WaPo: An Israeli attack against Iran would backfire — just like Israel's 1981 strike on Iraq

[Douglas Carpenter]

Before attacking Iran, Israel should learn from its 1981 strike on Iraq

by Colin H. Kahl for Washington Post

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.”

Ultimately, 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.

Iran’s nuclear program is more advanced than Hussein’s was in 1981. But the Islamic republic is still not on the cusp of entering the nuclear club. As the IAEA has documented, Iran is putting all the pieces in place to have the option to develop nuclear weapons at some point. Were Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to decide tomorrow to go for a bomb, Iran probably has the technical capability to produce a testable nuclear device in about a year and a missile-capable device in several years. But as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Arms Services Committee on Feb. 16, it does not appear that Khamenei has made this decision.

Moreover, Khamenei is unlikely to dash for a bomb in the near future because IAEA inspectors would probably detect Iranian efforts to divert low-enriched uranium and enrich it to weapons-grade level at declared facilities. Such brazen acts would trigger a draconian international response. Until Iran can pursue such efforts more quickly or in secret — which could be years from now — Khamenei is unlikely to act.

Such an attack would probably require dozens of aircraft to travel at least 1,000 miles over Arab airspace to reach their targets, stretching the limits of Israeli refueling capabilities. Israeli jets would then have to circumvent Iranian air defenses and drop hundreds of precision-guided munitions on the hardened Natanz enrichment facility, the Fordow enrichment site deep in a mountain near Qom, the Isfahan uranium-conversion facility, the heavy-water production plant and plutonium reactor under construction at Arak, and multiple centrifuge production facilities in and around populated areas of Tehran and Natanz.

full article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/an-israeli-attack-against-iran-would-backfire--just-like-israels-1981-strike-on-iraq/2012/02/28/gIQATOMFnR_story.html


Colin H. Kahl is an associate professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. From 2009 to 2011, he was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.


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[Lawlbringer]

1. Although, ultimately

the program went nowhere. Didn't Saddam divert his resources to the pursuit of biological / chemical over "nook-u-lar" weapons?

[Igel]

2. Partly.

In the late '80s he bought a lot of dual-use technology that could be used to make chemical weapons. He also bought a lot of precursor chemicals, primarily from places like the Netherlands, although perhaps 10% came from the US and US-owned companies.

These he made into chemical weapons. Chem weapons tech is fairly cheap and fast to implement. Nuclear tech is a bit harder to come by--no Kim or Khan to help out their brothers-in-outlaw working for global pieces.

Bio weapons were a bit harder and less productive. But he never gave up and even in 2000, as far as any evidence is available, still wanted to reconstitute his nuclear weapons programs. He had mothballed a lot of technology, sidelined researchers, archived research results, and had some raw materials his guys thought they'd need stockpiled.

A lot of people assumed that as soon as public scrutiny and sanctions were lifted he'd revert to form. In the late '90s and in 2000 there was a pretty big hue and cry for lifting the sanctions.

Iran's ahead of Saddam. Iran's ahead of where Saddam would have been had he completed the Osirak reactor. Part of the OP's argument is built on where to draw the line in determining what counts as "evidence." Some make the standard so high that they can claim there's no evidence Iran has anything but the purest of pacific motives in their nuclear program (other's flip the syllogism--Iran has only the purest of peaceful motives, so how could there possibly be any evidence?). Others set the standard for evidence so low that they believe that Iran certainly must have all the components for a dozen nuclear bombs sitting around, each part numbered, with schematics for assembly and an assembly crew on an extended 329-day lunch break just itching to get to work and blow up some Zionist Jews that populate New York and DC and Tel Aviv. The OP sets the standard probably a bit too high, deciding that any but incontrovertible evidence must be ignored. My take is that there's good evidence that can't be ignored--but there's also a lot of evidence that may be wrong but should be considered simply because the stakes are high.

[Mosby]

3. The 2007 strike on Syria's nuke facility worked out quite well

But I guess that doesn't fit with this author's "analysis".

Clearly the Israelis did learn a few things from the Osirak bombing.



Edit: This would have been a good OP for the new ME forum.

You were nominated for a host position btw.

[bananas]

4. Iran attacked it before Israel did

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiraq#Iranian_attack

Iranian attack

Iran attacked and damaged the site on September 30, 1980, with two F-4 Phantoms, shortly after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War.[45] At the onset of the war, Yehoshua Saguy, director of the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate, publicly urged the Iranians to bomb the reactor.[45][46] This was the first attack on a nuclear reactor and only the third on a nuclear facility in the history of the world. It was also the first instance of a preventive attack on a nuclear reactor which aimed to forestall the development of a nuclear weapon, though it did not achieve its objective as France later repaired the reactor.[17][46][47]

Trita Parsi, in the book Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, writes that a senior Israeli official met with a representative of the Khomeini regime in France one month prior to the Israeli attack.[48] The source of the assertion is Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli government employee. At the alleged meeting, the Iranians explained details of their 1980 attack on the site, and agreed to let Israeli planes land at an Iranian airfield in Tabriz in the case of an emergency.[48]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Blix

Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (1981-1997)

Blix became Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency between 1981 and 1997 after Sigvard Eklund.

Blix personally made repeated inspection visits to the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osiraq before its attempted destruction by the Iranians, in 1980, and its eventual destruction by the Israeli Air Force in 1981 during Operation Opera. Although most agreed that Iraq was years away from being able to build a nuclear weapon, the Iranians and the Israelis felt any raid must occur well before nuclear fuel was loaded to prevent nuclear fallout. The attack was regarded as being in breach of the United Nations Charter (S/RES/487) and international law and was widely condemned. Iraq was alternately praised and admonished by the IAEA for its cooperation and lack thereof. It was only after the first Gulf War that the full extent of Iraq's nuclear programs, which had switched from a plutonium based weapon design to a highly enriched uranium design after the destruction of Osiraq, became known.

[Bill USA]

5. for Israel it's pretty simple: strike while you can or be wiped out.