After Israel bombed Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, Saddam Hussein redoubled his efforts to get a bomb.

ECONOMIST: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has had his last chance

In 1981 it bombed Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor, and in 2007 it bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor under construction.

ECONOMIST: Nuclear proliferation

Israel had destroyed the Osirak reactor just outside Baghdad in June 1981.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Unable to verify, unworthy of trust

In nineteen eighty-one, Iraq was on the point of acquiring nuclear power. 10.17.01 Narrator The Osirak reactor was an experimental plutonium plant.

BBC

Israel attacked and destroyed the Osirak nuclear facility in Iraq in 1981 and attacked a target in Syria that the United States believes was a nuclear reactor.

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Iraq's official nuclear program was dealt a setback in 1981, when a reactor it was building in Osirak was destroyed in a raid by the Israeli air force.

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It all tends to add up to a very major military effort -- not the simple "one and done" raid Israel carried out on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.

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In 1981, Israel attacked and destroyed the Osirak nuclear facility in Iraq, and in September it attacked a target in Syria that the United States believes was a nuclear reactor.

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But even if they achieved temporary success, it would be just that, because the Iranian program is very different from the Iraqi Osirak reactor that the Israelis nailed so precisely in 1981.

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