Munaeem's Blog

  They called it a “miracle.” June 7, 1981. Israeli fighter jets soared over enemy airspace, unchallenged, and flattened Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear reactor outside Baghdad in under two minutes. No warning. No leaks. No Arab retaliation. But behind that miracle was something stranger. Something almost no one wanted to believe: Iran knew. And Iran helped. “Death to Israel,” But Pass the Missiles It sounds absurd. A Shia theocracy and a Jewish state working together? But the 1980s weren’t just violent—they were layered. That year, both Iran and Israel had one common fear: Saddam’s Iraq. And in geopolitics, shared enemies make strange bedfellows. “Israel viewed Saddam’s nuclear ambitions as an existential threat,” said Israeli historian Avner Cohen. “They couldn’t afford to wait. Iran, meanwhile, was already at war with Iraq. There was a silent convergence of interest.” That convergence led to backdoor cooperation. During the early years of the Iran-Iraq war, Israel secret...