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Great Daring Moments From History

Khalid Elhassan September 28, 2020 31 min

Josip Broz Tito - World War II — Yugoslav partisans wading across a river. Wikimedia

23. The 1980s Air Raids to Keep Saddam From Getting an A-Bomb

Saddam Hussein‘s enemies were alarmed when he began construction of the Osirak nuclear reactor on the outskirts of Baghdad. The reactor could be used for a weapons program that would furnish the Iraqi dictator with nuclear bombs, so his enemies sought to nip the problem in the bud.

In 1980, early in the Iran-Iraq War, Iranian F-4 Phantoms bombed the Iraqi reactor. However, they inflicted minimal damage, and the attempt did little to derail the Iraqi nuclear program. Israel, also threatened by the prospect of nuclear weapons in the hands of Saddam, made its own plans to take out the Iraqi reactor. The result was Operation Opera, one of the more daring air raids of the post-WWII era.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.