The U.S. Army made the Iraqi tapes and documents available for analysts, who have begun to publish books and academic articles on their content. Last year, two analysts, Hal Brands and David Palkki, published a study they prepared on the Iraqi records for the U.S. National Defense University (NDU). What they found was that Saddam Hussein had personally spoken about the importance of nuclear weapons as a key component of Iraqi strategy from 1978 until the Israeli strike on the Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.

Saddam's earlier obsession with nuclear weapons appears to have stopped for at least seven or eight years after the attack, according to the documents, until the late the 1980s when he began to speak about the subject again. For Brands and Palkki, the time Israel gained is a vindication of Prime Minister Menachem Begin's decision to strike Iraq.

So how did Saddam Hussein view the utility of nuclear weapons in a future conflict with Israel? The two NDU authors, Brands and Palkki, point out that contrary to the theories of many experts on international relations in the U.S., who claim that states seek to acquire nuclear weapons for defensive purposes alone in order to enhance deterrence against their neighbors, the Iraqi documents indicate that Saddam Hussein's regime clearly had offensive goals in mind.

This has contemporary relevance. In the July/August edition of the prestigious American quarterly, Foreign Affairs, that sometimes serves as a weather vane for the prevalent atmosphere in the U.S. foreign policy community, Professor Kenneth Waltz published an article entitled: "Why Iran Should Get the Bomb." He argues that an Iranian bomb would balance Israel and hence be "the best possible result: the one most likely to restore stability to the Middle East."

Brands and Palkki believe that his kind of thinking is completely wrong. To prove their point that stability will not be the likely result of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, they cite a meeting of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council on March 27, 1979 in which Saddam presented his strategic thinking, when he was the de-facto ruler of Iraq and just about to formally become its president. His thinking was surprising for he explained that Iraqi nuclear weapons would neutralize what many believed was Israel's nuclear capacity, thereby allowing Iraq to wage conventional war against Israel.

On another occasion, Saddam envisioned an Arab war coalition attacking Israel, spearheaded by 10 Iraqi divisions (five infantry and five armored or artillery) as well as forces from Syria and possibly Jordan. According to the documents, he raised this idea with Syrian president Hafez al-Assad. What Saddam Hussein's strategy illustrates is that the military use of nuclear weapons on the part of an adversary of Israel is very different from the role nuclear weapons played during the Cold War, despite the efforts of some analysts to apply the Soviet-American experience to the current Iranian threat.

What were Saddam's war aims according to this captured material? In some cases he spoke about recovering the territories the Arabs lost in 1967. Yet when he spoke to his most trusted advisers, he called for the elimination of Israel. Thus what emerges from the Iraqi documents is that when a leader like Saddam Hussein spoke about the destruction of Israel in public, this was not just rhetoric for political purposes, but rather reflective of the operational plans he had in mind for the Iraqi army in the future.

Much has changed since the time these Iraqi documents were written, and the threats Israel might face are evolving. But it would be a mistake to imagine that they have disappeared completely and much will depend upon the question of whether Iraq becomes a truly independent state or ends up being an Iranian satellite that serves as a springboard for its forces in the future. In this context, the latest information just revealed this week that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is permitting Iranian aircraft to fly through Iraqi airspace to re-supply the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, despite the repeated requests of the Obama administration that it discontinue this activity, is extremely disturbing.

Saddam Hussein's thinking about the relationship of nuclear weapons and conventional war is important to note for one other reason. In the debate over Israel's future borders in the West Bank, it is frequently argued that in the age of missiles, especially if they are armed with weapons of mass destruction, topography, terrain, and strategic depth are no longer relevant and hence Israel can give them up in future peace arrangements. This thesis, if widely accepted, could have enormous implications for areas like the Jordan Valley, undermining Israel's goal of obtaining defensible borders in any peace settlement.

But if the purpose of nuclear weapons in the hands of Israel's enemies is to make it safe for them to return to the era of conventional wars, then Israel must make sure that it guarantees that at the end of the day it must not be forced to concede its most vital territorial assets based on the unfounded notion that they no longer matter in the nuclear era.

In the internal debate in Israel over the subject of Iran, it is generally assumed by many that at the end of the day the U.S. will destroy the nuclear infrastructure of Iran when it becomes clear that sanctions and negotiations have failed. But is that a reliable assumption? True, President Barack Obama made clear last March during his address at AIPAC that he would use "all elements of American power to pressure Iran and prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon." However, with the exception of the 2003 Iraq War, which was launched in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the historical precedents indicate that the U.S. has not used military force in the past to stop rogue states from developing nuclear weapons.

