The 1981 attack by Israel on Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor complex has become an archetype of "counterproliferation," the use of force to prevent or reverse the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.The Osiraq attack is reviewed in a recent Masters thesis based on interviews with Israeli officials and a study of some more or less unfamiliar ource documents.
The author concludes generally that the attack did indeed slow down the Iraqi WMD program, but that it had other less favorable unintended consequences, had no deterrent effect, and is unlikely to serve as a useful model for similar actions in the future.