Iranian attack
Main article:
Operation Scorch Sword
Iran
attacked and damaged the site on 30 September 1980, with two
F-4 Phantoms, shortly after the outbreak of the
Iran–Iraq War.
[50] At the onset of the war,
Yehoshua Saguy, director of the Israeli
Military Intelligence Directorate, publicly urged the Iranians to bomb the reactor.
[50][51] The attack was the first on a
nuclear reactor and only the third on a nuclear facility in history. It was also the first instance of a
preventive attack on a nuclear reactor which aimed to forestall the development of a nuclear weapon.
[51][52][53]
Due to last minute Iranian concerns that the reactor had been already fueled and could release
radioactive fallout if hit, they did not attack the actual reactor dome, but the control room, research/centrifuge facilities, and the adjacent buildings. The targets were struck and the buildings were damaged, along with the plant cooling mechanisms.
[54] Two other F-4s simultaneously hit Baghdad's main power plant, knocking the city's electricity out for nearly two days. The Iraqis denied any major damage. The French and Italian technicians promptly left Iraq, and nearly withdrew from the project, but some later returned in February 1981 and began to repair the damage.
[54]
Trita Parsi, in the book
Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, writes that a senior Israeli official met with a representative of the
Ayatollah Khomeini in France one month prior to the Israeli attack.
[55] The source of the assertion is
Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli government employee. At the alleged meeting, the Iranians explained details of their 1980 attack on the site, and agreed to let Israeli planes land at an Iranian airfield in
Tabriz in the case of an emergency.
[55] While the new Iranian government was officially hostile to Israel, due to both nations having a common enemy (Iraq), and Iranian fears that the Iraqis would create an atomic bomb to use on them, they clandestinely worked with Israel to forestall such a development.