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The raid jolted U.S.-Israeli relations. An upset Reagan Administration (see NATION) condemned the attack and then suspended "for the time being" the delivery of four additional F-16s that were ready to be shipped last week from Fort Worth to Israel. The U.S. Congress will soon face the question of whether Israel violated the 1952 agreement under which the U.S. provides weapons to an ally for "defensive" purposes only. Congress is likely to find a delicate way to avoid any substantive action.
The Israeli attack unified, however briefly, the normally divided Arab world, which put aside its own conflicts to urge the U.S. to restrict Israeli "aggression and expansionism" and to ask the United Nations to impose "binding sanctions" on Israel. Western diplomats in the Middle East also feared that the Arabs might feel forced to launch a retaliatory attack of some kind against the Israelis to recover their honor after yet another humiliation. Such an attack would certainly be answered by the Israelis, and the cycle of violence would quicken.
One Arab with a particular right to feel outraged was Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was "totally astonished" by the news of the raid. Well he might have been; Sadat had held a highly publicized summit meeting with Begin in the Sinai only three days before the raid, and received no hint that trouble might lie ahead.
Even though the U.S. had no more warning of the attack than anyone else (a fact that should cause deep concern among U.S. intelligence experts), the Tammuz raid endangered American credibility with moderate Arab regimes, which still see a U.S. hand behind any Israeli military adventure. The attack rendered far more difficult the simultaneous Reagan Administration bid to support Israel, cultivate Arab friendships and further the 1978 Camp David peace accord. The assault also imperiled the Lebanese peacemaking mission of U.S. Envoy Philip Habib, who returned to the Middle East last week after a 12-day absence. Habib had seemed close to working out an agreement among Israelis, Lebanese and Syrians that would cool the missile crisis in Lebanon. Indeed, the Israeli raid posed the question of whether the U.S. had any means at all of controlling the maverick actions of an increasingly independent nation that depends ultimately for its existence on the U.S. Or failing that, did the U.S. have any way of dissociating itself from those actions when they did occur?
The sortie rankled European governments as well. Most ruffled were the French, who supplied the Iraqis with the reactor, who lost a technician as the only reported casualty of the raid and whose newly elected Socialist President, François Mitterrand, had declared his willingness to strengthen ties with Israel. Said French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson: "I am saddened. This government has a great deal of sympathy for Israel, but we don't think such action serves the cause of peace in the area." In her typically blunt fashion, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher summed up the view of many others: "Armed attack in such circumstances cannot be justified; it represents a grave breach of international law."
The raid was a stinging setback to