![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
Advocates of the preventive use of force against emerging nuclear, biological, or chemical programs often look to the allegedly successful 1981 Israeli airstrike against Iraqi nuclear facilities at Osiraq. According to the conventional wisdom, this attack may have prevented Iraq from going nuclear before Operation Desert Storm in 1991. This article assesses the claim that the 1981 attack substantially delayed Iraqi acquisition of nuclear weapons, both by revisiting older debates and by introducing new evidence from Iraqi scientists. The article casts doubt on the conclusion that the attack was successful for three reasons: (1) the reactor itself was not well equipped to generate plutonium for a nuclear weapon; (2) illegal plutonium production would likely have caused a cutoff in the supply of nuclear fuel and an end to weapons activities; and (3) the attack may have actually increased Saddam's commitment to acquiring weapons. These conclusions have implications for the Bush Doctrine, as the lack of success in 1981 casts doubt on the possible success of future attacks against nuclear programs.
Thanks to Scott Wolford and Kristin Bakke for research assistance. Thanks to Mike Horowitz, Ken Stein, and participants in the Ridgway Center's Preventive and Preemptive Military Intervention Workshop for comments. All opinions and remaining errors are solely those of the author.
Notes
1. White Office of Homeland Security, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” Sept. 2002, <www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html>.
2. “Taking Apart Iraq's Nuclear Threat,” New York Times, Sept. 4, 2002, p. A21.
3. Kenneth Pollack, The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 392.
4. Nicholas Kristof, “The Osirak Option,” New York Times, Nov. 15, 2002, p. A31.
5. Joshua Burek, Ben Arnoldy, and Jim Bencivenga, “War Against Iraq: Questions and Answers,” Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 12, 2003, p. 9; Joseph Leconte, “Rumsfeld's Just War,” The Press Room, Heritage Foundation website, Dec. 24, 2001, <www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed122401.cfm > ; Vice President Richard Cheney, quoted in Rodger W. Claire, Raid On the Sun: Inside Israel's Secret Campaign That Denied Saddam the Bomb (New York: Broadway Books, 2004), p. 240. See also The White House, “Vice President Speaks at VFW 103rd National Convention,” Remarks by the Vice President to the Veterans of Foreign Wars 103rd National Convention, Aug. 8, 2002, <www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/08/20020826.html > ; Vice President Richard Cheney, remarks on “Meet the Press,” Dec. 9, 2001, <www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20011209.html > ; The White House, “Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer,” Feb. 3, 2003, <www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030203-15.html>. See also David Rennie, “US Hawks Look for First-Strike Precedent in 1981 Attack on N-plant Israel's Bombing of Saddam's Reactor, Condemned by America, Britain and the UN, is Now Being Hailed,” Daily Telegraph (London), Sept. 14, 2002, p. 22.
6. Shlomo Nakdimon, Peretz Kidron, trans., First Strike (New York: Summit Books, 1987), p. 336.
7. See, for example, Senator John McCain, comments on “Meet the Press,” Nov. 21, 2004, <www.msnbc.msn.com/id/653154 > ; Thom Schanker, Eric Schmitt, and David E. Sanger, “U.S. Wants to Block Iran's Nuclear Ambition, but Diplomacy Seems to be the Only Path,” New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004, p. A8; Laura King, “Israel May Have Iran In Its Sights,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 22, 2004, p. A1; James Fallows, “Will Iran Be Next?” Atlantic 294 (Dec. 2004), pp. 99–110; Pollack, The Persian Puzzle, pp. 391–395.
8. See, for example, Ann Scott Tyson, “Use of Force in Korea is Tricky Proposition,” Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 12, 2003, p. 2.
9. Dan Reiter, “Preventive Wars Against Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons Programs,” paper presented at the “Preventive and Preemptive Military Intervention Workshop,” Ridgway Center for International Security Studies, University of Pittsburgh, Oct. 9–10, 2004.
10. Most centrally, Hamza, who has provided the most detailed information on many aspects of the pre-1991 Iraqi nuclear program, has come under personal attack. Kamal has declared that some of the documents Hamza has provided are fakes and that Hamza himself is a “professional liar.” Khadduri and former weapons inspector Scott Ritter claim that Hamza was generally uninvolved in weapons-related research. Former weapons inspector David Albright, who coauthored a journal article with Hamza, eventually came to conclude that Hamza had “started exaggerating his experiences in Iraq.” Others have defended Hamza, including former assistant secretary of defense Richard Perle and former CIA director James Woolsey. See Hussein Kamal, interview with UN officials, Aug. 22, 1995, Iraq Watch website, <www.iraqwatch.org/un/UNSCOM/unmovic-kamalmeeting-082295.pdf > ; Imad Khadduri, Iraq's Nuclear Mirage: Memoirs and Delusions (Toronto: Springhead Publishers, 2004), pp. 72–73, 92; William Rivers Pitt with Scott Ritter, War On Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know on Iraq (New York: Context Books, 2002), pp. 52–53; Albright quote and Stein, Perle, and Woolsey references from Seymour M. Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 213. Insight from other sources inside the Iraqi nuclear program such as the Iraqi scientist Hussein Shahristani come from Shyam Bhatia and Daniel McGrory, Brighter Than the Baghdad Sun: Saddam Hussein's Nuclear Threat to the United States (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2000).
11. Nakdimon, First Strike, pp. 40–45, 52; Khidhir Hamza with Jeff Stein, Saddam's Bombmaker: The Terrifying Inside Story of the Iraqi Nuclear and Biological Weapons Agenda (New York: Touchstone, 2000), pp. 61–66, 69; Richard Wilson, foreword to Jafar D. Jafar, Oppdraget: Innsidehistorien Om Saddams Atomvapen (Oslo: Spartacus, 2005). English language version of foreword provided by publisher.
12. Quoted in Nakdimon, First Strike, p. 59. See also Hamza, Saddam's Bombmaker, pp. 80–83. The Iraqis referred to the reactors as Tammuz 1 and Tammuz 2, though sources differ over which was which, Nakdimon (p. 62) claims that the larger reactor was Tammuz 1, and Richard Wilson claims that the larger reactor was called Tammuz 2. Richard Wilson, “A Visit to the Bombed Nuclear Reactor at Tuwaitha, Iraq,” Nature, March 31, 1983, pp. 374.
13. Hamza, Saddam's Bombmaker, pp. 115–117.
14. Hamza, Saddam's Bombmaker, pp. 97–101; 106; 109; 132–35; Mahdi Obeidi and Kurt Pitzer, The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind (New York: Wiley, 2004), pp. 46–47.
15. For an extensive account of the Israeli side of the raid, see Claire, Raid on the Sun.
16. The 70-MW reactor could only have been run at 40 MW because a heavy water moderator had been attached. Wilson, “A Visit,” p. 374; H. Gruemm, “Safeguards and Tamuz: Setting the Record Straight,” IAEA Bulletin 23 (Dec. 1981), pp. 12–13. The smaller reactor was “almost useless” for plutonium production. Hamza, Saddam's Bombmaker, p. 128.
17. Nakdimon cites IAEA Director General Hans Gruemm as estimating that enough plutonium could be produced for one to two bombs per year. However, Gruemm notes this estimate assumes a higher-than-normal input of fuel, which would be noticed about the international community, triggering cutoff of the fuel supply. Nakdimon, First Strike, p. 69; Gruemm, “Safeguards and Tamuz,” p. 12.
18. Wilson, “A Visit,” p. 376; Michael Jansen, Baghdad's Bomb—An Inside View,” Middle East International, Jan. 10, 2003, p. 11.
19. David Albright, “Iraq's Programs to Make Highly Enriched Uranium and Plutonium for Nuclear Weapons Prior to the Gulf War,” Institute for Science and International Security, Oct. 2002, <www.exportcontrols.org/iraqs_fm_history.html > ; Obeidi and Pitzer, A Bomb in My Garden, p. 49.
20. Christopher Herzig, “Correspondence: IAEA Safeguards,” International Security 7 (Spring 1983), p. 196; Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, Intelligence Assessment, The Iraqi Nuclear Program: Progress Despite Setbacks, June 1983, p. 13, <www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq19.pdf>. The CIA report says that putting a blanket around the core could increase that output to 10 kg per year, but notes that, “We strongly believe that building a blanket … would be difficult for Iraq to do without being detected by the IAEA or the French.”
21. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Israeli Attack on Iraqi Nuclear Facilities, 97th Cong., 1st sess., June 17 and 25, 1981, p. 88. Lucien S. Vandenbroucke estimates that enough plutonium for one to two bombs could have been produced in ten years. “The Israeli Strike Against Osiraq,” Air University Review 35 (Sept.–Oct. 1984), pp. 35–47.
22. Obeidi and Pitzer, The Bomb in My Garden, p. 50.
23. Nakdimon, First Strike, pp. 74–78, 149, 335; Bhatia and McGrory, Brighter Than the Baghdad Sun.
24. Vandenbroucke, “The Israeli Strike Against Osiraq”. The couple of newspaper articles Vandenbroucke cites shed little light on motivations, other than to point to a Dec. 1981 meeting of French ministers at which it was probably decided to hold fast on the Caramel issue in negotiations over reconstructing the reactor. Edward Cody, “France Plans to Bar Weapons-Grade Fuel for Iraq's Reactor,” Washington Post, Jan. 13, 1982, p. A18; Ronald Koven and Jim Hoagland, “Mitterrand Says France Will Hold Iraq to Strict Conditions on Any New Reactor,” Washington Post, June 18, 1981, p. A1.
25. Michael Dobbs, “France Delays on Iraqi Reactor,” Washington Post, Dec. 3, 1984, p. A20; David March, “France Shelves Plans to Replace Iraqi Reactor,” Financial Times, Jan. 19, 1984, p. 3.
26. On Saudi Arabia, see Dobbs, “France Delays.”
27. Wilson, “A Visit,” p. 376. The terms of the reactor agreement committed Iraq to allow French technicians to inspect the reactor site until 1989. Koven and Hoagland, “Mitterand Says France.”
28. A guidance transmitter was found in the wreckage of the reactor, possibly planted by the French. The French technicians on site had also scheduled a meeting that day away from the site, and tried desperately to dissuade one of their colleagues from being at the reactor when the attack took place. That French technician ignored their pleas and was killed by the attack. Hamza, Saddam's Bombmaker, pp. 129–30.
29. Herzig, “Correspondence,” p. 196.
30. Herzig, “Correspondence,” p. 196. Former IAEA official Roger Richter claimed in front of a House subcommittee that there were no provisions for camera surveillance in the reactor. Richter's qualifications to make this and other critiques of the inspection regime have been challenged, as critics have pointed out that he presented no specific facts in his testimony and he was not assigned to Iraq when working with the IAEA. U.S. House of Representatives, Israeli Attack on Iraqi Nuclear Facilities, p. 59; Sigvard Eklund, “The IAEA on Safeguards,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 37 (Oct. 1981), p. 32. Additionally, the reactor was not yet operational when it was destroyed, and the specific Facility Attachment that would have drawn up the particulars of inspection (including, in all likelihood, camera surveillance) had not yet been drawn up. Hence, even if it was narrowly correct that no agreement had yet been reached to install cameras, it is reasonable to expect that cameras would have been installed before the reactor became operational. U.S. House of Representatives, Israeli Attack on Iraqi Nuclear Facilities, p. 68.
31. Herzig, “Correspondence”; Anthony, “Osirak and International Security,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 37 (Oct. 1981), pp. 33–34; Wilson, “A Visit,” p. 376.
32. See Paul Lewis, “France Says Iraqis Couldn't Have Built A-Bomb Undetected,” New York Times, June 18, 1981, p. A1; Wilson, p. 376; Fainberg, “Osirak and International Security,” p. 34.
33. Gruemm, “Safeguards and Tamuz”; Herzig, “Correspondence”; Lewis, “France Says Iraqis Couldn't Have Built A-Bomb Undetected”; Eklund, “The IAEA on Safeguards”; Wilson, “A Visit”; Fainberg, “Osirak and International Security”; U.S. House of Representatives, Israeli Attack on Iraqi Nuclear Facilities, pp. 59–61; Khadduri, Iraq's Nuclear Mirage, pp. 81–82.
34. David Albright and Khidhir Hamza. “Iraq's Reconstitution of its Nuclear Weapons Program,” Arms Control Today 28 (Oct. 1998), pp. 9–15; Khidhir Hamza, “National Terrorist Alert Goes Up; Interview With Saddam's Bomb Maker,” CNN Crossfire, Feb. 7, 2003 < http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0302/07/cf.00.html>. The secret reactor was Project 182, discussed in the text.
