Israel’s Last Chance to Strike Iran
By Amos Yadlin
February 29, 2012

Tel Aviv – On June 7, 1981, I was one of eight Israeli fighter pilots who bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. As we sat in the briefing room listening to the army chief of staff, Rafael Eitan, before starting our planes’ engines, I recalled a conversation a week earlier when he’d asked us to voice any concerns about our mission.

We told him about the risks we foresaw: running out of fuel, Iraqi retaliation, how a strike could harm our relationship with America, and the limited impact a successful mission might have — perhaps delaying Iraq’s nuclear quest by only a few years. Listening to today’s debates about Iran, we hear the same arguments and face the same difficulties, even though we understand it is not 1981.

Seriously, read it all because it is a clear analysis of what is happening and what may happen and why.

About the author

themiddle

3 Comments

  • My question is, when is Israel gonna have enough of that brawling woman the USA, they’re like a mother molesting my people

  • Its funny that this was written by an x-fighter pilot who was in the IDF mission that destroyed the Osirak reactor but then got the date wrong:

    An earlier version of this essay misstated the date of Israel’s 1981 air strike against the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq. It was June 7, not July 7.

  • What does he know? Noted Kapo RichRd Silverstein says that Israel cannot succeed and that its a Schanda for them to even try. We should all be Ghetto Jews like him. I mean, what does an experienced iAF fighter pilot know compared to a former schnorrer in Seattle? Jewlicious, please get serious.