Is Netanyahu Facing Another Osirak Moment?
Before Netanyahu
It was codenamed Operation Opera — Israel’s daring and successful air attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor at Tuwaitha. On June 7, 1981, fourteen Israeli fighter jets (F-16s and F-15As) plus other aircraft flew from Etzion airport more than 600 miles over hostile countries into Iraqi airspace.
To avoid radar detection, the fighters flew low, and when they reached the reactor each fighter jet released its bombs. The attack partially destroyed the reactor and killed ten Iraqi soldiers and a French engineer. (Iraq had purchased the reactor from France on the condition that it be used for “peaceful” purposes).
Netanyahu’s greatest fear is a nuclear armed Iran, and he will do whatever he deems necessary to prevent that from happening.
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin had been warned by Israeli intelligence that the reactor would become operational sometime between July and November of 1981, and that after that Saddam Hussein would be able to extract plutonium from spent atomic fuel to manufacture an atomic bomb. As John Correll wrote in Air Force Magazine, “If Israel was going to act, it had to be soon. Once the reactor was in operation and … fueled with uranium …. a bombing attack would spread radioactive fallout across Baghdad,” which was only 12 miles away.
Begin’s advisors were not of one mind regarding an attack on the reactor. Begin wanted to disable the reactor, and he was supported by then Agricultural Minister Ariel Sharon, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, armed forces chief of staff Lt. Gen. Rafael Eitan, and air force commander Maj. Gen. David Ivy. (READ MORE from Francis P. Sempa: A Conservative Realist Foreign Policy for the Twenty-First Century)
All of the Israeli fighters returned to Etzion after the three-hour mission. World reaction was hostile. United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim characterized the attack as a “clear contravention of international law.” The New York Times called Israel’s attack “an act of inexcusable and short-sighted aggression.”
Even the Reagan administration initially criticized the attack, temporarily suspended deliveries of F-16s to Israel, and voted to condemn the Israeli strike in the UN Security Council. But Prime Minister Begin, as the Jerusalem Post later noted, “would not allow nuclear weapons in the region to threaten Israel.”
On September 5, 2007, in an air strike ordered by then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert codenamed Operation Out of the Box, Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters destroyed Syria’s nuclear reactor near Deir Ezzor and, thereby, prevented the Syrians from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Israel only publicly admitted that it carried out this operation in 2018. Israel’s intelligence minister Yisrael Katz tweeted that the raid “sends a clear message: Israel will never allow nuclear weapons to countries like Iran who threaten its existence.”
Netanyahu Here and Now
With those two precedents in mind, and with a current Israeli Prime Minister who, like Begin and Olmert, understands that Israel has no margin for error when it comes to its enemies acquiring nuclear weapons, we may be approaching another Osirak moment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has often praised Menachem Begin’s political legacy. Netanyahu once remarked that “Begin understood that security comes first,” noting Begin’s attack on Iraq’s Osirak reactor and Begin’s pledge to not allow Israel’s enemies to acquire nuclear weapons.
It is inconceivable that Netanyahu would allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran is Israel’s most dangerous enemy. It is currently waging war against Israel by proxy (Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis) and directly with the recent Iranian ballistic missile attack on Israel. Despite the cautionary mumblings of a mentally frail American president, Netanyahu will do whatever is militarily necessary to protect Israel from a nuclear threat.
Recently, the historian Niall Ferguson and Jay Mens compared Netanyahu to Germany’s Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Netanyahu, they wrote, is Israel’s “Iron Prime Minister,” who exercises “Machiavellian mastery of the dirty game of politics, domestic and international.”
Like Bismarck, Netanyahu is a political survivor in the rough and tumble of Israeli politics. Like Bismarck, Netanyahu looks at a map to envision Israel’s security. And Netanyahu’s map shows Israel “tiny and surrounded by foes.” He has focused “relentlessly on the Iranian threat,” which has improved Israel’s diplomatic position in the region because other Gulf states also fear Iran.
Netanyahu is a foreign policy realist. Bismarck was known for his devotion to Realpolitik. Bismarck fought three short, limited wars in the 1860s and early 1870s to unify Germany, then spent the rest of his career forging alliances and conducting diplomacy to avoid wars and provide for Germany’s security. (READ MORE: Endless War Champions Back Harris for President)
Both leaders looked to history and geography, not ideology, to ensure their country’s survival. Bismarck’s greatest fear was that Germany would be faced by an alliance between France and Russia — his wars and diplomacy prevented that until he was dismissed from office by Kaiser Wilhelm II who led Germany to ruin. Netanyahu’s greatest fear is a nuclear armed Iran, and he will do whatever he deems necessary to prevent that from happening. And he knows that the nuclear clock is ticking.
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