35. Herzig, “Correspondence”; Anthony, “Osirak and International Security”; Wilson, “A Visit,” p. 376. Other inspection skeptics include Shai Feldman, “The Bombing of Osiraq--Revisited,” International Security 7 (Fall 1982), pp. 114–42 (who is in turn rebutted by Herzig, “Correspondence”); Nakdimon, First Strike; Timothy L. H. McCormack, Self-Defense in International Law: The Israeli Raid on the Iraqi Nuclear Reactor (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), pp. 69–89.
36. Feldman, “The Bombing of Osiraq,” p. 121; Ronald Koven, “Baghdad Blocks Inspection of Its Nuclear Reactors,” Washington Post, Nov. 7, 1980, p. A1.
37. Koven, “Baghdad Blocks”; Herzig, “Correspondence,” p. 198.
38. McCormack, Self-Defence in International Law, pp. 74–75.
39. Fainberg, “Osirak and International Security,” p. 34.
40. McCormack, Self-Defense in International Law, pp. 73–82.
41. Fainberg, “Osirak and International Security,” p. 34.
42. Herzig, “Correspondence,” p. 197.
43. Richard K. Betts predicted in 1981 that the raid would increase interest throughout the Arab world in acquiring nuclear weapons. “Nuclear Proliferation after Osirak,” Arms Control Today 11 (Sept. 1981), p. 1. Others have speculated that the 1981 attack may have stimulated Saddam's pursuit of biological and chemical weapons. King, “Israel May Have Iran in Its Sights.”
44. Khadduri, Iraq's Nuclear Mirage, p. 82.
45. Feldman, Nuclear Weapons, p. 136; Michael Eisenstadt, “Can the United States Influence the WMD Policies of Iraq and Iran?” Nonproliferation Review 7 (Summer 2000), p. 66; Bhatia and McGrory, Brighter than the Baghdad Sun, p. 140.
46. Jafar, Oppdraget, pp. 55–56; Khadduri, Iraq's Nuclear Mirage, p. 82; Hamza, Saddam's Bombmaker, pp. 137–39. Thanks to Kristin Bakke for translation of portions of Oppdraget from the original Norwegian.
47. Hamza, “National Terrorist Alert”; Jafar, Oppdraget. Khadduri says that after the attack Iraqi scientists “went full speed ahead with our nuclear program, with unlimited resources.” Quoted in Farah Stockman, “Confronting Iraq: Hussein's Ex-Scientists Say Nuclear Bid Stymied,” Boston Globe, Feb. 9, 2003, p. A1.
48. Quoted in Bhatia and McGrory, Brighter Than the Baghdad Sun, p. 144.
49. Scott Ritter, Endgame: Solving the Iraq Crisis (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), p. 75. See also Eisenstadt, “Can the United States Influence,” p. 66; Hamza, Saddam's Bombmaker, p. 221; Bhatia and McGrory, Brighter Than the Baghdad Sun.
50. Khidhir Hamza, interview with Joseph Cirincione, “Presentation at the Carnegie Endowment Non-Proliferation Project,” Nov. 2, 2000, <www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/resources/hamzatranscript.htm>. See also Bhatia and McGrory, Brighter Than the Baghdad Sun, p. 143.
51. This crash program envisioned building some 50 centrifuges to enrich some 14 kg of 80-percent-enriched uranium up to the 93 percent that a bomb design requires; it would have been combined with the 12 kg of 93-percent-enriched uranium the French supplied in 1980. Though some UN inspectors speculated that with the crash program Iraq could have assembled an explosive device as early as mid-1991, the crash program was still likely farther away from succeeding, given that several scientific and engineering tasks remained to be mastered by spring 1991, including the production of uranium hexafluoride (a precursor for enrichment), a variety of bomb design issues, and the construction of the centrifuges themselves. Albright, “Iraq's Programs”; Obedi, Bomb in My Garden, pp. 131–37; Hamza, Saddam's Bombmaker, p. 334.
