If Israel's 1981 bombing of Iraqi nuclear facilities teaches us anything, it's that the quickest way to help the Iranians make up their minds is to attack them

On 7 June 1981 a phalanx of Israeli F-16 fighter-bombers entered Iraqi airspace on the orders of the then Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. Their mission, codenamed Operation Babylon, was to destroy Saddam Hussein's nascent nuclear programme. In less than two minutes the eight F-16s dropped 16 1,000-kg bombs on the unfinished Osirak nuclear reactor, situated 10 miles south of Baghdad. It was an audacious attack: the world's first air strike on a nuclear facility.