Bombing Iran: Osirik the Model?

Who hasn't heard by now of how far-sighted Israel was to bomb Iraq's Osirik nuclear reactor in 1981? That would be the attack that even the Reagan administration joined the other countries of the United Nations in formally condemning.

But our neocons and assorted war lovers know better now, right? The Osirik bombing shows what a cakewalk attacking Iran would be, doesn't it?

Well, maybe not. From The Osirak Fallacy by Richard K. Betts The National Interest Spring 2006 issue (3/17/2006):

As pressure mounts to reckon with Iran's nascent nuclear program, some strategists are arguing that the United States has run out of alternatives to military action. Many of them are pointing to Israel's 1981 air attack on Iraq's Osirak reactor as a model for action - a bold stroke flying in the face of all international opinion that nipped Iraq's nuclear capability in the bud or at least postponed a day of reckoning. This reflects widespread misunderstanding of what that strike accomplished. Contrary to prevalent mythology, there is no evidence that Israel's destruction of Osirak delayed Iraq's nuclear weapons program. The attack may actually have accelerated it.

Osirak is not applicable to Iran anyway, since an air strike on a single reactor is not a model for the comprehensive campaign that would be required to deal, even unsatisfactorily, with the extensive, concealed and protected program that Iran is probably developing. ...

Obliterating the Osirak reactor did not put the brakes on Saddam's nuclear weapons program because the reactor that was destroyed could not have produced a bomb on its own and was not even necessary for producing a bomb. Nine years after Israel's attack on Osirak, Iraq was very close to producing a nuclear weapon. Had Saddam been smart enough in 1990 to wait a year longer, he might have been able to have a nuclear weapon in his holster when he invaded Kuwait. (my emphasis)

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