The Israeli Ministry of Security concluded a deal to sell its old F-16 fighter jets to a private Canadian company, which will be used for training.
The deal included four fighter jets that took part in the 1981 attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor and in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, but were retired from active service once more advanced versions of the F-16 came into use.
The deal comprises of 29 jets that were retired in 2016, valued at $100 million, and is set to be the largest of its kind ever.
The planes were sold to the Canadian company, Top Aces Inc, which maintains a large fleet of training jets that it leases for the US Army and other militaries in the world.
It turned out that some of these aircraft were kept in Israeli warehouses, as part of an internal museum, and include the jets that participated in Operation Opera, also known as Operation Babylon, during which they destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in southeast Baghdad.
Iraq built the reactor with French expertise for “peaceful scientific research,” which Iran bombed nine months prior to the Israeli attack, but only caused minor damages.
The attack was considered an “Israeli-Iranian collaboration against Iraq.”
According to the Israeli army archive, the Israeli aircraft were intended for the Iranian air force, but the Khomeini revolution prevented their delivery to Tehran.
At that time, Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, recorded a new war doctrine, in which he indicated that this was not an exceptional attack, rather a precedent for every future government in Israel.
“We will not allow any of our enemies to acquire weapons of mass destruction.”
The doctrine prompted Ehud Olmert's government to destroy the nuclear reactor under construction in Deir Ezzor in Syria in 2007, and to later fight Iran's nuclear activity.
