Bombing Saddam's Nukes - Joint Israel-Iran Attacks, Iraq 1980-81

TL;DR

Israel and Iran secretly cooperated to bomb Iraq's French-built Osiris reactor, fearing Saddam Hussein was weeks away from producing nuclear weapons.

Key Points

• 1.Israel-Iran cooperation was extraordinary given their enmity. Israel secretly shipped US-made aircraft spare parts to Tehran so Iran could assemble a viable F-4 Phantom strike force, and described Iran as its most valuable ally — above even the United States.
• 2.Operation Scorch Sword was Iran's September 30, 1980 strike. Four F-4 Phantoms, each carrying six Mark 82 bombs, attacked at low level; two bombs hit the Tamuz 1 reactor and two others knocked out Baghdad's electricity for two days, though Iraq listed reactor damage as minor.
• 3.Israel's Mossad ran a parallel covert sabotage campaign before the airstrikes. Agents damaged the reactor core while it awaited shipment in France in April 1979, assassinated Egyptian nuclear chief Professor Yaya al-Mashad in his Paris hotel room, and poisoned two Iraqi engineers in Switzerland and France.
• 4.Operation Opera on June 7, 1981 used eight F-16As with Mark 84 2,000 lb delay-action bombs. The planes exploited a radar blind spot on the Saudi-Iraqi border; eight of sixteen bombs hit the reactor dome, killing 10 Iraqi soldiers and one French engineer, with the F-16s escaping unharmed despite anti-aircraft fire.
• 5.The reactor was ultimately finished off in the 1991 Gulf War. Though Saddam planned to rebuild with French help, the ongoing Iran-Iraq war and payment problems killed reconstruction, and US bombing in 1991 permanently destroyed the Al Tuwaitha facility.