Raid on the Sun

by Rodger W. Claire

  The infamous OPEC oil embargo of 1973–74 had just ended, sending gasoline prices to unimaginably high levels and shifting a trillion dollars of global wealth suddenly eastward. France was already dependent on Iraq for 20 percent of its oil. As part of the deal, Hussein offered France 70 million barrels of oil a year at present market prices for ten years. In addition, Iraq would purchase billions of dollars of French military hardware, including tanks, helicopters, antiaircraft missiles, radar, and one hundred Mirage F-1 fighters. Chirac practically trembled when Saddam threw in gratis contracts to purchase 100,000 Peugeots and Renaults in two blocks of 50,000 each. And as a final sweetener, the French would develop a planned billion-dollar lake resort outside Habbaniyah, the location of a large air force base west of Baghdad. In return, Saddam got his nuclear reactor.

  In September 1975, Hussein entered Paris like a conquering pasha out of 1001 Arabian Nights. Flanked by a troupe of barrel-chested bodyguards, he led a parade of festively clad Iraqi fishermen bearing flaming braziers of roasted Tigris River fish down the banks of the Seine. As news cameras rolled, Jacques Chirac and various government ministers of President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s administration gathered around the Middle Eastern cooking demonstration, tittering and smiling gamely as they sampled bites of fish served on aluminum foil, Baghdad-style.

  “C’est bon,” they declared, fastidiously wiping fish oil from their fingers with paper napkins.

  The fishermen, their hair tousled and looking as though they had slept in their clothes on the plane ride over, moved self-consciously between the fish and the French, exchanging anxious glances lest someone make a mistake. Faux pas in the service of the Great Uncle could often be fatal. But nothing was amiss this beautiful fall night along the glittering bank of the Rive Gauche, while above it all Saddam looked on, beaming like the proud father.

  Those of the educated class back in Baghdad would cringe in mortification at the television news images of their leader, like some cartoon Ahab, trying to impress the gourmand diplomats with fish in foil. But smiling in his trademark black fedora, Saddam was enjoying his own private joke. As wags later quipped, he knew Chirac and his entire cabinet would happily have eaten old tires from the Tigris if it would have bought them hundreds of millions of dollars in cheap oil.

  Hussein’s trip was the reciprocal visit to seal the deal struck in Baghdad. Hamza and his colleagues had picked out the perfect reactor for the Nuclear Research Center: the Osiris reactor, a huge, aluminum-domed, top-of-the-line research reactor, named for the Egyptian god of the underworld. France would oversee the production, shipping, and construction of the reactor and train Iraqi technicians in its operation. Ironically, as it turned out, many of the French companies contracted to do the work were the exact same government-approved outfits that had secretly built Israel’s Dimona reactor a decade earlier. France also expanded the original nuclear trade treaty to include yet another, smaller research reactor, “Isis,” named after Osiris’s wife, which would be erected alongside Osiris. Finally, in a rare and controversial decision, France agreed to supply Iraq with seventy-two kilograms of highly regulated enriched, or “weapons-grade,” uranium for start-up fuel. This last agreement quickly caught the attention of the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency, which kept a keen watch on any movement of U235 because it could be readily converted to use in an atomic bomb.

  The reactor “listed” for $150 million. The price tag for Saddam was $300 million.

  “We were happy to pay,” Hamza would recall later. “After all, who else was going to sell us a nuclear reactor?”

  Euphoric, Hussein rechristened the nuclear reactor Osiraq (incorporating the name Iraq), or “Osirak” in English, and the Nuclear Research Center “Tammuz,” after the Arabic word for July, in honor of the month of the Ba’th revolution. Tammuz would form the centerpiece of Iraq’s new nuclear energy industry centered at al-Tuwaitha, “the truncheon,” in the brown flatlands of the Tigris.

  The two Israeli generals, David Ivry and Raful Eitan, stared in silence at the row of grainy eight-by-tens, dealt like a poker hand on the table before them—aces and eights, a dead man’s hand. Smuggled out of Iraq at great personal risk by Mossad agents, the photographs showed a veritable Nuclear Oz populated by steel-and-glass laboratories, a nuclear fuel reprocessing unit, modern administration buildings, a square mile of electrified fences, and, rising Venuslike in the center of it all, the huge, gleaming aluminum dome of the Osirak nuclear reactor.

