On June 7, 1981, the Israeli Air Force conducted a surprise airstrike on an unfinished nuclear reactor in Iraq. The attack, known as Operation Opera, destroyed the Osirak nuclear research reactor at Tuwaitha, which was located 11 miles southeast of Baghdad. The Israeli attack exposed and set back the Brazilian, Iraqi, (and West German) scheme, while the implication of U.S. support for Israel’s action intimated oblique support for Buenos Aires. (Thornton, Richard C. The Reagan Revolution II: Rebuilding the Western Alliance, 2nd Edition, Trafford Publishing, 2005, p. 21)
I don’t understand why Thornton said “US support for Israel’s action intimated oblique support for Buenos Aires.” What was his logic? Please enlighten me.
I’ve read a little bit of the paper and for others wondering about this, the reading seems to deal with the Falklands and the Argentine/Brazilian efforts to develop a nuclear capability. AFAICT, since Brazil had been backing the Iraqi nuclear program (I think this was under Saddam) for their own reasons, US support for Israel also (obliquely) provided tacit support of the Argentine effort in that direction to the detriment of Brazil.
But most of the surrounding discussion is on the Falklands, so not sure what point you might be making.
[quote=“The_Stainless_Steel_Rat, post:2, topic:996090”]
But most of the surrounding discussion is on the Falklands, so not sure what point you might be making
[/quoteI’m just wondering why the U.S. supported Israel’s bombing of Brazilian nuclear reactors at the time implying that the U.S. supported Argentina? Supporting Argentina for what?
OK, this is my last note on a topic I’m mildly interested in. Anyone else can chime in.
According to referenced paper, Brazil and Argentina were both competing to develop a nuclear program. Brazil, along with W. Germany, had offered support to the Iraqi project, in hopes of benefiting their own programs. However, Israel put paid to that with their bombing of the site, which the United States, under President Reagan, fully supported. This set back the Brazilian program, and thus, probably without planning too, benefited Argentina’s race to nuclear development (obiquely: not in a direct way; indirectly). Argentina gained what they thought was an advantage by the US, in attacking an Iraqi reactor program, also set back their largest rival in the Continent (Brazil), without meaning too.
And that’s as far as I will go. Read the paper and draw your own conclusions.
Color me confused as well as to how this supported Argentina, the texts reads to me an implication that that both Argentina and Brazil were working on secret nuclear weapons programs. For the record the reactor was French, not Brazilian.
For some politics making for strange bedfellows, the Israeli strike that destroyed the reactor in 1981 wasn’t the only attack on it, Iran and Israeli had plans to cooperatively and jointly destroy the reactor prior to the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and Israel aided the now Islamic Republic of Iran to bomb the facility in 1980.
is an odd phrase. “intimated” suggests deliberate intention. One would more likely assume that, whilst there may have been cognition that it would create an imbalance, any such concomitant results were not considered important enough to worry about.
In general the nuclear powers take a very dim view of any other nation acquiring nukes. Reducing the likelihood of one nation acquiring them is most certainly not to be read as supporting a rival nation gaining them, nor tacit support for a nation’s military aspirations. The politics of nuclear weapons tends to gazump all other political realities.
You’ve got a point there, so I don’t understand why Thornton said the US support for what Israel did implied indirect support for Argentina. Don’t you guys think it was a far-fetched idea or interpretation? Sorry to say that.
Argentina’s nuclear weapons program. Which is an extraordinary claim, for which I’d need to see extraordinary evidence of before I’d even consider it to be in the realms of possibility.
(Speaking with no background at all on the topic, as if that was any sort of impediment …) another possible aspect is that if the US supported Israel’s bombardment of an Iraqi nuclear program, as leader of the Free World it was signalling strongly who it thought the goodies and baddies were.
If Brazil was in any way a partner / associate / stakeholder in the Iraqi program it immediately had the problem of being perceived by (I assume) one of its biggest trading partners as having poor judgement, being a possible pariah and possibly open to being punished in a wide range of ways. In contrast all Argentina had to do was to say ‘wasn’t us’ and look pointedly towards Brazil.
The U.S. government was taken completely by surprise by Operation Opera (the bombing of the Tammuz reactor), and furthermore, as Iraq was a U.S. client state at the time, the U.S. was furious about the attack, leading to one of the most serious crises ever between the two countries. As a result of the attack, Israel and the United States halted all intelligence sharing activity until the Gulf War in 1991.
If as quoted he mentions “the implication of U.S. support”, then that may not be evidence of actual backing of the operation. More along the line of the widespread misperception that Israel “always” acts with the support or approval of the US ( if not even as a direct proxy) on everything.
Well, that is not so. Not always and not on everything.
Also, it’s a bit of a reach, isn’t it? Israel bombed a site, where Brazil was one of many participants in the project, which results in indirectly benefitting Argentinian interest. But it takes some imagination to infer from that a sign of US support for Argentina.
The lead-up to the Junta’s self-inflicted Falklands disaster was filled with serious misreadings of the US political/security stance.
Still doesn’t make any sense. Who’s the enemy of my enemy the US and Argentina have in common that make them friends regarding Argentina getting its hands on nuclear weapons? Brazil? I suppose it’s possible that the Argentinian junta was delusional enough to think that, but again it’s so extraordinarily delusional that I’d need to see evidence to back up such a supposition. The reality is both Argentina and Brazil working on nuclear weapons programs (and Iraq as well) were violations of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which is not something the US has ever supported any nation doing.