In The Bomb In My Garden Dr Mahdi Obeidi tells the story of how Iraq tried to produce a nuclear bomb in the early 1990s. He was in charge of building centrifuges to enrich uranium. He goes through Iraq’s nuclear ambitions, how they covertly worked to gain the know-how and technology, how United Nations inspectors dismantled the program and then how the U.S. bungled its search for WMD after the 2003 invasion.
Obeidi began working on Iraq’s nuclear program in 1979 when it bought a reactor from France. Everyone involved including the Israelis believed this was the beginning of a bomb program. Mossad killed three scientists working on the project, bombed the reactor while it was still in France, and then jets attacked and destroyed it when it was installed in Iraq. This led Saddam Hussein to order a covert program to build a device in 1982 which the author was intimately involved in.
The book goes through all the steps the Iraqis took to try to build a bomb. That started with different methods to enrich uranium with centrifuges eventually becoming the main effort which Obeidi was in charge of. He and others went to Europe to get the necessary materials. Sometimes they were able to buy parts claiming they were for Iraq’s oil industry. Other times Iraq used front companies to get pieces. Iraqi engineers also went to study at different European universities and firms to gain more knowledge about how to operate equipment and the science necessary to enrich uranium. Iraq tried to keep all these moves as secret as possible after what happened with the French reactor. Obeidi later found out that England for one knew about many of these actions and turned a blind eye since Iraq was not considered a threat back then. That showed that at least some Western powers were not concerned about nuclear proliferation at the time.
In 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait Obeidi was told to start a crash program to enrich uranium for a bomb. Baghdad didn’t have all the pieces for a device however such as an explosive to set it off, a long range delivery system and more. When the Gulf War started the program was dismantled to protect it from bombing. Several sites were hit but when the ceasefire was announced Saddam ordered the scientists back to work which went nowhere when Iraq agreed to United Nations weapons inspectors. The author highlights that Iraq was close to enriching uranium but it was still far away from having a functioning bomb and a way to use it.
The end of the book is very interesting as well as it shows how disorganized the United States was about the 2003 invasion. Obeidi wanted to tell the Americans he had the blueprints for centrifuges and several prototypes buried in his backyard. He talked with two sets of intelligence officers who were rivals and then got arrested by the U.S. army. As one U.S. official told him the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. President Bush invaded to stop Iraq from acquiring WMD and a nuclear device but when a scientist at the middle of one of those programs came forward the U.S. had no idea how to handle him.
Obeidi’s book is one of the better ones about Iraq’s nuclear ambitions. He was at the center of the effort and gives a good overview of the steps which Baghdad took without getting too caught up in the details. It was also a warning to the international community. Iraq got close to building a bomb and another country could follow similar steps and actually achieve its goal. That meant more vigilance than in the 1980s when some countries knew what Baghdad was up to and did nothing about it.
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