  Taken from ground level at al-Tuwaitha, the blowups were incontrovertible proof that Saddam Hussein’s blueprint for an ambitious, modern nuclear program was proceeding at an alarming pace. Israel had known about the center, of course: Mossad had alerted Yitzhak Rabin to the possibility back at the time French prime minister Jacques Chirac first visited Baghdad in 1974 to discuss the trade treaty between France and Iraq. At the time, Israeli prime minister Rabin had called for Jewish-American organizations to pressure the Ford administration to help kill the deal. Defense Minister Shimon Peres had personally appealed to his close friend Chirac to cancel the contract. But the French could not bring themselves to abandon such a fat cash cow. Chirac reassured Peres that perhaps he could do “something” later, after the French national elections. In the end, Rabin decided to “wait and see.”

  Now, three years later, in May 1977, it was clear Hussein had much bigger plans than a simple research reactor. Israeli intelligence estimated Osirak would go “hot,” that is, be fueled with radioactive uranium, within three years, four tops. Israeli scientists figured the reactor would produce enough enriched weapons-grade uranium to build two or three Hiroshima-size bombs a year. The contingency people calculated that one “small” atomic bomb dropped on Tel Aviv would kill at least one hundred thousand people.

  Begin had just defeated Israel’s liberal Labor Party to become the conservative Likud Party’s first prime minister, and he quickly made dealing with al-Tuwaitha one of his government’s first pieces of business. Thus, this secret Sunday morning meeting at the prime minister’s heavily guarded offices in Jerusalem. Seated before him, along with Eitan and Ivry, was Begin’s new “shadow security cabinet”: Minister of Defense Ezer Weizman, large and bilious, one of Israel’s founding fathers; Deputy Prime Minister Yigael Yadin; Military Intelligence chief Yehoshua Saguy, heavy eyebrows and brush mustache framed by a round face with perennial raccoon circles under his eyes; Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, a no-nonsense military general; Agriculture Minister and legendary slash-and-burn tank commander Ariel “Arik” Sharon; and, finally, the chief of Mossad (officially the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations), Yitzhak Hofi, tough, compact, and stubborn as the craggy Jerusalem pine.

  It was obvious to everyone present that diplomacy had failed badly with Hussein. The United States and Britain had expressed official diplomatic “concern” about the sale of a nuclear reactor to Iraq, but the U.S. was not keen on a showdown with the country. Hussein had begun to distance himself from the Soviet Union and encourage trade with the West. Iraq was importing more domestic goods from America than from the Soviets. Already, trade had reached some $200 million. Within two years, that figure would triple and, it was estimated, there would be two hundred American businessmen stationed in Baghdad. Having been blackmailed with an oil embargo, Europe was in no hurry to provoke the Arabs again. Certainly, France, which was making billions of francs on its nuclear trade with Iraq, had no intention of stopping work.

  Israel would have to deal with Iraq alone. But what were its options? Iraq was one of the richest nations in the Persian Gulf, with a GNP of $18 billion—ten times the size of Israel. It had powerful allies, including the Soviet Union and the Arab Rejectionist Front, an organization of Arab nations, including Syria and Yemen, dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Iraq’s army boasted 190,000 men, 12 divisions, 2,200 tanks, and 450 attack planes.

  Surprisingly, the two intelligence chiefs, the IDF’s General Saguy and Mossad’s Hofi, as well as B
egin’s own Deputy Prime Minister Yadin, vehemently opposed any type of military raid. Such violation of a nation’s sovereignty was tantamount to an act of war, they argued. It was too risky and there were too many unknowns. And besides, who knew for sure whether Iraq was truly capable of building an atomic bomb? It required a sophisticated technological and educated infrastructure, which Iraq clearly did not possess. Eitan and Ivry, joined by Sharon, countered that Israel could not afford to wait and find out.

  Hofi’s stubborn, mulish eyes clamped on Rabin.

  “You run a much greater danger of alienating America than of destroying Iraq’s reactor,” he announced.

  “What help will they be if he creates an atomic bomb?” Ivry countered.

  Voices grew louder around the room. Though nothing compared to the Israeli Knesset, where parliamentarians routinely screamed at one another at the top of their lungs, hurling insults and threats, the meeting was nonetheless becoming tense and uncomfortable. These men had known and fought beside one another, literally in the trenches, for decades. But the critical nature of the “Arab nuclear question” and how to deal with it had profound and imponderable ramifications—and it cut to the bone of national survival.

