"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." — George Santayana Israel and its superpower benefactor always refuse to learn the lessons from their past acts of aggression. In
my latest article for the The Libertarian Institute (where I'm a
Research Fellow), I draw parallels between the recent US-Israeli war on
Iran and Israel's bombing of Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. If you enjoy this article, please share the link to the fully referenced version on my site.
I've included the full text below for your convenience. After that is
also an update about my family's housing situation (see the newsletter archive). Thanks to everyone who donated to support me through this challenge! ————— In a New York Times opinion
article on June 21, Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israel’s military
intelligence, attempted to defend Israel’s recent decision to start a
war with Iran, in which Israel was briefly joined by the U.S.
government under the administration of President Donald Trump. Under
the headline “Why Israel Had to Act,” Yadlin’s opening sentence states,
“Forty-four years ago this June, I sat in the cockpit on the Israeli
air force mission that destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. In one
daring operation, we eliminated Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions.” The
parallels between that event and the current war on Iran are indeed
remarkable—but the real lesson to be learned from it is precisely the opposite of the one Yadlin draws. In
addition to constituting aggression under international law, “the
supreme international crime” as defined at Nuremberg, the American and
Israeli bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities proves how policymakers in
both countries refuse to learn from the lessons of history. The
claim that Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 halted or
set back Saddam Hussein’s efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons
capability is a popular myth.In
fact, Iraq had been a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons (NPT) since it came into force in 1970, and its nuclear
program was under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA), which had reported that the program was in compliance
with Iraq’s legal obligations under the treaty. Israel,
by contrast, is known to possess nuclear weapons and “has not adhered
to” the NPT, as the United Nations Security Council observed
in Resolution 487. Unanimously adopted on June 19, 1981, that resolution
strongly condemned Israel’s act of aggression. The Security Council recognized: “…the
inalienable sovereign right of Iraq and all other States, especially
the developing countries, to establish programmes of technological and
nuclear development to develop their economy and industry for peaceful
purposes in accordance with their present and future needs and
consistent with the internationally accepted objectives of preventing
nuclear-weapons proliferation…” The
Council described Israel’s attack as “a serious threat to the entire
safeguards regime of the International Atomic Energy Agency” and called
on Israel “urgently to place its nuclear facilities under the
safeguards” of the IAEA. It
warrants emphasis that the U.S. government neither abstained from the
vote nor used its veto power to block that resolution. The most
parsimonious explanation for this is that there was no evidence Iraq had
a nuclear weapons program, and Israel’s bombing was instead likely to
push Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in that direction and otherwise
undermine the goal of nuclear non-proliferation. In
an interagency intelligence assessment titled “Implications of Israeli
Attack on Iraq,” dated July 1, 1981, the U.S. intelligence community
provided its assessment, stating that “The
US-Israeli relationship once more is a central issue in regional
politics, and new strains have been added to US-Arab relations.
