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Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2001 18:39:41 -0800 (PST)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Israel.prevented.atomic.disaster.in.1981]
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George Will
November 1, 2001
Israel prevented atomic disaster in 1981
WASHINGTON--When Israel's Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, accompanied
by Ambassador David Ivry, recently visited the Oval Office, President
Bush remarked that Israel certainly has the right ambassador for the
moment. He said this because Ivry has shown that he understands how
preventive action is pertinent to the problem of weapons of mass
destruction in dangerous hands. Bush's remark, pregnant with
implications, revealed that the president as well as the vice
president remembers and admires a bold Israeli action for which Israel
was roundly condemned 20 years ago.
On the afternoon of June 7, 1981, Jordan's King Hussein, yachting in
the Gulf of Aqaba, saw eight low-flying Israeli F-16s roar eastward.
He called military headquarters in Amman for information, but got
none. The aircraft had flown below Jordanian radar. So far, so good
for Ivry's mission, code-named Opera.
Ivry, a short, balding grandfatherly figure with a gray moustache, was
then commander of Israel's air force, which had acquired some of the
75 F-16s ordered by Iran from the United States but not delivered
because of the 1979 revolution that toppled the shah. The F-16s were
to be tested to their limits when Israel learned that Iraq was about
to receive a shipment of enriched uranium for its reactor near
Baghdad--enough uranium to build four or five Hiroshima-size bombs.
The reactor was 600 miles from Israel. Ensuring that the F-16s had the
range to return to base required the dangerous expedient of topping
off the fuel tanks on the runway, while the engines were running.
Measures were taken to reduce the air drag of the planes'
communications pods and munitions racks.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the attack to occur before the
uranium arrived and the reactor went ``hot," at which point bombing
would have scattered radioactive waste over Baghdad. The raid was
scheduled for a Sunday, to minimize casualties. It was executed
perfectly. Aren't we glad. Now.
The raid probably was not Israel's first pre-emptive act against
Iraq's attempts to acquire nuclear weapons. In April 1979,
unidentified saboteurs blew up reactor parts at a French port, parts
awaiting shipment to Iraq. In August 1980 an Egyptian-born nuclear
physicist important to Iraq's nuclear program was killed in his Paris
hotel room.
The U.S. State Department said Israel's destruction of the reactor
jeopardized the ``peace process" of the day, said relations with
Israel were being ``reassessed," canceled meetings with Israeli
officials and suspended deliveries of military equipment, including
F-16s, pending a decision about whether Israel had violated the
restriction that weapons obtained from America could be used only for
defensive purposes. The New York Times said Israel had embraced ``the
code of terror" and that the raid was ``inexcusable and short-sighted
aggression." The Times added this remarkable thought:
``Even assuming that Iraq was hellbent to divert enriched uranium for
the manufacture of nuclear weapons, it would have been working toward
a capacity that Israel itself acquired long ago. Contrary to its
official assertion, therefore, Israel was not in `mortal danger' of
being outgunned. It faced a potential danger of losing its Middle East
nuclear monopoly, of being deterred one day from the use of atomic
weapons in war."
The Times was sarcastic about fear of Saddam Hussein (``even assuming
... hellbent") and sanguine about his acquiring nuclear weapons which
would deter Israel from using such weapons. But 10 years later
Americans had reason to be thankful for Israel's muscular
unilateralism in 1981.
Today on Ivry's embassy office wall there is a large black-and-white
photograph taken by satellite 10 years after the raid, at the time of
the Gulf War. It shows the wreckage of the huge reactor complex, which
is still surrounded by a high, thick wall that was supposed to protect
it. Trees are growing where the reactor dome had been.
The picture has this handwritten inscription. ``For Gen. David Ivry,
with thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the
Iraqi nuclear program in 1981--which made our job much easier in
Desert Storm." The author of the inscription signed it: ``Dick Cheney,
Sec. of Defense 1989-93."
Were it not for Israel's raid, Iraq probably would have had nuclear
weapons in 1991 and there would have been no Desert Storm. The fact
that Bush and Cheney are keenly appreciative of what Ivry and Israel's
air force accomplished is welcome evidence of two things:
In spite of the secretary of state's coalition fetish, the
administration understands the role of robust unilateralism. And
neither lawyers citing ``international law" nor diplomats invoking
``world opinion" will prevent America from acting as Israel did,
pre-emptively in self-defense.
©2001 Washington Post Writers Group
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