  The present government, it became immediately clear, was dangerously divided over how to handle Iraq’s nuclear threat. Indeed, Hofi found himself ruling a house divided at Mossad. Most of his department heads supported a raid. Since when, they observed, did Israel care what Europe thought of its policies? Where were their “friends” in ’67 and ’73? David Biran, the head of Tsomet, Mossad’s recruiting department, was already moving ahead with preparations for some kind of intervention by force at Osirak and had ordered the Paris station to find an Iraqi candidate working at France’s Sarcelles nuclear facility, which was overseeing the construction of the reactor, whom they could recruit . . . or compromise.

  Shocking the cabinet, the usually hawkish, shoot-from-the-hip prime minister, his shiny bald head and steely black eyes flashing around the table, announced he would not approve any military operation unless he had 100 percent backing of the entire cabinet. Rabin’s election in 1974 had been partially the result of the continuing ideological temblors shaking Israeli politics ever since the trauma of the ’73 Yom Kippur War, when Israel, after fatally misreading Arab troop movements along its borders, found itself in danger of being overrun by Syrian forces during the first three days of fighting. Begin, the hard-line general and infamous Irgun head, had been elected to ensure that such a disaster never happened again. But the kind of raid the cabinet was now contemplating, the first ever on a nuclear reactor, was far too risky, the stakes way too high to go it alone. Begin would need all the political cover he could get.

  He ordered the two military chiefs, Eitan and Ivry, to begin drawing up contingency plans. In the meantime, Mossad and military intelligence would ascertain when the reactor would go “hot.”

  But Ivry still worried.

  “If we are to wait,” he pronounced, cocking an eyebrow at Hofi, “we have to slow things down a bit.”

  Begin agreed. They couldn’t just sit around and do nothing.

  Though he opposed striking al-Tuwaitha, the crotchety Mossad chief was nothing if not a loyal soldier. Hofi smiled thinly at the group.

  “Well, we may have one or two ideas.”

  SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 1981

  1455 HOURS: T-MINUS 1:06

  ETZION AFB, ISRAELI-OCCUPIED SINAI PENINSULA

  The thunderous roar of eight Pratt & Whitney jet engines firing up inside the cavernous underground hangar vibrated all the way through the crew chief’s safety earmuffs, seeming to make the foam-rubber-lined earphones jump right off his skull. The F-16 maintenance chief swore he could actually see the sound waves rolling out of the exhaust burners. He glanced up at the cockpit of No. 106. Through the glass canopy the pilot gave him a thumbs-up. He was ready to taxi up the ramp to the runway for takeoff position. Where the pilots were going, the warrant officer had no idea. This was a “black operation,” conducted in complete secrecy. The entire base had been locked down like a prison since Friday. All flight and support crews had been warned by security officers not to talk to anyone and to ask no questions.

  Now it was T-minus 1:05 and counting. Takeoff was 1600. The maintenance chief could feel a knot in his stomach. Something big was happening. He ducked under the wing on the three o’clock side for final preflight inspection. He had already rechecked the plane’s parachute fittings and affirmed that all the safety pins were pulled so the ejection seats were armed and ready. The rocket beneath each seat would shoot the pilots several hundred feet into the air above the aircraft in case of bailout. All the pilot had to do was pull the ejection handle. Now, the crew chief looked for hydraulic leaks, fuel leaks, damage to the fuselage. He checked the tire pressure and that the two-thousand-pound MK-84 gravity bomb was secured in its release clip and that the safety pin was still in place. He scanned the external fuel tank, hung between the bomb and the fuselage. The tank held an extra 370 gallons of fuel. He had not seen many external fuel pods. Nearly all IAF combat missions and patrols, even during hostilities, occurred within or just across Israel’s borders. Such a long-distance strike was rare—maybe a first. The warrant officer and the other crewmen could not help but guess where the pilots were going. Most thought deep inside Syria—or maybe Libya. He thought it would be east.

