability","tag-nuclear-nonproliferation-middle-east","tag-osirak-reactor-attack-consequences","tag-saddam-hussein-nuclear-ambitions","tag-trump-withdrawal-from-iran-nuclear-deal","tag-us-israel-military-cooperation-middle-east","tag-us-supplied-israeli-fighter-jets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iranians.global\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}