Operation Opera (),Perlmutter, p. 172. also known as Operation Babylon,Amos Perlmutter, Michael I. Handel, Uri Bar-Joseph. Two Minutes over Baghdad. Routledge (2nd ed.), 2008. p. 120. was a surprise airstrike conducted by the Israeli Air Force on 7 June 1981, which destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor located southeast of Baghdad, Iraq. The Israeli operation came a year after the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force had caused minor damage to the same nuclear facility in Operation Scorch Sword, with the damage having been subsequently repaired by French technicians. Operation Opera, and related Israeli government statements following it, established the Begin Doctrine, which explicitly stated the strike was not an anomaly, but instead "a precedent for every future government in Israel". Israel's counter-proliferation preventive strike added another dimension to its existing policy of deliberate ambiguity, as it related to the nuclear weapons capability of other states in the region.Country Profiles -Israel , Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) updated May 2014
In 1976, Iraq purchased an Osiris-class nuclear reactor from France.Ramberg, Bennett. Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril. University of California Press, 1985. p. xvii.Cordesman, Anthony H. Iraq and the War of Sanctions: Conventional Threats and Weapons of Mass Destruction. Praeger, 1999. p. 605. While Iraq and France maintained that the reactor, named Osirak by the French, was intended for peaceful scientific research, the Israelis viewed the reactor with suspicion, believing it was designed to produce nuclear weapons that could escalate the ongoing Arab–Israeli conflict. On 7 June 1981, a flight of Israeli Air Force F-16A fighter aircraft, with an escort of F-15As, bombed the Osirak reactor deep inside Iraq.Shirley V. Scott, Anthony Billingsley, Christopher Michaelsen. International Law and the Use of Force: A Documentary and Reference Guide. Praeger, 2009. p. 182. Israel called the operation an act of self-defense, saying that the reactor had "less than a month to go" before "it might have become critical."Scott, p. 132. The airstrike reportedly killed ten Iraqi soldiers and one French civilian.Polakow-Suransky, Sasha. The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa. Pantheon (1 ed.), 2010. p. 145. The attack took place about three weeks before the 1981 Israeli legislative elections for the Knesset.
At the time of its occurrence, the attack was met with sharp international criticism, including in the United States, and Israel was rebuked by the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly in two separate resolutions. Media reactions were also negative: "Israel's sneak attack ... was an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression", wrote The New York Times, while the Los Angeles Times called it "state-sponsored terrorism". The destruction of Iraq's Osirak reactor has been cited as an example of a preventive strike in contemporary scholarship on international law.Shue, Henry and Rhodin, David (2007). Preemption: Military Action and Moral Justification. Oxford University Press. p. 215. The efficacy of the attack is debated by historians, who acknowledge that it brought Iraq back from the brink of nuclear capability but drove its weapons program underground and cemented Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's future ambitions for acquiring nuclear weapons.
Iraq's nuclear program
Iraq had established a nuclear program sometime in the 1960s, and in the mid-1970s looked to expand it through the acquisition of a nuclear reactor.Perlmutter, p. 40. After failing to convince the French Government to sell them a gas cooled graphite moderated plutonium-producing reactor and reprocessing plant, and likewise failing to convince the Italian government to sell them a Cirene reactor, the Iraqi government convinced the French government to sell them an Osiris-class research reactor.Perlmutter, pp. 41–42. The purchase also included a smaller accompanying Isis-type reactor, the sale of 72 kilograms of 93% enriched uranium and the training of personnel.Stockman-Shomron, Israel. Israel, the Middle East, and the great powers. Transaction Books, 1985. p. 334. The total cost has been given as $300 million (equivalent to $1.62 billion in ). In November 1975, the countries signed a nuclear cooperation agreement and in 1976, the sale of the reactor was finalized.
Construction for the 40-megawatt light-water nuclear reactor began in 1979 at the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Center near Baghdad.Aloni, Shlomo. Israeli F-15 Eagle Units in Combat. Osprey Publishing, 2006. p. 35. The main reactor was dubbed Osirak (Osiraq) by the French, blending the name of Iraq with that of the reactor class. Iraq named the main reactor Tammuz 1 () and the smaller Tammuz 2.Perlmutter, p. 46. Tammuz was the Babylonian month when the Ba'ath Party had come to power in 1968. On 6 April 1979, Israeli agents sabotaged the Osirak reactor awaiting shipment to Iraq at La Seyne-sur-Mer in France. On 14 June 1980, Mossad agents assassinated Yahya El Mashad, an Egyptian nuclear scientist who headed the Iraqi nuclear program, in a hotel in Paris. In July 1980, Iraq received from France a shipment of approximately 12.5 kilograms of highly enriched uranium fuel to be used in the reactor. The shipment was the first of a planned six deliveries totalling 72 kilograms.Holroyd, Fred. Thinking about nuclear weapons: analyses and prescriptions. Routledge, 1985. p. 147. It was reportedly stipulated in the purchase agreement that no more than two HEU fuel loadings, 24 kilograms, could be in Iraq at any time.Holroyd, p. 151.
