Remember Operation Babylon

As the debate over possible military action against Saddam Hussein heats up, it would behoove skeptical U.S. lawmakers and anti-war European politicians to recall an eerily similar controversy—also concerning Hussein and weapons of mass destruction—which took place some 21 years ago.

On June 7, 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor, called Osirak, which had been sold to the Baathist government by France in November 1975. The air strike, known as “Operation Babylon,” was carried out to prevent Hussein’s engineers from constructing a nuclear weapon that could have been used against Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin stressed that a pre-emptive disabling of the Osirak reactor was wholly justified as a means of national self-defense.

Predictably, though, the international community greeted Operation Babylon with near-universal condemnation. The Arab League issued a joint statement calling the bombing “a dangerous precedent that threatens world peace and security.” French Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy deemed the strike “unacceptable,” and the British Foreign Office labeled it “an unprovoked attack” that constituted “a grave breach of international law which could have the most serious consequences.” The United Nations Security Council—in a unanimous 15-to-0 vote—passed a resolution strongly criticizing the Israeli attack, after U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim reproached it as a “clear contravention of international law.” Even U.S. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, one of the Reagan Administration’s staunchest supporters of Israel, was forced to admonish the raid. “The means Israel chose to quiet its fears,” she told the Security Council, “have hurt, not helped, the peace and security of the area.”

President Reagan’s comments, however, were much more accommodating to the Israeli position. He said, quite notably, that Israel “might have sincerely believed that” the raid was a strictly defensive maneuver. Meanwhile, revelations from U.S. experts lent credence to this argument. Many State Department and intelligence officials believed that Hussein had obtained sufficient quantities of enriched uranium and specialized equipment to construct a nuclear weapon by the end of 1981—as well as multiple bombs by mid-decade.

When the facts were re-examined, moreover, they all indicated that Begin had made the proper decision. The budget for Iraq’s Atomic Energy Commission had increased dramatically from $5 million to $70 million per year in 1976 (a year after the Osirak reactor was purchased). Even more troubling, in 1980 the Italian government had sold Hussein three “hot cells”—nuclear laboratories that are shielded by lead and specifically designed for handling radioactive materials—which, when combined with reprocessing technology, would’ve enabled Iraq to make its own plutonium. That same year, former International Atomic Energy Agency inspector Roger Richter had warned the U.S. State Department that “available information points to an aggressive, coordinated program by Iraq to develop nuclear-weapons capability during the next five years.”

By 1981, Iraq had amassed roughly 200 tons of natural uranium—often called “yellowcake” and used in making plutonium—and its delegations had been touring nuclear facilities in several European countries, including Sweden, France, Italy and West Germany. Amazingly, certain Italian officials were also training Iraqi scientists in the use of plutonium-separation technology. In addition, Hussein had threatened to cut off oil exports to Portugal unless its government furnished Iraq with uranium ore.

Thus, prior to destroying Osirak, Israel had substantial evidence that the reactor was being used to produce a nuclear bomb. What’s more, Baghdad appeared to be frighteningly close to developing weapons-grade fuel. The Israelis had seen the brutal reality of Hussein’s territorial ambitions in the Persian Gulf—he had invaded Iran the previous year—and they were well aware of his thinly-veiled desire to conquer and destroy the Jewish state. The imperative nature of Operation Babylon, from their perspective, was undeniable.

In an address at Israel’s national military cemetery in Jerusalem roughly a month after the air strike, Begin predicted that the name “Osirak” would be “remembered and cherished by generations to come.” His speech was remarkably prescient, given the events of the past two decades. After the Gulf War ended in 1991, then-U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney specifically thanked Israel for the 1981 action that had made victory possible. Indeed, the Economist magazine recently noted that if Saddam “had already had nuclear weapons when he invaded Kuwait 11 years ago, he might still be there.”

As civilization once again confronts Hussein’s voracious appetite for weapons of mass murder, the protestations of those opposed to a pre-emptive strike sound all too familiar. Despite the mountains of evidence indicting the Iraqi government as a grave threat to American and world security—including links to terrorists such as the now-deceased Abu Nidal and terror groups such as al Qaeda, known stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, reports from Iraq’s former bomb-maker that its scientists could be months away from producing a nuclear weapon, Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds, his wanton slaughter of Iraqi dissidents and civilians, his firing at U.S. and British planes patrolling the “no fly” zones, his agents’ attempt to assassinate former President Bush and his repeated flouting of U.N. resolutions—we are told that the Bush Administration has no right to seek regime change by military force. If America does not first try the failed inspections strategy, if we don’t have enough support to assemble a coalition, and if we do not have definitive proof of Iraqi nuclear capability, many in the anti-war crowd argue, then our mission to eradicate Baghdad’s weaponry must be unnecessary and unjust.

Yet twenty-one years ago the Israelis assumed this difficult responsibility when no one else was willing to take it on, and they may well have saved the entire Middle East. Today, all freedom-loving nations face the same challenge: immobilizing the technological pursuits of a vicious, land-hungry, terror-mongering despot before he gets his hands on the world’s most lethal weapons. President Bush is ready to lead, just as Begin was in 1981; and just as the Israeli prime minister stayed resolute in his convictions despite the barrage of international criticism that followed the bombing of Osirak, Bush should likewise remain unfazed by the muddled arguments of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and the senseless posturing of ungrateful European chancellors.

The president may yet face opposition to a pre-emptive strike from some of Congress’s more committed left-wingers and partisan Democrats. As he continues to “make the case” before U.S. lawmakers, Bush would be well-served to mention Israel’s 1981 raid as clear evidence that pre-emption can be a vital means of national, regional and global self-defense. Ultimately, any senator or congressman who still believes that America should merely work to “contain” or “box in” Hussein’s murderous regime ought to review the legacy of Operation Babylon before he or she casts a vote against war.

Duncan M. Currie ’04, a Crimson editor, is a history concentrator in Leverett House.