Osirak and Iran

In 1981, Israeli F-16s bombed the nearly completed Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin saw the reactor as a key step toward Saddam Hussein's acquiring nuclear weapons, which they viewed as an intolerable threat. He said:

We chose this moment: now, not later, because later may be too late, perhaps forever. And if we stood by idly, two, three years, at the most four years, and Saddam Hussein would have produced his three, four, five bombs . . . another Holocaust would have happened in the history of the Jewish people.

Which sounds exactly like what Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying lately about Iran's nuclear program.

But careful study of the history of Iraq's nuclear program, made possible by Saddam's overthrow and the capture of many secret documents, shows that bombing Osirak may actually have speeded up Iraqi efforts to get a bomb. Colin Kahl:

To begin with, Hussein was not on the brink of a bomb in 1981. By the late 1970s, he thought Iraq should develop nuclear weapons at some point, and he hoped to use the Osirak reactor to further that goal. But new evidence suggests that Hussein had not decided to launch a full-fledged weapons program prior to the Israeli strike. According to Norwegian scholar Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, a leading authority on the Iraqi program, “on the eve of the attack on Osirak . . . Iraq’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability was both directionless and disorganized.” . . .

By demonstrating Iraq’s vulnerability, the attack on Osirak actually increased Hussein’s determination to develop a nuclear deterrent and provided Iraq’s scientists an opportunity to better organize the program. The Iraqi leader devoted significantly more resources toward pursuing nuclear weapons after the Israeli assault. As Reiter notes, “the Iraqi nuclear program increased from a program of 400 scientists and $400 million to one of 7,000 scientists and $10 billion.”

Iraq’s nuclear efforts also went underground. Hussein allowed the IAEA to verify Osirak’s destruction, but then he shifted from a plutonium strategy to a more dispersed and ambitious uranium-enrichment strategy. This approach relied on undeclared sites, away from the prying eyes of inspectors, and aimed to develop local technology and expertise to reduce the reliance on foreign suppliers of sensitive technologies. When inspectors finally gained access after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, they were shocked by the extent of Iraq’s nuclear infrastructure and how close Hussein had gotten to a bomb.

Israel’s 1981 raid didn’t end Iraq’s drive to develop nuclear weapons. It took the destruction of the Gulf War, followed by more than a decade of sanctions, containment, inspections, no-fly zones and periodic bombing — not to mention the 2003 U.S. invasion — to eliminate the program. The international community got lucky: Had Hussein not been dumb enough to invade Kuwait in 1990, he probably would have gotten the bomb sometime by the mid-1990s.

Bombing Iran will not keep the theocratic regime from getting a nuclear weapon. Instead it will only make them more determined to get one, and it would also entrench them in power at a time when a majority of Iranians has probably turned against them. The right strategy toward Iran is to encourage democracy and wait for a new generation to take power that is less interested in jihad and more concerned about the welfare of the people.