Raid on the Sun by Rodger W. Claire

Author:Rodger W. Claire
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780767918084
Publisher: Broadway Books
Published: 2004-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

Ever since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had landed in Tehran in February 1979, Saddam had kept a jaundiced eye to his east. Socialist and secular, Hussein distrusted the bearded, fanatically religious Shi’ite Muslims who ruled Iran and made up the majority of the population in the southern half of his own country.

“This place hardly seems like part of Iraq,” Khidhir Hamza recalled Hussein grousing one day as a mob of Iraqi Shi’ite demonstrators chanted Khomeini’s name in the streets. “They don’t even speak Arabic.”

On September 17, 1980, Hussein, convinced that Iran was plotting his assassination with Iraqi Shi’ites, canceled a 1975 peace treaty with Iran and invaded the disputed Shatt al Arab estuary in the north of the Persian Gulf that formed the border between the two countries. Hostilities quickly escalated, and by September 22 the nations were in a state of all-out war, conducting air and large-scale ground assaults.

The evening of September 30, Ivry was still at work at Tel Aviv headquarters when he was informed that at least two Iranian F-4 Phantoms had just bombed al-Tuwaitha. Intelligence was still trying to get details, but initial reports indicated that the bombs had missed the reactor and damaged some laboratories and support facilities. The most serious blow was to Osirak’s water-cooling system and plumbing, which took a direct hit. In the end the damage was minor. Begin was furious, cursing the incompetent Iranians who could not “finish the job.” Ivry was also disturbed, but for a more practical reason. In response, Iraq put all its antiaircraft defenses on “alert time,” meaning the readiness time of al-Tuwaitha’s AAA batteries was significantly heightened. And, as an extra protection, Iraq launched a ring of tethered balloons twenty feet high around the Nuclear Center’s walls to interfere with low-flying bombers. Ivry’s already impossible attack plan was, if possible, now even more difficult. What could go wrong next? he wondered.

Fearing more strikes, the following week France and Italy ordered the two hundred techs and engineers employed at al-Tuwaitha to evacuate immediately. Mossad reported that the workers, who lived with their families at a separate compound away from the center, were packing up and heading for home. By November, Mossad was reporting that work at Osirak had come to a complete halt. Khidhir Hamza and his administrative colleagues continued to come to work at al-Tuwaitha, but the constant activity around the reactor, the buzz and comings and goings of the construction crews and the nuclear techs, had all but disappeared.

With the immediate threat of enriched uranium production over—at least for the time being—Begin, under pressure by Saguy and Hofi, called off the mission.

Raz and the F-16 pilots continued training, however. None of the pilots knew what the mission was, let alone Begin’s decision to postpone it. But details were beginning to be revealed. For the first time, Raz informed the pilots of the kind of ordnance they would be carrying: two 2,000-pound dumb bombs. Because of the sensitive placement of the target, he told them, carpet-bombing was out.

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