Iraq came very close to becoming the first Arab country to produce nuclear weapons. Before its invasion of Kuwait, Iraq, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), pursued a multi-billion dollar nuclear weapons program. Originally, Iraq intended to secretly extract plutonium from its safeguarded reactors to use as fissile material in an implosion-type device. After the destruction of its French-built Osiraq reactor by Israeli jets in 1981, Iraq pursued multiple uranium...