(Saddam chokes at one minute and thirtyeight seconds in the video) |
The late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein gave orders to launch missiles equipped with chemical warheads at Israel should his power be in danger during the First Gulf War, Israel’s Channel 2 reported Friday, based on tapes from Hussein's archives.
According to the report, Hussein stationed missiles armed with chemical weapons at bases across the country and ordered them to be fired at Israel should his regime collapse or he be cut off from his command staff.
A list of strategic targets was drawn up and included, amongst others, Haifa’s leading high-tech university, The Technion, because a teacher at the university had spoken ill of him.
Hussein eventually never launched biological or chemical warheads at Israel “because he never thought he had reached the point that he felt his regime was under threat,” Avner Golov of the Institute of National Security Studies told Channel 2.
Golov analyzed part of Hussein's large audio archive which included many of his meetings with senior Iraqi officials and foreign dignitaries and was captured by the invading US forces in 2003.
During the Gulf War Hussein did however fire 39 Scud missiles armed with conventional warheads at Israel in 199, killing one Israeli. Fears that he might also make use of chemical warheads led to the Israeli authorities distributing gas masks, and instructing people to seal all windows and doorways of their homes when the Scuds were heading toward Israel.
On one of the tapes published by Channel 2, Hussein told the visiting Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in April 1990 that “Iraq has chemical weapons, it successfully used against the Iranians” during its eight-year war with Iran, “and Iraq won’t hesitate to use them against Tel Aviv.”
In another recording dated to 1991 Hussein orders his vice president, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, to attack Israeli targets at night. When al-Douri asks whether Hussein is referring to military targets, he replies, “I consider every city in Israel a target.”
Saddam is still held in high regard by some Arabs for his 1980-88 war with Iran, his confrontations with the United States, his strikes against Israel, and his composure during his execution, which was recorded on mobile phone videos.
Hussein's resentment of the Jewish State continued until his death in 2006. Just moments before his execution, while a list of indictments was read to him, Hussein repeated: "Death to America! Death to Israel! Long live Palestine! Death to the Persian magi,” his executioner recalled in an interview with AFP in December 2013.
