Word: tammuz
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...focus of anxiety these days is Iraq. In the 1980s President Saddam Hussein used poison gas against not only Iran but also rebellious Iraqi Kurds. Last year he tested the Tammuz-1 ballistic missile, with a range of 1,240 miles. Four weeks ago, he was caught trying to smuggle into Iraq U.S.-made electrical devices for what Western experts are convinced is a project to build an atom bomb. Then, on April 2, Saddam vowed to "let our fire eat up half of Israel if it tries to wage anything against Iraq...
...that the U.S. extend some form of defense umbrella to cover Kuwait, whose territory Iraq claims, and Saudi Arabia, whose royal family is uneasy about Saddam's undisguised ambitions to dominate the region. Carus imagines the U.S. offering protection to these and other friendly countries within range of the Tammuz-1. The model might be the U.S. guarantee of South Korea's security against North Korea, which is also believed to be developing the Bomb...
Russell became absorbed in the proliferation problem while writing TIME's 1981 cover story on the Israeli attack against Iraq's Tammuz nuclear reactor. At that time, remembers Russell, "I called down 30 or 40 books on the subject, some of them absolutely opaque." Since then, Russell has added to his knowledge by plowing through several cubic feet of nuclear literature, including an impressive stack of documents assembled by Reporter-Researcher Edward Desmond for this week's story. "The more you know about this problem," says Russell, "the less obvious the solutions...
...agency's safeguards system has seldom been openly called into question. In 1981, following the Israeli attack on Iraq's Tammuz reactor, two inspectors unconnected with the facility resigned, charging suspicious Iraqi delays in allowing agency visits at the site. But France subsequently revealed that under a secret agreement with Iraq, French technicians had kept a constant eye on the workings of the Tammuz plant. That same year, while negotiating an upgraded agreement with Pakistan over safeguards at its Canadian-built reactor, the agency, without alleging any wrongdoing, said that it was unable to certify the facility. About two years...
Technically, there is little doubt among experts that the Tammuz reactor, with modifications, could have produced bomb-grade plutonium. But the burden of proof that Iraq planned to do so still rested squarely on the Israelis...