Elliot Abrams
WSJ, June 25, 2025
“This time, Israeli action wasn’t condemned or tacitly approved but followed and built on.”
The U.S. and Israel have long been allies, but Washington hasn’t always been friendly to the Jewish state’s efforts to stop the development of nuclear weapons by its enemies in the Middle East.
When Israel struck the Iraqi nuclear program on June 7, 1981, the U.S. was as surprised as the Iraqis. The Israelis had given no notice. The Reagan administration—in which I served as an assistant secretary of state—was split over how to react. I remember the attitude Secretary of State Alexander Haig showed in private: The strike against the Osirak reactor had been a terrific show of military power. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger urged an end to all aid to Israel. President Reagan suspended delivery of F-16 jets scheduled for days later. Reagan’s heart wasn’t in it, he quickly reversed himself, and Israel got the planes.
Impossible to reverse was United Nations Security Council Resolution 487, which “strongly condemns” the “premeditated Israeli air attack.” The U.S. voted for it. Jimmy Carter’s record of allowing or joining Security Council votes against Israel had elicited a scalding December 1980 Washington Post editorial titled “Joining the Jackals” and a February 1981 Commentary article of the same title by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The U.N. ambassador who cast the U.S. vote for the condemnation of Israel over its elimination of the Iraqi reactor was Jeane Kirkpatrick, who had famously criticized Carter’s foreign policy in Commentary.
Defending her vote against Israel, Jeane sent a cable to Washington ending with these words: “I am not joining the jackals; The UN is for real.” I thought she had joined them. Jeane had been a family friend for many years, and our relationship never fully recovered. ….SOURCE