45 Years Ago, Iran Waged Its Own Preemptive Strike on Nuclear Facilities - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

45 years ago, Iran waged its own preemptive strike on nuclear facilities

On Sept. 30, 1980, Tehran ordered a surprise airstrike of its own on the same Iraqi nuclear facilities that Israel would destroy a little more than eight months later.

45 years ago, Iran waged its own preemptive strike on nuclear facilities - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

In ordering a preemptive strike aimed at significantly setting back Iran’s nuclear program, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was following in the footsteps of two of his predecessors. Menachem Begin ordered an attack in 1981 that destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor. And a quarter-century later, Ehud Olmert gave the green light in 2007 to destroy a nuclear reactor in its last stages of construction in northeastern Syria. But Israel was not in fact …