In ordering a preemptive strike aimed at significantly setting back Iran’s nuclear program, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was following in the footsteps of two of his predecessors. Menachem Begin ordered an attack in 1981 that destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor. And a quarter-century later, Ehud Olmert gave the green light in 2007 to destroy a nuclear reactor in its last stages of construction in northeastern Syria.
But Israel was not in fact the first country in the Middle East to take aim at an enemy’s nuclear facilities.
That distinction belongs to Iran.
On Sept. 30, 1980, just eight days after Iraq invaded Iran, Tehran ordered a surprise airstrike of its own on the same Iraqi nuclear facilities that Israel would destroy a little more than eight months later. Dubbed Operation Scorch Sword, the attack featured four Iranian Phantom jets and setback construction of the nuclear reactor for several months.
Iraq claimed the French-built reactor was being built strictly for civilian purposes. While some experts before and after the strikes backed up this view, both the Israelis and Iranians believed Iraq was clandestinely committed to developing nuclear weapons and starting to take steps in that direction.
The combination of Iraq’s military aggression and intelligence about its nuclear activities convinced the new Iranian regime to act in 1980. Fast forward almost 45 years, and Israeli leaders are essentially making the same case for their country’s attack on Iran, insisting Tehran was close to “the point of no return” in its pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
“The Iranian regime has been working for decades to obtain a nuclear weapon, the Israeli military said in a statement. “The world has attempted every possible diplomatic path to stop it, but the regime has refused to stop.”
This week’s Israeli strikes come the same day a United Nations watchdog group announced that Iran had not been abiding by its earlier promises to constrain its nuclear program — spurring a promise by Iran to ramp up the program even more.
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