Key Points and Summary – Israel has a long and consistent history of launching preemptive military strikes to destroy the nuclear programs of hostile neighboring states, a pattern that provides crucial context for its current conflict with Iran.
-In 1981, the Israeli Air Force destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, and in 2007, it conducted “Operation Outside the Box” to eliminate a nearly-completed Syrian reactor in Deir al-Zour, which was being built with North Korean assistance.
-While these operations were successful, subsequent Israeli intelligence assessments, such as those preceding the 2003 Iraq War, have been flawed, highlighting a mixed record of brilliant tactical intelligence gathering alongside strategic misjudgments.
A History of Preemption: How Israel Has Bombed Its Neighbors’ Nuclear Programs
On June 7, 1981, more than 40 years ago, an Israel Air Force (IAF) flight of F-15I and F-16I fighter aircraft attacked and destroyed a significant portion of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear research reactor at Tuwaitha.
The reactor had originally been purchased from France under a bilateral agreement. However, the purchase was made under an arrangement that it would be used for peaceful research purposes and not for the development of weapons-grade nuclear material.
The historical reporting on the event records that “this research facility was also subject to International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. Israel asserted that Iraq was on the brink of developing a nuclear weapons capability and justified the attack as an act of self-defense. Iraq insisted that its reactor program was peaceful, and France said that the reactor’s design features and the precautionary procedures it had implemented insured that the Osirak reactor could never be used in the production of nuclear weapons.”
Israeli aircraft took out the facility anyway.
These actions are instructive because, as a former colleague of mine in the defense industrial intelligence sector used to say, “There is no way that Israel will ever permit for there to be an ‘Islamic bomb.’ The idea of one of these Middle Eastern states ever having a nuclear device is just a non-starter for Israel.”
What is worth mentioning is that this was the beginning of a pattern of activity by Israeli governments when it comes to the threat of a neighboring Islamic state acquiring a nuclear weapon. The Iraqis pursued the development of a nuclear weapon for decades before Israel decided to bomb it.
But the Israelis chose to let the program run for years before finally attacking it—and they delayed that attack for specific reasons.
The idea was to allow the hostile state to expend resources for years on end, let the Israeli intelligence services learn the Iraqi sources and supply chains, determine who the illicit operators were, and then shut them down as well.
Then, at the moment the reactor in a place like Iraq was ready to produce results, it was time to strike.
A Quarter of a Century Later
About 25 years later, the specter of an Arab state acquiring a nuclear weapon raised its head in Syria.
This situation culminated in a 2007 strike on a reactor site in Deir al-Zour province at a facility 450 km northeast of Damascus. There was no admission by the Israeli military until 2018—eleven years later—that they had bombed the site because it was assessed to be a nuclear facility.
The IAF bombed the Syrian reactor site, but like the Iraqi facility, not until it was in a state of near-completion. As with the Iraqi reactor, Israel did not attack until the effort had been years in the making, and it was nearing the point where it could begin producing weapons-grade uranium.
However, even after the Israeli military said fighter jets bombed the facility, Syria’s government repeatedly denied that it was building a reactor.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) later said that a “vast intelligence effort” to uncover what was taking place at the Syrian site began in late 2004. Israeli operatives reportedly learned that foreign specialists believed to be North Koreans were assisting Syria with their nuclear weapons project.
Israeli intelligence was then able to locate the building site for the secret project. The Israeli analysis was that the nuclear reactor would become operational by the end of 2007. At this point, the IDF made plans for an air strike to destroy the facility, which was designated “Operation Outside the Box.”
Determination of Real Risk
The two reactor bombings straddle the famous Operation Iraqi Freedom, which will go down in history as a major military operation that was also justified on the basis of needing to eliminate the threat of a Middle Eastern nation developing a nuclear weapon. There was no small amount of controversy created later by the eventual discovery that nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons, and the facilities required to produce them were not to be found.
As Israeli Brigadier General (ret.) Shlomo Brom later pointed out in an article titled “The War in Iraq: An Intelligence Failure” that there were three aspects of how the Iraqi invasion turned out to be based on false pretenses.
General Brom makes three key points in his article, which discusses why Israel’s intelligence was correct in 1981 and 2007 but not in 2003. His conclusions were: “(1) Israeli intelligence agencies failed because they did not realize that Saddam Hussein’s main goal was survival; (2) Israeli intelligence tends to adopt the worst-case scenario; (3) Inflated threat assessments exact a heavy price.”
Israeli intelligence agents were convinced that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat because they held “a one-dimensional perception” of Saddam Hussein as an evil man “possessed by a compulsion to develop weapons of mass destruction in order to strike Israel and others.”
General Brom also criticizes the Israeli intelligence agency’s failure to identify Saddam’s primary motive as that of survival. He argues that after 1991, Saddam Hussein must have realized that “activities in the realm of weapons of mass destruction became a factor that threatened his survival rather than ensured it.”
In short, the Israeli intelligence picture is mixed—brilliant on-the-ground intelligence of activities where it had sources on the spot but less accurate assessments of the strategic capabilities and intentions of adversaries.
The current campaign against Iran has demonstrated considerable brilliance in the first type of activity. It remains to be seen whether the long-term view of Iran and its future actions proves equally accurate.
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments, and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
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