Suchergebnisse

Thirty years after the Israeli attack on the Osirak reactor in June 1981 the consequences for Iraq's nuclear weapons program remain hotly debated. A new history of this program, based on several new Iraqi sources, yields a net assessment of the impact of the Israeli attack that differs from prevailing accounts. The attack had mixed effects: it triggered a covert nuclear weapons program that did not previously exist, while necessitating a more difficult and time-consuming technical route to developing nuclear weapons. Notwithstanding gross inefficiencies in the ensuing program, a decade later Iraq stood on the threshold of a nuclear weapons capability. This case suggests that preventive attacks can increase the long-term proliferation risk posed by the targeted state.

In the early stages of the Second World War, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and key regime figures were tempted to enter the war on the Axis side. This temptation was a serious concern for British wartime strategy. This article studies the British military operations prepared to confront the possibility of Spain entering the war between 1940 and 1944. These operations aimed to protect Gibraltar, maintain access through the Strait of Gibraltar, and reduce the Axis threat to maritime communications in the eastern Atlantic. The article sheds new light on three issues: the balance of advantages and disadvantages that the plans entailed and the preparations to carry them out; the simultaneity of planned operations to cooperate with the Spanish Armed Forces and ones to confront them; and the importance of Spanish non-belligerence as a differential factor with respect to other neutral European countries.