Writing in Haaretz on August 8, Israel's former ambassador to the U.S., Salai Meridor, warns that it cannot be assumed that Washington will act in the Iranian case as well. He correctly noted that in the past, the U.S. in fact condemned the 1981 attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor and it refused to take military action against the Syrian nuclear program. He doesn't completely rule out the possibility that the U.S. will act, but he points out that it is not at all certain, for when past administrations were faced with making a decision and the moment of truth was reached, they chose to accept the nuclearization of rogue states over starting a war.

The case of North Korea stands out as an instance in which the U.S. would not take action against a dangerous rogue state that was developing a nuclear weapons capability. In March 1994, North Korea blocked inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from inspecting its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. By June, it appeared that the North Koreans were about to take the spent fuel rods from the reactor and extract enough weapons-grade plutonium for five or six bombs.

The U.N. imposed economic sanctions on North Korea. President Clinton wrote in his memoirs that he was determined to stop North Korea from developing a nuclear arsenal, "even at the risk of war." The Pentagon planned to destroy the Yongbyon reactor, but ultimately pulled back from its threats. Just like today, high-level U.S. officials said that all options are on the table -- but that was as far as they went. Negotiations were launched with North Korea that led to the signing of the "Agreed Framework," which the North Koreans violated within a few years. It would become clear that Washington had not pushed hard enough.

The weakness of the "Agreed Framework" was revealed in December 2002, when North Korea removed the IAEA seals from the containers with the spent fuel rods and began to produce plutonium from them. In the months that followed, the Bush administration took no firm action. North Korea then expelled the IAEA inspectors and announced early 2003 it was withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Four years later on Oct. 8, 2006, the North Koreans conducted their first underground test of an atomic bomb.

As a result, the U.N. Security Council adopted a tough resolution on North Korea , but the U.S. did not take any measures to eliminate North Korea's nuclear infrastructure. Six-party negotiations began leading to another agreement in 2007 that was similar to the "Agreed Framework" of 1994. For its part, North Korea was clearly unimpressed with the Western reaction to its atomic test. Thus it conducted a second nuclear test on May 25, 2009, when President Obama was already in office.

Why has the U.S. not taken more forceful action against rogue states crossing the nuclear threshold? First, there is the issue of intelligence. Even a superpower like the U.S., may not have a sufficiently clear intelligence picture that would allow it to detect that a state like North Korea, which is isolated from the world, is about to conduct a nuclear test. This is also a problem for the American intelligence agencies in a country like Iran.

Indeed, just two years ago, Robert M. Gates, who was then the defense secretary, was quoted saying about the Iranians: "If their policy is to go to the threshold but not to assemble a nuclear weapon, how do you tell that they have not assembled? I don't actually know how you would verify that." Gates comments were important. He was a former head of the CIA and has a keen understanding of the real limits of intelligence.

The problem that Gates describes explains why it is hard to move against states developing nuclear weapons if you don't know they are actually taking the last steps towards a bomb. In his memoirs, former Vice President Dick Cheney adds that since the Iraq War, the U.S. intelligence community is afraid of repeating the same error of relying on false intelligence, thereby affecting its decision-making even when it has "solid" information, as was the case with Syria.

According to President Bush's account, while CIA Director Mike Hayden said that he had "high confidence" that the Syrians were building a nuclear reactor, since he could not find the facility for the weaponization of the plutonium that the reactor generated, he only had "low confidence" that the Syrians had a nuclear weapons program. Bush concluded that the U.S. could not operate against the Syrians with such a murky intelligence picture. According to foreign sources, Israel had to strike instead.

Thus, U.S. decision-makers understandably demand a level of certainty that intelligence agencies cannot always supply. Before acting, Obama will want to know how definite the information is that Iran has enriched uranium to weapons grade, has assembled a nuclear warhead, and is mounting it on a Shahab-3 missile.

A second limitation influencing the U.S. is the United Nations Security Council and the American dependence on multilateral approval. President Obama justified American military involvement in Libya to Congress by repeatedly saying that he had U.N. authorization. Following administration policy, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 7, that in the case of Syria, before the U.S. could get militarily involved, "our goal would be to seek international permission." Since that time the Russian and Chinese have proven that they are willing to block a consensus in the Security Council over a resolution calling for stopping the bloodshed in the Syrian uprising.

Given this international environment, the chances the U.S. would receive United Nations authorization to take action against Iran's nuclear program are virtually nil. The U.S. would have to act outside of the U.N., which it has done in a number of notable cases, like Kosovo, under President Clinton. In the case of the Obama administration that would require a sharp break in past policy.

