RAID ON THE SUN Inside Israel's Secret Campaign That Denied Saddam the Bomb

The First Inside Account of The Landmark Air Raid That Eliminated Iraq's Nuclear Threat. From the earliest days of his dictatorship, Saddam Hussein had vowed to destroy Israel. So, when France sold Iraq a top-of-the-line nuclear reactor in 1975, the Israelis were justifiably concerned-especially when they discovered that Iraqi scientists had already formulated a secret program to extract weapons-grade plutonium from the reactor, a critical first step in creating an atomic bomb. The reactor formed the heart of a huge nuclear plant situated twelve miles from Baghdad, 1,100 kilometers from Tel Aviv. By 1981, the reactor was on the verge of becoming "hot," and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin knew he would have to confront its deadly potential. He turned to the Israeli Air Force to secretly plan a surgical strike on the reactor-a never-before-contemplated mission that would prove to be one of the most daring-and successful-military operations in recent history.Claire, Rodger is the author of 'RAID ON THE SUN Inside Israel's Secret Campaign That Denied Saddam the Bomb', published 2005 under ISBN 9780767914253 and ISBN 0767914252.