Why israel attacked iraq

At issue was whether French and Soviet personnel were still present at the complex. There had been no inspections since June, when Agency inspectors observed seals on the French fuel supply. The Agency had been negotiating with the Iraqis over the facility attachments for the reactors and storage area at Tuwaitha but a trip to resume the talks had been postponed.

The facility attachments were important and highly sensitive documents concerning safeguards at each installation, including locations for making measurements, provisions for cameras and seals, specification of the data to be recorded and reported by the facility, specific activities of the inspectors, and an estimate of the person-days per year of inspections that the IAEA expected to make. Benson and Matthew Nimitz, box 8, Chron. Why Pickering did not make the briefing is unclear.

If Lewis wanted, Draper could explain the decision in a phone call. All aircraft returned safely. The U. Fahd expected a prompt U. The Embassy requested information and guidance as soon as possible.

Member of parliament and former foreign minister Moshe Dayan told Ambassador Lewis that Begin would contact President Reagan with justifications for the strike. Principal Officer in Iraq William Eagleton had not yet learned of an official Iraqi response -- during a meeting with an Iraqi Foreign Ministry officer it was not mentioned.

Saudi Arabia called the attack an insult to itself and to the United States. Mubarak said that it would cause problems with the Arab states for both Egypt and the U.

To justify the attack, the Government of Israel made the worst-case argument that the Osirak reactor would give Iraq the capability to produce Hiroshima-scale weapons. Moreover, the raid occurred on a Sunday to avoid harm to foreign experts working at the site one French technician was killed, notwithstanding.

The strike was not yet known to the public but would be soon. Press guidance was being prepared. Addressees were told that local authorities should not yet be alerted but missions should initiate all appropriate security measures. At present nothing should be discussed with staff or outside of missions. Israel had planned on announcing the strike; so far, it had not been reported on Radio Baghdad. According to this Department message to the CIA, Israel had been pushing in recent days for the accelerated production and delivery of U.

F and F fighter aircraft both models were used in the strike. Principal Officer Eagleton reported that so far the U. Interests Section in Baghdad had heard only rumors about the Israeli attack: Iraqi media had not mentioned the raid.

Eagleton said he was checking with the French and Italian embassies. Meanwhile, speculation about aspects of the strike was circulating among Iraqis, according to Interests Section employees. The mission was said to be implementing appropriate security measures. Ambassador Neumann in Riyadh commented to the Department that guidance for dealing with the Israeli reactor strike provided so far by Washington had not been sufficiently strong, given the high emotional connotations of nuclear-related incidents, especially hostile acts.

The passage of attacking Israeli planes through Saudi airspace, he reported, would be seen by Saudis as an act of war. Saudis would also interpret the timing of the attack as undermining their efforts to mediate conflict in Lebanon. To maintain credibility, Neumann called for a stronger U. As for the press, Israel planned to wait for questions about the attack and would downplay it, Deputy Defense Minister Zippori told Brown told, but if Iraq made an announcement Begin would issue a statement.

Israel did not plan to provide any details on the strike. So far, there had been no press stories, although CBS had made inquiries. The Israelis later told Brown that they struck only French facilities and timed the attack to avoid radiation dispersal and to limit casualties. They used 16 iron bombs dropped by eight U. F aircraft escorted by six U. There was little Iraqi resistance. The Israelis claimed that their photographs showed that a hit on the reactor dome had led to its collapse.

Principal Officer Eagleton reported that Italy had accounted for all its workers at the Tuwaitha reactor site, but the French ambassador indicated that one French technician was missing. There had not yet been an official Iraqi statement. An air raid alert, followed significantly later by anti-aircraft fire, led to rumors, but there was only speculation about what triggered them.

So far it appears that only a few Iraqi officials are aware of the strike, and there has been no apparent popular reaction.

William Eagleton reported that there had still not been any apparent Iraqi reaction to the attack on the Tuwaitha reactor, despite the audible explosions that accompanied it.

The Baghdad Interests Section had implemented security measures but did not expect in the near term to be targeted. Eagleton predicted that whatever Washington said, Iraqi leaders would assign much of the blame for the attack to the U. Eagleton noted that the Iraqis would suspect that the U. He noted that Iraq had no shared border with and was not in a fighting war with Israel, that the facility was costly, and that Iraq had signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Hammadi adds that Eagleton was the first foreign representative he had called since the strike, since the U. He contended that the U. Eagleton said in reply that he could affirm officially that the U. After Hammadi made a skeptical comment that is excised in the document, Eagleton countered that even if it had been aware of the flights the U.

When those discussions concluded, Lewis became convinced that Israel would strike the reactor before it became operational.

Recounting his 17 July conversation with Begin, he explained that the Carter administration had made reassurances that Begin had dismissed and pointed to signs that the Israelis might use the Iraq-Iran war as cover for an attack on the reactor. Lewis also discussed a briefing that he had given to Begin in December originally to be provided by Assistant Secretary Thomas Pickering.

It indicated no basic U. Begin, however, remained worried that diplomacy would not work. The December meeting was the last such exchange. The CIA reported that photographic evidence indicated that structural damage at the Iraqi reactor after the Israeli strike was less severe than previously reported. Damage to the interior of the ISIS reactor building could not be determined. Cleanup work was not apparent. There were five bomb craters at the Osirak reactor building, an undetermined number near the destroyed and damaged support buildings, and several craters were visible near the laboratories.

Principal Officer Eagleton reported that one French technician at the Iraqi nuclear facility had been killed by fumes during the airstrike. There were only four French technicians in the vicinity during the attack, which occurred after the end of the workday. His source was aware of numerous Iraqi casualties but not yet of any deaths.