Finally, it must be remembered that the U.S. is a superpower with global commitments. That means it has conflicting priorities, which constrain its ability to take on missions against rogue states that are in the last phase of assembling nuclear weapons. The Bush administration was focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, which undoubtedly affected its approach to North Korea -- and later Syria. Perhaps, in the near future, the Obama administration will be involved in supporting an international intervention against the Assad regime in Syria, and will not be focused on the Iranian issue.

Then there is the issue of America's forward-deployed forces around the world. During the Clinton administration it was understood that a strike on North Korea could lead to a retaliatory attack against U.S. ground forces along the Demilitarized Zone protecting South Korea. In the debate over whether the U.S. should take out Syria's nuclear reactor, the risks of Syrian retaliation against U.S. forces in Iraq was raised. Thus while the U.S. unquestionably has the military power to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by the world's most dangerous states, or organizations, repeatedly successive administrations have been reluctant to use their vast military capabilities for that purpose because of the international circumstances they have faced

After all, the U.N. was established in 1945, when the horrors of the Holocaust were on the minds of its founders. One of its most critical early documents, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, spoke of the "barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind." It was clear that the U.N. was founded to prevent this sort of mass murder from ever recurring. In that spirit, the U.N. General Assembly also adopted the Genocide Convention at the same time.

However, in the 1990s, the U.N. proved to be completely ineffective in halting the very acts of genocide it was intended to prevent.

In 1994, the commander of the U.N. forces in Rwanda, Gen. Romeo Dallaire, sent a cable to U.N. headquarters in New York saying that he had information from an informer that the country's Hutu leaders were planning to massacre Rwanda's Tutsi population. Dallaire wrote that he planned to destroy the Hutu militias' weapons depots. The head of U.N. peacekeeping, Kofi Annan, cabled back instructions to Dallaire to refrain from interfering. In the months that followed, some 800,000 Rwandans were butchered. The U.N. Security Council debated what action should be taken but ultimately did nothing; the Rwandan regime in fact sat on the council as a legitimate diplomatic partner.

The failure of the U.N. to stop mass murder continued. After the outbreak of the Bosnian War, the U.N. Security Council created a "safe area" for Bosnian Muslims in the area of the town of Srebrenica. The U.N. commander declared to the Muslim population that had fled to Srebrenica: "You are under the protection of the United Nations." He added: "I will never abandon you." Yet, in July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army assaulted the Srebenica enclave and began systematically killing 8,000 Muslims who lived there.

When tested, the U.N. peacekeeping force did not protect the Muslims. Its Dutch battalion fled. The Dutch press reported that while the massacres were underway, the peacekeepers held a beer party in the Croatian capital of Zaghreb. The U.N. launched an internal investigation about Srebrenica. The report concluded by saying that "the tragedy of Srebenica will haunt our history forever."

Last year, when President Barack Obama looked at the offensive operations of Libyan President Moammar Qaddafi's forces near Benghazi, his advisers said that if the West did not stop them the result would be "Srebenica on steroids."

Now the U.N. has the new Srebenica it wanted to avoid. The Syrian uprising began in March 2011. While the U.N. Security Council debated over a period of months, more Syrian civilians died. A draft resolution proposed in October 2011 was vetoed by the Russians and the Chinese. At the end of May this year, the Security Council finally condemned Syria after the killing of 108 civilians in Houla. But it did not pass a resolution with any concrete measures.

Another failed U.N. initiative involved former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was appointed as a special envoy to deal with the Syrian crisis by the U.N. and the Arab League in February. A month later he announced a six-point plan that went nowhere. As long as the Annan mission persisted, the West could say that it supported his efforts and had an excuse to wash its hands from taking any measures against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by itself over the last three months.

In the meantime, so far more than 14,000 Syrians have been killed. Yet again, the U.N. is failing to fulfill one of its original purposes: preventing the mass murder of innocent civilians.

The reason why the U.N. fails time and again to halt mass murder and even genocide is because of the interests of its member states. It refuses to take a firm moral position condemning those who perpetrate massacres and then it refrains from imposing effective measures against them. In the case of the Darfur rebellion, which began in 2003, while the U.S. called the actions of the Sudanese army "genocide," the U.N. refused to adopt the same term and adopted ineffective actions for the following eight years, while thousands died.

There are two lessons for Israel from the international response to the Syrian crisis. First, the behavior of the U.N. proves yet again that Israel must never compromise its doctrine of self-reliance when its own security is at stake by relying on the protection of international forces.