Washington’s ability to promote Arab cooperation against a Soviet threat
or to bring the Arabs and Israelis to the bargaining table has been
struck a hard blow. Arab leaders far from the frontlines in the Levant
have been shown that their military and economic facilities are not
beyond the reach of Israel’s striking power. Rather than drawing them
into a negotiating process, Israel’s demonstrated prowess will only
speed the arms race.” Further,
Saddam Hussein responded to the attack “by suggesting that world
governments provide the Arabs with a nuclear deterrent to Israel’s
formidable nuclear capabilities. His message to other Arabs is that they
can have no security as long as Israel alone commands the nuclear
threat.” The
attack also caused “damage to the Non-Proliferation Treat (NPT) and to
the IAEA safeguards system,” with Israel having justified its attack “on
the grounds that the IAEA safeguards system is a sham.” The assessment
was that this “probably will have a detrimental impact.” Iraq
had received “the support of most IAEA members because of general
acceptance that international and bilateral safeguards over Iraq’s
program were sufficient to guard against the diversion of fissile
material for a nuclear device.” In
sum, the attack did not halt an Iraqi nuclear weapons program but was
the impetus that drove Saddam Hussein to subsequently attempt to acquire
a nuclear deterrent to Israel’s aggression. Beyond that, the
destruction of the Osirak reactor threatened to undermine the IAEA
safeguards framework, thus heightening rather than mitigating the threat
of nuclear weapons proliferation. In
2003, the United States waged an illegal war of aggression against
Iraq on a pretext of lies to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein—who
had waged war against Iran throughout most of the 1980s with American support. In
2007, the U.S. intelligence community produced a National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) about Iran’s nuclear program, which has been similarly
operating under the IAEA safeguards regime. The assessment was that Iran
had been working toward a weapons capability until the United States
took out Iran’s enemy Saddam Hussein in 2003, at which time the program
was halted and never resumed. That
remained the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment with another
NIE issued in 2011. That same year, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan said,
“An aerial attack against Iran’s nuclear reactors would be foolish.” He
warned that it could start a regional war with unforeseeable
consequences. Notwithstanding
the fearmongering proclamations from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu that Iran was working to build nukes, documents leaked to Al
Jazeera in 2015 revealed that the assessment of Israel’s infamous
intelligence organization the Mossad was that Iran was not pursuing a
nuclear weapon. In
January of this year, the outgoing director of the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), William Burns, reiterated the U.S.
intelligence community’s longstanding assessment in an interview with
NPR, saying that there was no sign that Iran had decided to move forward
with nuclear weapons development. On
March 25, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Tulsi
Gabbard, testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that
the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not
building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has not
authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” The
decision by the American and Israeli governments to bomb Iran’s nuclear
facilities illustrates how the lessons of the past remain unlearned.
Rather than preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons, this action
will only cause Iran to reconsider the need for a nuclear deterrent
against American and Israeli aggression and otherwise undermine the
international nuclear non-proliferation safeguards framework. As observed by the Libertarian Institute’s Bill Buppert, host of Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast,
one option for Iran is to withdraw from the NPT—their parliament
has just voted to suspend cooperation with the IAEA—and state that it
will rejoin the treaty and accept the IAEA safeguards framework once
Israel does the same. Iran
would also be acting within reason to insist that the United States
formally acknowledge its right to enrich uranium for nuclear energy as a
condition for rejoining the nuclear non-proliferation treaty,
especially since the whole current disaster is a consequence of the U.S.
government persistent rejection of Iran’s recognized rights under the
NPT. If
Washington would like to deter threats to peace by getting other
countries to comply with international law, it should start by ending
its own criminal violence—including the Trump administration’s continued
support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. ————— Update on My Family's SituationI
would like to thank my readers for the outpouring of support in
response to my previous email about our landlord kicking my family out
of our rental home in retaliation for requesting an acknowledgment of
the problem of radon gas levels exceeding that at which the EPA
recommends immediate mitigation. To
update you on our situation, apart from writing this article for The
Libertarian Institute, I have been working full time on resolving our
housing crisis. We immediately chose a trusted agent and started looking
at homes, and after narrowing the list down to the best-looking
options, we went to view them—only to be horrified by how misleading the
listings were. Homes
that looked quite nice in the photos turned out to be absolute dumps in
reality. The air in the basement of one was so toxic that we couldn't
stay to look around for more than a minute. I overlooked finding and
checking out the furnace in my rush to escape. Just
as we were feeling crushed and hopeless about exhausting our list of
possibilities, an appealing property appeared on the market. I acted
fast, and we were the first to get a viewing. Unlike every other
listing, this one was as pictured, would meet all our needs, fulfill
some of our most important wants, and was in our price range. I think we
were the very first to put in an offer, and it was miraculously
accepted! So,
while it isn't a done deal yet, and we have much work to do before I'll
be able to get back to my journalism business full time, we feel
encouraged by the likelihood that soon—for our first time ever—we will
be able to move into a home of our own, which will enable me to be more
productive than ever once we get resettled. In Truth & Liberty, Jeremy | 
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