Iraq and France claimed that the Iraqi reactor was intended for peaceful scientific research.The 1982 World Book Year Book. World Book Inc., 1983. p. 350. Agreements between France and Iraq excluded military use.United Nations Staff. Yearbook of the United Nations 1981. United Nations Pubns, 1984. p. 277. The American private intelligence agency STRATFOR wrote in 2007 that the uranium-fueled reactor "was believed to be on the verge of producing plutonium for a weapons program". (requires e-mail address) In a 2003 speech, Richard Wilson, a professor of physics at Harvard University who visually inspected the partially damaged reactor in December 1982, said that "to collect enough plutonium [for a nuclear weapon] using Osirak would've taken decades, not years".Ragaini, Richard C. International Seminar on Nuclear War and Planetary Emergencies: 29th session. World Scientific Publishing, 2003. p. 33. In 2005, Wilson further commented in The Atlantic: "The Osirak reactor that was bombed by Israel in June 1981 was explicitly designed by the French engineer Yves Girard to be unsuitable for making bombs. That was obvious to me on my 1982 visit". Elsewhere Wilson has stated that contrary to claims that the bombing of the Iraqi Osirak reactor delayed Iraq's nuclear bomb program, the Iraqi nuclear program before 1981 was peaceful, and the Osirak reactor was not only unsuited to making bombs but was under intensive safeguards.
In an interview in 2012, Wilson again emphasised: "The Iraqis couldn't have been developing a nuclear weapon at Osirak. I challenge any scientist in the world to show me how they could have done so."
Iraq was a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, placing its reactors under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. In October 1981, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published excerpts from the testimony of Roger Richter, a former IAEA inspector who described the weaknesses of the agency's nuclear safeguards to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Richter testified that only part of Iraq's nuclear installation was under safeguard and that the most sensitive facilities were not even subject to safeguards. IAEA's Director-General Sigvard Eklund issued a rebuttal saying that Richter had never inspected Osirak and had never been assigned to inspect facilities in the Middle East. Eklund claimed that the safeguards procedures were effective and that they were supplemented by precautionary measures taken by the nuclear suppliers. Anthony Fainberg, a physicist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, disputed Richter's claim that a fuel processing program for the manufacturing of nuclear weapons could have been conducted secretly. Fainberg wrote that there was barely enough fuel on the site to make one bomb, and that the presence of hundreds of foreign technicians would have made it impossible for the Iraqis to take the necessary steps without being discovered.
Strategy and diplomacy
In Israel, discussions on which strategy to adopt in response to the Iraqi reactor development were taking place as early as Yitzhak Rabin's first term in office (1974–1977).Perlmutter, p. 67 Reportedly, planning and training for the operation began during this time. After Menachem Begin became Prime Minister in 1977 the preparations intensified; Begin authorized the building of a full-scale model of the Iraqi reactor which Israeli pilots could practice bombing.Simons, Geoff Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam. St. Martin's Press, 1996. p. 320. Three Israeli pilots died in accidents while training for the mission.
Israel's Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan initiated diplomatic negotiations with France, the United States and Italy (Israel maintained that some Italian firms acted as suppliers and sub-contractors) over the matter but failed to obtain assurances that the reactor program would be halted. In addition Israel was not able to convince the French governments of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and François Mitterrand to cease aiding the Iraqi nuclear program.Arye Naor, 2003. "Analysis of the Decision-Making Process," Israel's Strike Against the Iraqi Nuclear Reactor 7 June 1981. Jerusalem: Menachem Begin Heritage Center. p. 26. Saddam Hussein consistently maintained that Osirak was intended for peaceful purposes.Sciolino, Elaine. The Outlaw State: Saddam Hussein's Quest for Power and the War in the Gulf. John Wiley & Sons Inc. (1st ed.), 1991. p. 152. Begin considered the diplomatic options fruitless, and worried that prolonging the decision to attack would lead to a fatal inability to act in response to the perceived threat. According to Karl P. Mueller, in the spring of 1979, Begin had reached the conclusion that an anticipatory attack was necessary.
Anthony Cordesman writes that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad conducted a series of clandestine operations to halt construction or destroy the reactor.Cordesman, p. 606. In April 1979, Mossad agents in France allegedly planted a bomb that destroyed the reactor's first set of core structures while they were awaiting shipment to Iraq. In June 1980, Mossad agents are said to have assassinated Yehia El Mashad, an Egyptian atomic scientist working on the Iraqi nuclear program.Styan, David. France and Iraq: Oil, Arms and French Policy Making in the Middle East. I.B. Tauris, 2006. p. 134. Shortly afterward, two other Iraqi engineers working on the program, Salman Rashid and Abdul Rasul, fell ill and died on trips to Switzerland and France respectively, with Mossad suspected of having poisoned them. It has also been claimed that the Mossad bombed several of the French and Italian companies it suspected of working on the project, and sent threatening letters to top officials and technicians, causing several French technicians to resign.Bergman, Ronen: Rise and Kill First, pp. 350–352Hurst, Steven. United States and Iraq Since 1979: Hegemony, Oil and War. Edinburgh University Press, 2009. p. 55.Spector, Leonard. Proliferation Today. Vintage Books, 1984. pp. 175–178. Following the bombing in April 1979, France inserted a clause in its agreement with Iraq saying that French personnel would have to supervise the Osirak reactor on-site for a period of ten years.