A second lesson is how Israel should relate to the constant criticism it receives from various U.N. bodies. On May 28, the Wall Street Journal called the U.N. an "accomplice" to the murder of civilians in Houla, Syria, as it was in Srebrenica, Bosnia, in 1995. This was harsh criticism but contained a kernel of truth that cannot be ignored: The U.N. raises expectations that it will offer effective protection to people facing extermination, and in the end does nothing to stop repeated cases of aggression against them, frequently with its forces standing by while innocents are killed.

If the U.N. is a paralyzed body that cannot take decisions about cases of genocide, treating aggressors and their victims equivalently, then why should Israel listen to its moral judgments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What can a U.N. with such glaring defects tell Israel about Gaza? Who exactly are its international civil servants who issue statements about Israel?

Indeed, the Syrian crisis is just the latest example of how the U.N. has lost the moral authority it had when it was founded. Israel must internalize the change in the U.N.'s status the next time a U.N. official decides to issue another politicized "condemnation" about its actions.

These details still matter forty-five years later. When the rights of the parties that claimed Jerusalem were debated after the Six-Day War, it became necessary to look into the circumstances of how each came to possess the city. Jordan's capture of Jerusalem in 1948 resulted from what had been described at the time by the U.N. secretary-general, Trygve Lie, as the first case of "armed aggression" since the Second World War. This stood in contrast to how Israel entered the eastern portions Jerusalem in 1967, that came about through what was plainly a war of self-defense. This distinction became glaringly apparent when the Soviet Union failed in its repeated efforts to have Israel branded as "the aggressor" in the Six-Day War first in the Security Council, in June 1967, and then a month later in the General Assembly.

The great American legal scholar, Stephen Schwebel, who would become the President of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, was cognizant of this comparison for he wrote in 1970: "when the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the state which subsequently takes that territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against the prior holder, better title." Israel had historical rights to Jerusalem that had been embedded in the British Mandate, but that was not part of the international discourse after 1967. Basing himself on the events of the Six-Day War, Schwebel concluded that Israel's claim to "the whole of Jerusalem" was stronger than that of Jordan's. His analysis was echoed at the time by his contemporaries like the British expert on international law, Elihu Lauterpacht and the Australian, Julius Stone.

Normally, at the end of modern wars, diplomatic efforts focus on restoring the status quo ante -- the pre-war situation on the ground. But there was a serious problem in automatically applying this principle to the situation in Jerusalem, in particular, given the fact that Jordan's claim to sovereignty had been rejected by the international community, with the exception of Pakistan. Given the total failure of the U.N. in 1948 to dispatch forces to protect Jerusalem, the internationalization clauses in the Partition Plan, were no longer viable either, though they were discussed in U.N. debates into the early 1950s. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared in the Knesset in 1949 that these clauses on the internationalization of Jerusalem were "null and void."

When the U.N. Security Council met to discuss what would be the principles of a future peace settlement after the Six-Day War, there was a certain degree of ambivalence when the territorial dimension was raised, especially with respect to Jerusalem. The pre-1967 line was not sacrosanct. It was not a recognized international border but only an armistice line that separated the armies at the end of Israel's War of Independence. Thus when the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 242, it refrained from calling on Israel to withdraw from "all the territories" it had captured in the Six-Day War, as the Soviet Union had demanded. Instead, it called for new borders to be drawn that would be "secure and recognized boundaries." Today, common reference is made to Israel's rights to defensible borders.

Resolution 242 not only did not call for an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, it did not even refer to Jerusalem either. On March 6, 1980, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. during these deliberations over Resolution 242, Arthur Goldberg, wrote to the New York Times and explained "Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate." He spoke on the subject on multiple occasions, laying out the original approach taken by the U.S. under President Lyndon Johnson. He explained in his letter that "at no time in these many speeches did I refer to East Jerusalem as occupied territory". He insisted that "the armistice lines dividing Jerusalem were no longer viable." Goldberg fully understood the full legal implications of what he was saying. He had served as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court before his appointment to the U.N..

Since 1988, the Palestinians have argued that they are filling the diplomatic shoes of the Jordanians. However, they have repeatedly sought however to acquire a status in Jerusalem to which they were not automatically entitled. To erode Israel's legal rights, they began introducing language into U.N. resolutions that spoke about "Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem." In 1994, the Clinton administration rightfully stood firm against this effort, when the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright explained an American veto in the Security Council by saying, "We are today voting against a resolution precisely because it implies that Jerusalem is occupied Palestinian territory."

