Five days into 2010, we already have a contender for Chutzpa of the Year; most fair-minded analysts judge Menachem Begin’s destruction of the Osirak reactor in 1981 to have saved the world from the specter of a nuclear Saddam Hussein:
A senior Iraqi lawmaker this week said his government is planning to demand, via the United Nations, that Israel pay compensation for destroying the country’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.
Iraqi MP Mohammed Naji Mohammed told the local Baghdad newspaper al-Sabah that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the Iraqi Foreign Ministry have already “turned to the UN and the Security Council demanding that Israel pay us reparations for damage caused to the reactor.”
Apparently, the demanded compensation will also try to take into consideration the lost revenue a completed reactor would have brought in.
Built with French assistance, the Osirak reactor was built by Saddam Hussein as part of his effort to obtain nuclear weapons. In a surprise attack, an Israel Air Force squadron crippled the reactor, ending Hussein’s nuclear ambitions.
Many Western powers and not a few Arab states quietly approved of the Israeli action, though the UN passed a harsh resolution condemning the Jewish state and clearing the way for Iraq to claim compensation.