 In the late 1970s, Iraq purchased an "Osiris class" nuclear reactor from France.Israeli military intelligence assumed this was for the purpose of plutonium production to further an Iraqi nuclear weapons program, in spite of it being built within the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and under the inspection regime of the IAEA.Israeli intelligence also believed that the summer of 1981 would be the last chance to destroy the reactor without exposing the Iraqi civilian population to nuclear fallout.