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Saturday, March 23, 2013

Israel Stopping the Osirak Nuclear Reactor in Iraq

Nadene Goldfoot
Netanyahu warned the world on Thursday, September 27, 2012 from the UN General Assembly about Iran obtaining enough uranium to make nuclear weapons. He explained with a visual that there is a red line, a point at which Iran's nuclear program would reach at which it could no longer be stopped.  Netanyahu reiterated that sanctions were good but hadn't stopped Iran from speeding up their nuclear program.  The time to prevent their nuclear building was getting very late.

  It's been six months since Netanyahu's warning.  During Obama's recent trip to Israel on March 20, 2013, he said that he feels that  danger is at least a year away.  Netanyahu said on TV while with Obama that this is about right.  However, the red line he had warned against is closer in his view, from indications than Obama believes.  Obama feels there is still time to solve this diplomatically.  He pledged to keep Iran from nuclear weapons.  Obama spoke about the need to make the weapon itself now which will take a lot of time.

Israel is the target of such a weapon as Iran has called Israel every disgusting name in the book, and is so much closer to Iran than the USA happens to be, so she has far more reason to be wary. Iran's President  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and to eliminate the Zionist regime.  He says the Holocaust never happened and has protested in such programs as "A world Without Zionism."  The man has derided Israel on many occasions. "Ahmadinejad said most Jews in Israel "have no roots in "Palestine"  but they are holding the destiny of Palestine in their hands and allow themselves to kill the Palestinian people."  He then came out with the idea that if the Europeans feel that the Holocaust existed and they feel guilty, they should create a home there for the Jews.  He does nothing but spout fanatic religious thoughts about Jews and wants to be in complete denial about Jews as to their history.
 

Israel has gone through this before.  In 1981, she became convinced that Iraq was approaching the capability to produce a nuclear weapon.  At this time, Israel was also widely criticized.  Critics minimized the importance of Iraq's nuclear program, claiming that because Baghdad had signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and permitted its facilities to be inspected, Israeli fears were baseless.

Israel knew that such a weapon was to be used on them, so they preempted the building of the weapon and launched their surprise attack and destroyed the Osirak nuclear complex in Iraq on June 7, 1981 in Operation Opera.   Iraq had bought a plutonium production reactor from France.  France had also built a research reactor and laboratories for them.     There had been a lot of diplomatic talk between Israel and Iraq.  "Israeli diplomacy engaged France, Italy (the main suppliers to the reactor) and the United States.  But it hadn't helped.  Even, internally, there was opposition from Peres, but Begin insisted that he “will not be the man in whose time there will be a second Holocaust."  Had they not done so, "American and coalition forces may have faced a nuclear-armed Iraq during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and again during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, had Israel not destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981.

  On June 19, 1981, the UN Security Council unanimously condemned the raid.  After the allied forced had announced the destruction of Iraq's nuclear facilities, the UN inspectors found Saddam's program to develop weapons was far more extensive than even the Israelis had believed.  Analysts had thought Iraq was unable to enrich uranium for bombs.  Saddam's Iraqi researchers used several methods, even an obsolete one, that were believed to have made it possible for Iraq to have built at least one bomb.  That's all it would take to wipe out Israel.

We were living in Israel at the time, attending classes in Haifa at the Ulpan where we lived in order to obtain our teaching degrees.  I wrote back to my family the following on July 26, 1981.  "We thought it was okay for Israel to bomb the atomic plant in Iraq.  Everyone should know what they've been up to.  It's too bad that now that it's out in the open, France or someone else will rebuild it for them..  At least the world will know what can happen with a country like Iraq."    

Then Iraq invaded oil rich Kuwait on August 2, 1990."Saddam Hussein declared that the nation of Kuwait no longer existed; Iraqi forces held the country for seven months, until U.S. and coalition forces liberated the occupied country in the first Gulf War from this date on to February 28, 1991.".  Iraq had a population of 31,234,000 and Kuwait only had 3,399,637 people.  This caused US officials to finally  acknowledge to everyone that Baghdad had been developing nuclear weapons and that it was far closer to reaching its goal than they had thought.  This brought out people who said that the Administration was only trying to justify having a war with Iraq for their oil after the USA went in again in 2003!  

Resource:  Myths and Facts by Dr. Mitchell G. Bard, Joel Himelfarb p. 278-279
Letters From Israel, page 120
http://www.policymic.com/articles/15438/israel-red-line-netanyahu-un-speech-gets-tough-on-iran-nuclear-program
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/mar/20/on-israel-visit-obama-pledges-to-keep-iran-from/It's
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Osirak.html
http://www.thetakeaway.org/2010/aug/02/iraqs-invasion-kuwait-remembered-20-years-later/#13640571780151&%7B%22ready%22%3Atrue%7D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel

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