Israel's counter-proliferation preventive strike added another dimension to its existing policy of deliberate ambiguity, as it related to the nuclear weapons capability of other states in the region.

[35] In a 2003 speech, Richard Wilson, a professor of physics at Harvard University who visually inspected the partially damaged reactor in December 1982, said that "to collect enough plutonium [for a nuclear weapon] using Osirak would've taken decades, not years".

[20] In October 1981, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published excerpts from the testimony of Roger Richter, a former IAEA inspector who described the weaknesses of the agency's nuclear safeguards to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

[40] Anthony Fainberg, a physicist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, disputed Richter's claim that a fuel processing program for the manufacturing of nuclear weapons could have been conducted secretly.

[40] Fainberg wrote that there was barely enough fuel on the site to make one bomb, and that the presence of hundreds of foreign technicians would have made it impossible for the Iraqis to take the necessary steps without being discovered.

[5] In Israel, discussions on which strategy to adopt in response to the Iraqi reactor development were taking place as early as Yitzhak Rabin's first term in office (1974–1977).

In addition Israel was not able to convince the French governments of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and François Mitterrand to cease aiding the Iraqi nuclear program.

[45] Begin considered the diplomatic options fruitless, and worried that prolonging the decision to attack would lead to a fatal inability to act in response to the perceived threat.

[48][49] Shortly afterward, two other Iraqi engineers working on the program, Salman Rashid and Abdul Rasul, fell ill and died on trips to Switzerland and France respectively, with Mossad suspected of having poisoned them.

[50][47][49][51] Following the bombing in April 1979, France inserted a clause in its agreement with Iraq saying that French personnel would have to supervise the Osirak reactor on-site for a period of ten years.

[46] Shai Feldman specifies that "[those opposed] feared that the operation would derail the fragile Israeli-Egyptian peace process, fuel Arab anxieties about Israel's profile in the region, and damage Israel-French relations".

[46] Yehoshua Saguy argued for continued efforts in trying to find a non-military solution as it would take the Iraqis five to ten years to produce the material necessary for a nuclear weapon.

[50] Prime Minister Begin defended the timing of the bombing stating that a later attack, after the reactor had become operational, could cause lethal radioactive contamination doses to reach all the way to Baghdad.

[66] This was similarly the conclusion of Herbert Goldstein of Columbia University using IAEA release factors, the lethal contamination would be confined to a close proximity to the reactor and small amounts of radiation would be detectable in Baghdad under the assumption that winds were blowing in that direction.

[68] Israeli reconnaissance planes had been monitoring Iraq during the attack, and observed that the Iraqi Air Force had been severely degraded and their retaliatory capacity had been weakened.

[56] Yehuda Zvi Blum, in a speech to the United Nations Security Council following the attack, claimed that the operation was launched on a Sunday afternoon under the assumption that workers present on the site, including foreign experts employed at the reactor, would have left.

[43] The F-16 pilots were Ze'ev Raz, Amos Yadlin, Dobbi Yaffe, Hagai Katz, Amir Nachumi, Iftach Spector, Relik Shafir, and Ilan Ramon.

[59] It was later revealed that half an hour before the Israeli planes arrived, a group of Iraqi soldiers manning anti-aircraft defenses had left their posts for an afternoon meal, turning off their radars.

The United Nations Security Council issued a unanimous and almost immediate response on 19 June 1981, following eight meetings and statements from Iraq and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Security Council Resolution 487[15] strongly condemned the attack as a "clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct" and called on Israel to refrain from such attacks in the future; the Council recognised the right of Iraq to "establish programmes of technological and nuclear development" and called for Israel to join Iraq within the "IAEA safeguards regime" of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

[76] Debate prior to passage of the UN resolution reflected member states' differing positions on issues such as nuclear proliferation in the region and the appropriateness and justifiability of Israel's actions.

The Iraqi representative stated that "the motives behind the Israeli attack were to cover up Israel's possession of nuclear weapons and, more importantly, the determination not to allow the Arab nation to acquire scientific or technical knowledge.

[72][79] Privately, President Reagan wrote in his journal on the day of the attack, "I swear I believe Armageddon is near," adding of Begin's decision, "He should have told us & the French, we could have done something to remove the threat.

[13] Dan Perry writes that "the Osirak bombing—and Peres's poor political judgement in criticizing it—were crucial in turning the tide of what initially had seemed to be a hopeless election campaign for Likud".

[90] An Iraqi official asserted that Iraq's right to redress is supported by Resolution 487 adopted by the United Nations Security Council in response to the attack.

[95]Charles R. H. Tripp, in an interview for the 25th anniversary of the attack, described the bombing of Osirak as a variation of Israeli military doctrine beginning with the premiership of David Ben-Gurion, "advocating devastating pre-emptive strikes on Arab enemies.

"[97] Tom Moriarty, a military intelligence analyst for the United States Air Force, wrote in 2004 that Israel had "gambled that the strike would be within Iraq's threshold of tolerance."

"[98] Joseph Cirincione, then director of non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in 2006: Israel had pulled off a remarkable military raid, striking targets with great precision over long distances.

"[102] Bob Woodward, in the book State of Denial, writes: Israeli intelligence were convinced that their strike in 1981 on the Osirak nuclear reactor about 10 miles (16 km) outside Baghdad had ended Saddam's program.

[108]Following Desert Storm, Dick Cheney, then the United States Secretary of Defense, thanked the Israeli mission commander for the "outstanding job he did on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981".