  He did a final visual of the Sidewinder missile mounted on the wingtip, looking for loose clips or unattached electrical wires that could cause the air-to-air heatseekers to malfunction—and perhaps lead to the death of the pilot. He repeated his inspection under the opposite wing, then gave an “all clear” sign to the pilot before ducking under the landing gear to pull out both chocks wedged beneath the tires. Unfettered, and with another deafening whine from its engine, the 106 Fighting Falcon inched forward, gradually gaining speed as it climbed the ramp out of its hidden nest to the tarmac outside. The crew chief walked beside the plane, blinking back the blinding rays of the summer sun, staring at the eastern sky.

  CHAPTER 2

  MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

  First say to yourself what you would be,

  then do what you have to do.

  —EPICTETUS

  The drivers of the two cargo trucks bounding across the French countryside carrying the Mirage jet engines from the Dassault-Breguet plant for delivery to a warehouse in the tiny Mediterranean port town of La Seyne-sur-Mer barely noticed when a third nearly identical container truck pulled onto the highway behind them and joined their caravan along the route to the French Riviera. The convoy stopped outside the main gate of a heavily fenced compound while the guardhouse security officer checked the paperwork of the first driver.

  It was April 6, 1979, and three guards were on duty this evening, one of them a new employee with impeccable credentials who had been hired just days before. They all worked for a private French security company contracted to protect the compound. The guards, more concerned with shipments going out than coming in, waved the trucks through, including the third truck, which was ferrying a large metal shipping container. This truck turned off from the other two and pulled up outside a huge storage bay. The bay gate had been unlocked earlier by the new guard. Climbing down from the cab, the driver momentarily surveyed the darkened compound, then moved to the back of the truck and unlatched the doors to the metal container. Six men, all dressed in street clothes, quickly dropped to the ground. Five of the men were neviots (Mossad break-in specialists trained in sabotage and bugging), the sixth an Israeli nuclear engineer.

  Inside the bay, crated and marked for shipment to Iraq, were the finished cores to the Osirak nuclear reactor, arguably the most critical components of the reactor. Crated nearby were more reactor parts and a huge metal block designed to house atomic batteries. Alongside the Iraqi shipment was a device for loading nuclear fuel into a reactor, scheduled for shipment to a Belgian company, and a specially designed lid to a container to store radioactive materials
, ordered by a West German firm.

  As the Israeli nuclear engineer quickly pointed out the most damaging places in the cores to plant five plastic explosive charges, outside the compound gates a crowd had begun to form. Across the street from the guards, a strikingly attractive woman had been suddenly brushed by a dark late-model car as she crossed the street. Whether injured or not, she was decidedly not dumbstruck and immediately began shouting obscenities in French at the shaken driver, drawing the attention of passersby and the security guards, who left the gate and jogged toward the woman to see if she was hurt. As the guards crossed the street, a deafening explosion behind them shook the village like an earthquake, blowing out windows blocks away from the plant and engulfing the shipping warehouse in flames. By the time the gendarmes and fire trucks had raced to the compound, both the car and the woman had disappeared into the night.

  The twisted nuclear-fuel loader destined for Belgium and the West German container lid were unsalvageable. Both of the Iraq reactor cores showed hairline fractures. Designed to withstand intense heat and radiation, the cores had been manufactured to exacting specifications. The slightest fissure could lead to a meltdown. French investigators estimated the damage at $23 million, U.S.

  The French were curiously unapologetic. Dr. Khidhir Hamza and the Nuclear Research Center were informed that the cores would take two years to replace. They could be put online, but they would crack eventually. If Iraq wanted them “as is,” it would have to sign a waiver releasing the French from all responsibility. Ultimately, Iraq’s atomic energy officials, knowing the Great Uncle’s obsession with deadlines, decided to accept the cores the way they were, cracks and all. The French agreed to perform what repairs they could.

  French officials were closemouthed about the incident, and a police blackout was imposed on the media. Meanwhile, the French began a “below the shadow line” investigation. Immediately suspect were Libya, the PLO, the Russians, the Israeli Mossad, and even their own French secret service, which had been known to have grave misgivings about the Paris-Baghdad treaty from the beginning. After the blast, an anonymous caller from an environmental organization identified as Le Groupe des Ecologistes Français, a group no one had ever heard of before—and would never hear of again—telephoned the French daily Le Monde, claiming it had bombed the plant at La Seyne-sur-Mer “to neutralize machines that threaten the future of human life.” A week earlier the near-meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, had sparked antinuke demonstrations around the world. The caller referred to this accident, saying the group had turned to action “to safeguard the French people and the human race from such nuclear horrors.”