Iraq is today, little more than an aspiring Islamic Republic on the Iranian model. The only reason for this is the US war on Iraq in 2003.
While much of Ibrahim al-Jaafari's speech to the UN dealt with Iraq's recent successes and long term political strategy to combat Salafist terrorism, the Iraqi Foreign Minister's most important remark made during his address to the UN General Assembly was that
Iraq seeks to exercise its legal option to create nuclear energy facilities.
This is not the first time Iraq has sought to being producing its own nuclear energy. Beginning in 1979, French nuclear scientists began building a nuclear reactors near Baghdad called Tammuz 1 and 2. The reactors are also referred to by their French name Osirak.
In spite of guarantees from the French scientists that the reactors were incapable of weapons grade enrichment,
Israel resorted to numerous illegal measures to stop the project from being successfully competed. This included a state-sponsored assassination of a scientist in Paris. In 1980, agents of Israel's secret intelligence service, Mossad, killed Yahya El Mashad, an Egyptian national in his hotel room due to his role in the Iraqi nuclear energy programme.
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