Twenty-one years have passed since Israeli fighter-bombers destroyed Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor shortly before it was ready to go on line. At the time, the general global community reaction was overwhelmingly hostile. The UN Security Council, in Resolution 487 of June 19, 1981, condemned the attack and said that “Iraq is entitled to appropriate redress for the destruction it has suffered.”
Israel’s controversial defensive action of June 7, 1981, now looks very different. We now know for certain that Saddam Hussein’s plans to build a French-supplied reactor at his nuclear research center at Tuwaitha, about 12 miles from Baghdad, were designed to produce militarily significant amounts of plutonium. There was no other purpose.
The Iraqi objective was “simply” to manufacture nuclear weapons that could provide Hussein with regional dominance and–if necessary–with the implements of atomic war fighting.
An Iraqi dictatorship with nuclear weapons would have had far-reaching global implications, affecting not only the “infidel” Jewish state, but also the security of those other states requiring Middle Eastern oil and those states that came to be engaged in the 1991 gulf war.
In this connection, protracted failure by the international community to prevent Hussein’s post-gulf war efforts to create nuclear weapons now allows Iraq to prepare for even vastly greater levels of aggression. If only this international community had been willing to replicate Israel’s heroic action of June 7, 1981, rather than foolishly to condemn it, our fragile world would not be faced with the threat of unconventional Iraqi attacks.
Israel did not act illegally at Osiraq.
International law is not a suicide pact. Under the long-standing customary right known as anticipatory self-defense, every state is entitled to strike first when the danger posed is “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation.”
Iraq has always insisted that a state of war exists with “the Zionist entity.” It follows that because aggression cannot be committed against a state with which a country is already at war, Jerusalem could not possibly have been guilty of such a “crime against peace.”
Fourteen Israeli aircraft took part in the raid–eight F-16 Falcons, each carrying two 1,000-kilogram bombs, and six F-15 Eagles serving as escort planes. The reactor was destroyed, without civilian casualties and before any radiation danger existed.
Unlike Iraq’s thirty-nine Scud attacks on Israel during the gulf war, which were expressly designed to harm innocent civilians, Israel’s raid on Osiraq was conceived for essential protection of civilians.
Israel’s defensive strike against an outlaw enemy state preparing for extermination warfare was not only lawful, but distinctly law-enforcing. In the absence of a centralized enforcement capability, international law relies upon the willingness of individual states to act on behalf of the entire global community. This is what took place 21 years ago, when–with surgical precision–Israel’s fighter-bombers precluded an Iraqi nuclear option.
Today, when waiting to absorb a first shot could sentence a tiny state such as Israel to obliteration, the legitimacy of anticipatory self-defense should be more widely acknowledged than ever before.
Israel’s citizens, both Jews and Arabs, American and other coalition soldiers who fought in the gulf war owe their lives to Israel’s courage, skill and foresight in June 1981. Had it not been for the raid at Osiraq, Hussein’s forces would have been equipped with atomic warheads in 1991.
The Saudis, too, are in Jerusalem’s debt. Had it not been for Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s resolve to protect his people in 1981, Hussein’s Scuds falling on Saudi Arabia might have spawned immense casualties and lethal irradiation.
With these facts in mind, one thing is certain. It is time for the world community generally, and the United Nations in particular, to acknowledge the obvious: Israeli pre-emptive action in 1981 was a heroic and indispensable act of international law enforcement.
Regarding future essential resorts to anticipatory self-defense, whether by Israel or by any other state facing unconventional aggression, such an acknowledgment could provide an important incentive to do what is needed to save human lives within the authoritative bounds of international law.
