The French were helping Iraq build a nuclear plant near Baghdad in the late 1970s. Israel bombed and destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor on this day in 1981
Why did Israel attack Iraq?
The raid was the first-ever successful attack on a nuclear plant. Israel believed that Iraq was building a plant designed to make nuclear weapons to destroy the Jewish nation. The raid, codenamed Operation Opera, was ordered by Israeli PM Menachem Begin. The 70-megawatt uranium-powered reactor was near completion but had not been stocked with nuclear fuel, so there was no danger of a leak, the BBC quotes its French sources as saying.
Columbia shuttle disaster link
Israel said that all the pilots involved in the raid returned safely. One of them was Ilan Roman, the country’s first astronaut. Ramon was among those killed in the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster in which Indian-American astronaut Kalpana Chawla also died
United States vs Israel
Many countries, including America, condemned the Israeli raid. Even the Reagan administration, normally sympathetic to Israel, chose to condemn the attack, wrote Pulitzer prize winner Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times. The US, which usually exercises its veto on anti-Israel resolutions, joined a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel