U.S. intensifies covert campaign against Iran's nuclear weapons program
in Argentina on 11 May 1960.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the Mossad advised Iraqi scientists involved in Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapon program to change their professional interests. Several Iraqi scientists who did not prove amenable to such advise were killed. Mossad agents also blew up the core of an Iraqi reactor while in port in France, waiting to be shipped to Iraq. The Mossad also disrupted other nuclear weapons-related shipments from European ports to Iraq.
On 22 March 1992, Israeli agents killed Gerald Bull outside his apartment in Brussels, Belgium. Bull, a Canadian engineer, was helping the Iraqis develop a long-range gun capable of firing projectiles a long distance with great accuracy. His Extended Range, Full Bore [ERFB] GC-45 could routinely place rounds into 10 meter circles at ranges up to 30 km, extending this to 38 km with but little loss in accuracy. This was just the beginning. Bull became convinced that a gun could launch objects into space — and do so more cheaply than missiles. He designed a 45 meters, 350 mm caliber gun for testing purposes, and then started work on the “real” machine — a gun that was 150 meters long, weighed 2,100 tons, with a bore of one meter (39 inches). It was to be capable of placing a 2,000 kilogram projectile into orbit. The Iraqis told Bull they would finance his gun project only if he would also help with development of their longer ranged Scud-based missile project. Bull agreed. The Israelis were afraid that the Iraqis would use the long-range weapons Bull was designing to launch chemical or biological weapons at Israel. Several attempts to persuade Bull to cease and desist proved futile, and Mossad agents killed him. Bull, by the way, had a colorful career: His efforts on behalf of the U.S. military in the 1970s earned him a U.S. citizenship. The end of the Vietnam war saw funding for his projects dwindle, and he turned more and more to rogue countries such as Iraq, South Africa, and North Korea for financial support.
For the definitive history of Israel’s — and the U.S.— covert action against Iran during the past three decades, see Ronen Bergman’s The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist Power (New York: Free Press, 2008).
In addition to covert activities, Israel has also intervened more openly in the nuclear plans of its neighbors:
- On 7 June 1981, Israel sent eight F-16s, with six F-15s as escorts, to bomb and destroy Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor.
- On 6 September 2007, a squadron of Israeli F-15s destroyed a suspected Syrian nuclear facility in north-east Syria. The sophisticated Syrian air defense system was paralyzed by a first-of-its-kind Israeli electronic warfare attack, allowing the Israeli planes to go in, attack, and come out of Syria unnoticed and unmolested. A Shaldag air force commando team was waiting near the nuclear site to direct their laser beams at the target for the approaching jets. The team arrived on foot from a neighboring country a couple of days before and hid near the site. Exploiting the Syrian radar blindness, the team was lifted by helicopters and taken back to Israel.
