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

North Korea and Iran: A Twosome Sharing Nuclear Information?

Nadene Goldfoot
Netanyahu just said yesterday that Iran is getting closer to the red line that he had set at the UN.  I note that they've been slowed down by computer viruses like the Stuxnet in June 2010, thought to have been planted by the USA and Israel but not proven.  Iran claimed that 5 Iranian nuclear scientists were killed and they hung an Israeli.   They're building centrifuges that enrich the uranium needed to make nuclear bombs at 3 times the pace.  They could cross that red line and get to a high enrichment of 90% enriched uranium in a much shorter time.

In 2007, the Israelis bombed the al-Kibar nuclear site in Syria which the North Koreans helped to design.  It was a plutonium facility.

Lee Smith, Senior Editor at the Weekly Standard and Fellow at the Foundation For Defense of Democracies and writer about the ties between Iranians and North Korean scientists, feels that they may already have the bomb.  His background gives him some skills to learn about what the Iranians have been doing.  Smith has a B.A. from George Washington University, where he received awards in English and Latin.  He received the Sage Graduate School Fellowship at Cornell University, and studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo and Universite Saint-Joseph in Beirut.  He knows Spanish, Arabic, French and Latin.  English must be his native language.

For at least the last 10 years, the North Koreans have cooperated with Iran on nuclear and missile issues.  The Iranians have several full-time weapons engineers on site in North Korea.  This has not been a secret.

Last fall, North Korea and Iran signed a paper regarding science and technology.  The North Koreans published the names who signed, including the head of Iran's atomic energy organization and the defense minister.  They are exchanging information.  There are precedents for states passing on designs.  The New York Times spoke with a senior US official who said that the North Koreans are testing for 2 countries.

North Korea has been into nuclear goals since December 12, 1985 when they acceded to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty.  They then withdrew from the IAEA in 1994.  By July 9th, President Kim II Sung died and Kim Jong II took over.  By August 31, 1998, their 3 stage rocket was fired with a range of 93-1,240 miles which went over Japan.  By July 4, 2006 they had a 7 ballistic missile fail but by October 9th had an underground test.  April 5, 2009 they tested a 3 stage rocket.  May 25, 2009 was a 2nd underground test.  December 17, 2011, Kim Jong II died and Kim Jong-Un took over.  On April 13th, a satellite rocket failed but by December 12, 2012, they launched the Unha-3.

January 2013:  Kim Jong-un, about 20 years old, said that the USA was the prime target for Pyongyang's nuclear  and missile tests.  "North Korea is a "serious threat" to the United States and Washington must be prepared to deal with it, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned after Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test.

"We saw what North Korea has done these last few weeks with a missile test and now a nuclear test,"  said Leon Panetta, the outgoing Defense Secretary, at a farewell ceremony.  Their goal is to be a force to be reckoned with.  Now South Korea is planning to build ballistic missiles.

On February 2013:  Iran's Ali Khomeini rejected negotiation with the USA over their nuclear ability.  Both North Korea and Iran feel that no one can stop them.  They are both paranoid, secretive regimes.  Jeffrey Lewis, Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at Monterrey Institute feels it's hard to know if North Korea would give the blueprints to Iran.  They do need money, though, and Iran would pay.

North Korea's 1st test most likely used plutonium.

Iranians were at North Korea's 2nd nuclear test.  In May 2009 the explosion was half the size as its 3rd test.  They probably used plutonium then, too.

Iranians were at North Korea's last nuclear test on Tuesday the 12th.  It was a 5.0 in magnitude, half the size of the Hiroshima blast.  It was believed to be an enriched uranium devise.  "Pyongyang appears to detonate a nuclear device with regional monitors detecting an unusual seismic event, of a magnitude between 4.9 and 5.1, in the same location as the North's Punggye-ri nuclear test site.  Seoul estimates the blast yield at six to seven kilotons."

I'll be listening to Lee speak tomorrow night.  There might be more insights into just what is going on.

Resource:  Why Iran Already Has the Bomb, by Lee Smith  originally on Tablet Magazine. http://www.realclearworld.com/2013/02/14/why_iran_already_has_the_bomb_145279.html
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130212/key-dates-north-korea-nuclear-missile-programmes
http://www.hudson.org/learn/index.cfm?fuseaction=staff_bio&eid=LeeSmith
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/05irran-scientist-assassinations-state-tv-confessions_n_1744862.html
http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/the-iran-north-korea-connection/2013/02/18/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/world/asia/test-seen-as-push-by-kim-for-credibility.html?_r=0