52. Jeremy Tamsett, “The Israeli Bombing of Osiraq Reconsidered: Successful Counterproliferation?” Nonproliferation Review 11 (Fall/Winter 2004), pp. 70–85. Hamza has also stated that absent the 1981 attack, Iraq would have had a nuclear weapon by 1990, though as discussed, this presumes that without the attack an array of technical problems in weapons design (aside from production of fissile material) which were not solved by 1991 would have been solved by 1990. This assumption is particularly questionable, as it predicts faster scientific breakthroughs with a much smaller set of scientists operating with a much smaller budget (as discussed, the budget and personnel assigned to the weapons program increased some 15-fold after the attack). Interestingly, Hamza argues without the attack Iraq would have had one nuclear weapon by 1990, but also that with the attack the Iraqi nuclear program was on track eventually to produce six nuclear weapons per year, before it was halted by the 1991 Gulf War. Hamza, “National Terrorist Alert.”
53. Tamsett, “The Israeli Bombing,” p. 83, n. 2.
54. Central Intelligence Agency, Iraqi Nuclear Program, pp. 12–14.
55. Jafar, Oppdraget.
56. Albright, “Iraq's Programs.”
57. Hamza, Saddam's Bombmaker, p. 334; U.S. Senate, Armed Services Committee, Testimony of Dr. David Kay, “Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs,” Jan. 28, 2004, available at <www.ceip.org/files/projects/npp/pdf/Iraq/kaytestimony.pdf > ; Bhatia and McGrory, Brighter Than the Baghdad Sun, p. 184.
58. Tamsett, “The Israeli Bombing,” p. 72. Tamsett also proposes (p. 71) that by forcing the weapons program underground into several facilities, the attack “strained coordination between principals (weapons scientists and engineers) and substantially slowed progress.” He provides no specific examples of this increased compartmentalization and its negative effects. More generally, under the paranoid rule of Saddam, there was widespread compartmentalization before the attack, and limits to compartmentalization after the attack, as when, for example, progress toward gaseous diffusion as a means of uranium enrichment was presented to a group of Iraqi nuclear physicists at a 1984 conference. Obeidi and Pitzer, Bomb in My Garden, pp. 54–55.
59. International Atomic Energy Agency, “The Implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolutions Relating to Iraq: Report by the Director General,” Aug. 12, 1996, <www.iaea.org/About/Policy/GC/GC40/Documents/gc40-13.html>.
60. Hamza implies that plans for Project 182 existed at least as far back as 1981, though this is in contrast to testimony given by Iraqi officials to UN inspectors. Hamza, Saddam's Bombmaker, p. 120.
61. IAEA, “Implementation”; Albright, “Iraq's Programs”; IAEA, “Fourth Consolidated Report of the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency under paragraph 16 of Security Council resolution 1051 (1996),” S/1997/779, Oct. 8, 1997, p. 53, <www.iaea.or.at/worldatom/Programmes/ActionTeam/reports/s_1997_779.pdf>.
62. Israel raised its concerns to the French government formally in 1977. Nakdimon, First Strike, pp. 77–80. Some two weeks after the attack French President François Mitterrand publicly denounced it, declaring there was no evidence that the reactor was part of a secret Iraqi weapons program. Koven and Hoagland, “Mitterand Says France.”
63. Tamsett, “The Israeli Bombing,” p. 77, citing Vandenbroucke.
64. Obeidi and Pitzer, A Bomb in My Garden; Hamza, Saddam's Bombmaker, p. 221; Albright, “Iraq's Programs.”
65. Hamza, Saddam's Bombmaker, pp. 240, 334; Khadduri, Iraq's Nuclear Mirage, p. 122; Obeidi and Pitzer, The Bomb in My Garden, p. 136; Cirincione, Deadly Arsenals, p. 274; Central Intelligence Agency, Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD, vol. 2, “Nuclear,” Sept. 30, 2004, p. 4; Kamal interview; Albright, “Iraq's Programs.” Notably, Hamza is probably the most optimistic in his assessment of Iraq's ability in 1991 to have solved these technical problems quickly once the fissile material became available. Hamza, “National Terrorist Alert”; Hamza and Cirincione, “Presentation at the Carnegie Endowment.”
66. Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (New York: Times Books, 2004), p. 35.
67. James Fallows, “Will Iran Be Next?” Atlantic (Dec. 2004), p. 106; Joel S. Wit, Daniel B. Poneman, and Robert L. Gallucci, Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Brookings 2004), p. 104.