The Palestinians' diplomatic strategy has been based on getting the international community to uncritically adopt their legal terminology. Unfortunately, many Israelis have become resigned to this process and are increasingly unaware of the fact that Israel has historical and legal rights, which are plainly stronger than claims that are voiced by the Arab side to this day. Just this past March, the Palestinians easily pushed through a resolution in the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva describing Jerusalem as "Occupied Palestinian territory." In a period in which the delegitimization of Israel's rights is at the heart of the agenda of its adversaries, Israeli diplomats must now more than ever speak up and stress the historical truth of what happened forty-five years ago and not let the twisted narrative being sold to the U.N. to take hold.

The last time Iran faced similar pressures was in 2003, after the fall of Baghdad, when the Iranian leadership was convinced that President Bush was going to order US forces to attack Iran after he dealt with Saddam Hussein. Tehran also feared that its nuclear file at the IAEA, which detailed its violations of its past agreements, was going to be reported to the U.N. Security Council and new sanctions were on the way. Iran lowered its nuclear profile as a result: at that time it closed down its weaponization facility, which it eventually re-opened two years later at a different location, when the American military threat appeared to have diminished as the Iranian-backed Iraqi insurgency raged on. But still when Iran feared Western measures, it clearly scaled back its nuclear activity in the past.

According to the May 2012 IAEA report, this was not the pattern that Iran decided to adopt this time. Surprisingly, Tehran significantly increased its production of low enriched uranium at its Natanz facility in the last few months. If in the last IAEA report in February, Iran had produced a total of 5,451 kilograms of low-enriched uranium, now in the latest May report, the total Iranian production reached 6,197 kilograms. Moreover, to reach this quantity of uranium, the Iranians went from enriching an average 150 kilograms per month to nearly 250 kilograms -- roughly a 60 percent increase! The report covers a period that coincides with the announcement of the nuclear negotiations in March 2012 and the convening of the first round of talks in Istanbul that were held in April. The Iranians did not just exploit the talks with the West in order to increase their uranium stockpiles, but they even used this time to boost the rate at which they are enriching uranium.

What did these numbers mean? If Iran needed to put roughly 900 kilograms of low enriched uranium through a process of a further stage of enrichment in order to reach enough weapons-grade uranium for one atomic bomb, then it now appeared that Iran had enough material for five to six bombs and it was determined to manufacture enough for even more nuclear weapons in the future. Iran also continued to produce uranium enriched to the 20% level, at both its Natanz and Fordow facilities. But with 145.6 kilograms, it barely had enough of this material for one bomb. Unlike the situation with its low-enriched uranium, Tehran also expanded its stock of the 20% material.

Because, Iran could enrich its 20% uranium to the level needed for an atomic bomb in half the time required to enrich low-enriched uranium to the same level, it is considered in the West as Iran's fast-track to weapons grade uranium. The P5+1 have focused their efforts for now on halting its production, in particular. The Iranian press is arguing that the West may recognize Iran's right to produce low-enriched uranium, if Tehran halts its production of 20% uranium. If the West agreed to this formula, it would be freezing a program that at this stage might not even lead to one atomic bomb, while allowing a program that had already enriched enough uranium for six bombs. This sort of concession by the P5+1 should not be ruled out, if the Western powers are determined to reach an agreement this summer at all costs. For Israel, this diplomatic outcome would be regarded as nothing less than a Western sell-out to Iran.

It should be remembered that 20% enriched uranium is not the only shortcut available to Tehran for getting to a bomb. Indeed, Iran could make its stock of low-enriched uranium as dangerous as 20% uranium by simply installing faster centrifuges, which it is currently designing. In short, drawing a distinction between low enriched uranium and 20%enrichment, by which the West permits the former but prohibits only the latter, is a huge mistake. All levels of uranium enrichment should be halted as called for by five resolutions of the U.N. Security Council that were even backed at the time by the Russians and the Chinese. Allowing enrichment of any sort today would entail throwing out these resolutions and all the hard diplomatic work done since 2007 in building the basis of an international consensus against Iran.

There remains the question of why Tehran allowed itself to dramatically increase its production of low-enriched uranium at this sensitive time. The most likely explanation is that by increasing their enrichment rate during the negotiations, the Iranians are testing the reaction of Catherine Ashton, the EU Foreign Policy chief, and her negotiating team.

There is some degree of contemptuousness towards the West that stands behind this behavior. It is also possible that the Iranians calculated that with its focus on 20%enrichment, the Western powers would not see this as a provocation. But the Iranians' behavior most of all indicates that they truly believe they can get away with this acceleration of their enrichment activity and no one will take any measures against them, as they pick up the pace of their race to the nuclear finishing line.