The source indicated that there was not much left to work with at the site, and French workers would not return while a war was ongoing. National Security Council staffer Robert M. Kimmitt briefed National Security Advisor Richard Allen on legal requirements under the Arms Export Control Act for cutting off military exports to a country that has substantially violated military sales agreements, and for presidential notification of Congress to that effect.

On behalf of Reagan, Secretary Haig reported the incident to Congress. The White House would inform Congress of the results of its deliberations, but in the interim was suspending shipment to Israel of four F aircraft. Kimmitt assumed that other deliveries would not be affected.

The Fs were a special case because they were used in the attack. He noted that another delivery of Fs was scheduled for mid-July, but the review should be completed by then. In December Lewis told Begin that the U. Feith provided the memorandum to Allen for his signature. Stoessel underscores how the Israeli strike put the United States in a difficult legal and political position with respect to its chief regional ally.

He wrote that the U. In fact, he advised against doing so, to keep its options open: if it found that the strike was illegal, Washington would be required to cut off the flow of weapons to Israel. The Americans told Evron that a December U. He added that Israel must recognize high-level concern in Washington about the surprise attack. Regarding the crisis in Lebanon, Veliotes said that the Israeli attack had not ended efforts by presidential envoy Philip Habib to mediate the conflict but had complicated it.

Participants in a June monthly warning meeting did not think that Iraq would retaliate for the strike on its reactor by attacking either Israel or the U. Success would be unlikely, they believed. Plus, President Saddam Hussein saw some benefit from the attack because he believed that it isolated Israel in international opinion, and Iraq was currently stressing diplomacy in its foreign policy.

Were they willing to comply, the Iraqis could try to incite terrorism by Palestinian militants. It was unlikely that Baghdad would strike at Iran as a prestige-enhancing move because the Iraqi president would like to get the Iran-Iraq war over with, the participants concluded. The raid had soured U. The strike increased the security concerns of governments in the region, likely accelerating the arms race, according to the document.

Since Israel stated that it would stop any Arab country from attaining a nuclear weapons capability, other measures for self-defense might be pursued -- possibly offering opportunities to Moscow. However, the raid may have damaged the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the IAEA safeguards system, giving credence to critics who dismissed their effectiveness as barriers against proliferation — and demonstrating their limitations as security guarantors for treaty members. The assessment concluded that the raid was likely to increase skepticism in the Arab world that the United States had credibility as an unbiased peacekeeper in the Middle East.

From this perspective, Washington had, instead, transformed Israel into a major military power whose actions could not be restrained by the U. The most intense Arab reactions to the attack came from traditional friends of the United States, the report noted, like Jordan, which feared that the strike and the U. So far, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein who was focused on the competing crisis of the war with Iran had been relatively restrained in his criticism of United States support for Israel.

Yet, the strike also focused attention on the threat of nuclear proliferation; demonstrated the need for tighter nuclear export controls; and could provide opportunities for negotiating improvements of the NPT and the IAEA nonproliferation regime while increasing their funding and international support. The bombing set back temporarily Iraq's nuclear research program, which aimed for a weapons option, by limiting its access to material and technological assistance.

An Iraqi draft resolution omitted a call for Israel's expulsion but considered the strike against a safeguarded Iraqi nuclear facility as "an attack on the Agency and its safeguards regime.

The bureau predicted that with the passage of time the atmosphere would moderate, and the U. See, for example, Kevin M. Woods, David D. Palkki, and Mark E. Stout, eds. Skip to main content. The Osirak research reactor site in Iraq after it was bombed by Israel in Creative Commons.

CIA and U. Whether the French informed the Israelis about the steps they had taken is not clear, but some of the measures, such as pre-irradiating HEU would have been effective The Carter administration believed that Italy had gone far in providing technology that could help Iraq produce plutonium for a weapons program.

Read the documents. Document 1. Salmon [et al. Aug 24, Document 2. Oct 1, Document 3. Frantzman observed "In only several minutes on that day, Israel established a doctrine that it would act to prevent any existential threat involving weapons of mass destruction in the region.

Second, the strike provided a one-time benefit for Israel The attack on Osirak involved the need for the F attack aircraft and their F escort fighters to fly at low level over Jordan and Saudi Arabia to avoid radar detection.

King Hussein, who was ruling Jordan at the time, had close ties to Saddam Hussein and almost wrecked the Israeli operation. Hussein, a pilot himself, recognized what they were. He sent a warning message to Iraq, but it was never received by anyone in authority. Israeli versions of the King Hussein episode vary. Israel Defense , a defence website, in claimed King Hussein's call was intercepted by Israeli intelligence.

The other side affirmed that it received the message and promised to convey it to the Iraqis. Hussein did not know, according to foreign sources, that the person on the other end of the line was not a Jordanian officer, but an Arabic-speaker from Israeli intelligence. The warning, probably, never reached its destination," Israel Defense claimed. The attack on Osirak remains an incident analysed by military experts for the overwhelming odds the Israeli Air Force faced.

The least of which was the distance of around miles to the target area. Noting that no air defence missiles or guns had "touched" the Israeli Fs, then prime minister Menachem Begin once attributed the success of the Osirak attack to the "grace of God". In , the Israeli Air Force destroyed another under-construction nuclear reactor, this time in Syria. And over the past 20 years, there have been plenty of warnings from Israel that it would not stand by if Iran attempted to acquire nuclear weapons.

The success and limitations of the Osirak attack continue to have reverberations. The Osirak attack was cited as a model of the doctrine of pre-emption in the wake of the September 11 attacks in