Norman Dombey

On 7 June 1981, Israeli aircraft bombed and completely destroyed the Iraqi nuclear research reactor Osirak. The French government, which had sold the reactor to Iraq, protested. Bertrand Barre, its nuclear attaché in Washington, explained that the reactor posed no proliferation risk and that ‘it was intended to be used . . . for testing or converting materials into isotopes, which have specialised uses in medicine.’ The UN Security Council strongly condemned the attack as being ‘in clear violation of the charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct’. The United States, however, objected to the imposing of any sanctions on Israel.

The prime minister made it clear that except where Her Majesty’s Government may decide that supreme national interests are at stake, these British forces will be used for the purposes of international defence of the Western Alliance in all circumstances.

Harold Macmillan, 21 December 1962

Harold Macmillan’s statement was made during a visit to the Bahamas to meet President...

The word ‘radioactive’ was first used in public on 18 July 1898, when Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre, reported to the French Academy of Sciences on the progress of their work on becquerel rays – what we would now call ionising radiation. The Curies had subjected pitchblende, a black mineral composed largely of uranium dioxide, to repeated heating, then dissolved the...

The US defence and intelligence community launched a pre-emptive strike at George Bush and Richard Cheney on 3 December. The new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released that day concluded: ‘We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme.’ So Iran will not be the next target of this administration after all. The politicians’...

A building at Al Kibar in eastern Syria was attacked by Israeli aircraft early on the morning of 6 September last year. After the raid the Syrian authorities bulldozed the site, presumably to hide what remained from inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). At an intelligence briefing on 24 April, seven months later, US officials showed a video and satellite images of the...