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Begin himself obviously felt he had to go further in his accusations against Iraq. On Wednesday, after his government complained that the temporary U.S. suspension of the latest F-16 shipment was "unjust," Begin made a new claim about the Tammuz reactor. He declared that some 132 ft. beneath the demolished reactor there was a secret installation, undiscovered by international inspectors, where the Iraqis intended to produce their bombs. This too, he said, had been destroyed. The next day, Begin altered the depth of the hiding place to 13.2 ft.
Both the IAEA and the French designers of the reactor flatly denied the existence of any such secret room at any level. The construction had been under constant French supervision. In all likelihood, Begin was referring to the reactor's "guide chamber," a sealed area in such installations where physicists conduct experiments with the neutrons produced by the reactor.
If Begin's knowledge of reactors proved to be foggy, so did his understanding of the Reagan Administration's response to the raid. Begin was outraged by a report, carried in the press, that U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger had suggested cutting off all forms of U.S. military aid to Israel as punishment.
"What chutzpah," Begin fumed to his aides. On the hustings, Begin went further. "By what morality were you acting, Mr. American Secretary of Defense?" he asked rhetorically before a campaign crowd. "Haven't you heard of 1.5 million little Jewish children who were thrown into the gas chambers?" Weinberger, who in fact had not urged stopping aid to Israel, issued a calm statement saying that he was "sorry that Mr. Begin is proceeding on an erroneous assumption."
Despite Begin's outlandish utterances, there was a perceptible relaxation by week's end of the fear that the Tammuz raid might set off some new and shocking chain reaction in the Middle East. Egyptian President Sadat had declared that he would remain faithful to the Camp David peace process despite Israel's "intolerable" act. Said Sadat: "We started [the peace movement] and we're not ready at all to give it up." The foreign ministers of the 21-member Arab League issued a tough but predictable resolution condemning the attack, calling for a halt to all U.S. assistance to Israel and demanding U.N. sanctions in retaliation for the assault. Arab League Secretary-General Chedli Klibi declared the session to be "one of the shortest and most successful Arab meetings to date."
This week the Arabs will ask the Security Council to condemn Israel. In addition to calling for sanctions, which almost certainly will be vetoed by Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. Ambassador to the U. N. Iraqi Foreign Minister Saadoun Hammadi has demanded that the council order Israel to open its own atomic facilities for inspection and subject them to the safeguard system of the IAEA. Israel's U.N. Ambassador Yehuda Blum, on the other hand, has proposed making the Middle East a nuclear-free zone—a ploy that would require Arab states to recognize Israel as an equal partner.