In 1981, then-prime minister Menachem Begin sent the Israel Air Force on an unprecedented mission to bomb and destroy Saddam Hussein’s Osiraq “peaceful” French-built nuclear reactor, which was about to start making plutonium for nuclear weapons. The attack was successful, and shocked the Iraqi leader and the world.
This was the origin of the Begin Doctrine, which declared that “we shall defend our people with all the means at our disposal. We will not allow any enemy to obtain weapons of mass destruction that can be turned against us.”
On Friday morning at 2 a.m., Israel time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu applied the Begin Doctrine, authorizing the air force to launch a full-scale attack against Iran’s military leadership, nuclear experts, and main facilities.
Begin Doctrine then and now: Israel stops enemies getting nuclear weapons
In contrast to Osiraq, a single undefended target destroyed by eight F-16s, each carrying two 2,000-pound bombs (and protected by six F-15s), the air force will need to fly hundreds of sorties against numerous nuclear facilities, some buried deeply underground. The scale is very different, but the objective is the same.
Another key similarity is the failed attempt to convince the leaders of the world’s democracies, including the US and the so-called “international community,” to take definitive action necessary to end these existential threats without resorting to war. Months before the 1981 strike, Begin sent Yuval Ne’eman, a top scientist and Nobel Prize candidate, with the evidence to France, Washington, and elsewhere, but Ne’eman’s warnings went unheeded.
Now, as then, Netanyahu and other Israeli officials devoted years in trying to convince political leaders to stop Iran’s march toward the ultimate weapon of genocide and mass destruction, and this also failed. At times, the regime pretended to slow uranium enrichment and open facilities to inspection, as required when Iran signed the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
This enabled Iran to receive “civilian” and “peaceful” nuclear technology, and even to participate in workshops run by international experts. Although Saddam Hussein was Iran’s sworn enemy, in this, they followed the Iraqi leader’s charade and got away with it for a long time.
The pretense of negotiations bought over 20 years of time to almost cross the nuclear finish line. In 2003, after the International Atomic Energy Agency belatedly acknowledged Iran’s repeated cheating, Tehran agreed to talks with Britain, France, and Germany – aka the E-3 – about a possible agreement. Nothing substantive happened, even after the UN Security Council imposed economic sanctions to increase the pressure. Iran continued to secretly build centrifuges and test bomb components.
In parallel, the threats of Israeli action began to register, and in 2013, when Obama became president, he made an agreement with Iran a top priority.
After two more years of negotiations, in 2015, the US and European leaders triumphantly declared success, reaching an agreement with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that removed the sanctions in exchange for paper limitations that were largely ignored and unverified.
In 2018, US President Donald Trump renounced the fictitious framework, and the US withdrew and renewed the sanctions, but this was reversed by the Biden administration, and Iran was able to increase the pace of enriching uranium for atomic bombs.
At this point, Netanyahu, like Begin more than four decades earlier, realized that Israel would have to act alone, and detailed preparations for war began.
ANOTHER COMPARISON is in the responses. In 1981, international officials condemned what they called “Israel’s reckless attack” on Iraq’s reactor. Led by the Arab and European states, and even with the support of US president Ronald Reagan, the UN Security Council condemned Israel for violating the UN Charter and international law, and repeated Iraq’s right to develop “peaceful nuclear technology.” Washington also suspended arms deliveries to Israel for a few months.
However, after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991 and the US-led coalition forced him to withdraw, the Americans publicly acknowledged Israel’s vital contribution to their security, and the fact that a nuclear-armed Iraq would have prevented a counterattack.
This time, there are fewer condemnations of the Israeli action against Iran, although, except for Trump, the responses mainly consist of banal virtue signaling and calls for restraint on all sides.
Finally, in 1981, many pundits declared that Israel’s action would not stop Iraq from becoming an atomic power, and might accelerate the process. They were wrong, and 44 years later, Saddam is long gone and Iraq has no nuclear facilities.
When the successors to those pundits claim that Iran will quickly rebuild its facilities, they cannot know. The regime might fall due to massive incompetence and repression, and be replaced by leaders not obsessed with the Jewish state.
Whether or not this happens, Israel has again shown that it will not allow any enemy to “obtain weapons of mass destruction.”
The writer is emeritus professor at Bar-Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor. His book Menachem Begin and the Israel-Egypt Peace Process was published by Indiana University Press.