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Twenty five years later, Israel still in shadow of nuclear threat (AP file)
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| By Associated Press June 8, 2006 |
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It took less than a minute for eight Israeli fighter jets to drop 16 one-ton bombs on an unfinished reactor southeast of Baghdad and shatter Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions.
Exactly 25 years later, the daring June 7, 1981, airstrike remains fresh in the minds of Israeli decision-makers as they anxiously watch archenemy Iran's nuclear standoff with the West.
Israel identifies Iran as its greatest threat today -- a concern exacerbated by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's calls for Israel's destruction. But the military option is far more complicated.
The Iranians, learning from Iraq's bitter lesson, have scattered their program across that vast country, hiding some facilities in underground bunkers.
"I don't see anyone stopping the Iranian project. The IAF (Israel Air Force) can do damage to some of the facilities, but cannot stop them as a whole," one of the squadron leaders in the Iraqi strike, Col. Zeev Raz, was quoted as saying recently in The Jerusalem Post.
"You would have to go there physically, with an army on the ground, and this should be done with coalitions and superpowers, like in (the Gulf War) in 1991," Raz said.
Israeli leaders have repeatedly said diplomatic pressure is the best way to end Iran's nuclear program, with military action to be considered only as a last resort -- and led by other powers.
So far, Tehran, which insists its nuclear program is peaceful, has kept world powers at bay during more than two years of nuclear talks, undeterred by talk of bruising sanctions.
In 1981, Israel had no interest in letting diplomacy run its course. The French-built Osirak reactor, some 600 miles away, could be used to produce weapons-grade fuel, it said, and then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered his air force to wipe it out.
Eight F-16 bomber jets, flying low to avoid enemy radar and missile defense systems, zeroed in on the target, dropped their destructive cargo, and operating on little fuel, beat a retreat.
All returned safely.
Retired Brig.-Gen. Amir Nachumi told Israel Army Radio on Wednesday that he and the other seven airmen on the mission -- including Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut killed when the U.S. space shuttle Columbia tore apart in 2003 -- operated under the assumption they might not make it back.
"We judged very realistically that with such a level of risk and such an operation, two aircraft very well wouldn't return home," Nachumi said.
Raz said pilots dangerously broke the rules to conserve enough fuel to get home. They increased the planes' range by jettisoning external fuel tanks as soon as they were used up -- a tactic that reduced drag, but introduced the risk of a falling tank hitting a bomb mounted under the wings, and causing the plane to explode.
"Now it looks like we had no choice, but at the time it was crazy," he told The Jerusalem Post.
The markers the strike force had been trained to look out for appeared different in the shifting desert sands. But then, the reactor loomed into view.
"The dome, though smeared with mud, glistened in the afternoon sun," Nachumi told Army Radio. "And then you forget about the rest of the world. You focus on the (bomb) sight."
Israel -- widely believed to possess nuclear arms itself, though it has neither confirmed nor denied this -- has expanded its military arsenal in light of Iran's nuclear program.
It has acquired dozens of warplanes with long-range fuel tanks to allow them to reach Iran. And it's reportedly in the process of buying two additional submarines from Germany capable of firing nuclear missiles.
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