Operation Diamond - When Israel stole Iraq's MiG-21

On June 16, 1955, MiG-21, the best fighter plane of that time made its first flight. The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 was designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau in the Soviet Union. It's production began in 1959 and countries like Iraq, Syria, Egypt bought many of them. The condition Russia had put in front of buyers countries was not to share the technology with any other country specially USA and Israel.

Isser Harel, the second director of intelligence agency of Israel, Mossad tried to bring or at least see MiG-21 but every country was bind to the agreement they had with Russia. After Isser, Meir Amet took the charge of the Mossad's director. The then Commander of the Israeli Air Force, Ezer Weizman was of good friend of Amet. Once he requested Meir Amet to bring MiG-21 to Israel. This was a difficult task for Meir as he knew that Isser Harel had already tried a lot but he was not successful in this, but he decided to try once again on this mission.
All the officers and agent together started working on this plan and finally came to the conclusion that they had to bribe a MiG-21 pilot.

They made their first attempt by sending their agent Jean Thomas to Egypt. There he befriended a Egyptian pilot Adib Hanna. He won his trust and one day Jean offered him 1 million dollars and if he would fly the plane to Israeli Air Base. Adib didn't betrayed his country and informed the higher authorities about Jean Thomas. As a result, he was arrested and was hanged to death in December 1962. His father and three other relatives were imprisoned. 
They also failed in their second attempt. Israeli agents contacted two Iraqi pilots but at the last moment they also refused. In fear that both of them will reveal their plan, both the pilots were killed by them.

In 1964, Yusuf who was working in Israel's embassy in Iran told Mossad that his girlfriend's friend was getting married to a Christian pilot in Iraqi Air Force, Munir Redfa. While keeping an eye on Munir, they got to know that he was upset because he was not getting promoted to higher rank by the management just because he was a Christian. Seeing this as an opportunity, a lady agent was sent to Iraq and there she became friend with Munir. Slowly, Munir started sharing all his emotions with the agent like how he was discriminated on the basis of religion. 

Munir Redfa was then convinced to travel to Europe to meet with Israeli agents. Meir Amet (the then director of Mossad) himself observed the whole discussion through a hole. Munir was offered $1 Million and Israeli citizenship. He agreed on the condition that his whole family including his parents should also get the Israeli citizenship along with him. The deal was finalized. Major General Mordechai (Motti) Hod and Munir Redfa had a talk about the path and flights on the same day.

The first task was to smuggle out Munir's wife Betty, his two kids and his parents out of Iraq. His parents were sent to Tehran on Health Visa. His wife and kids were sent to Paris on Tourist Visa. No one knew, why they were taken out of the country, When contacted by an agent, Betty got angry and threatened to inform the Iraqi embassy, before she was calmed down. From Iran and France, Munir's whole family reached Israel.

16 August 1666, was the day to execute the plan. A test flight was to be done that day. Normally, the fuel of the plane was not completely filled but on few occasions Munir used to ask them to fill the whole fuel tank and the workers there used to agree. On that day, Munir applied the same trick and filled his fuel tank completely. He redirected the planned route. He was getting warnings from the Iraqi Air Base to return back but he turned off the radio. The plane then entered the Jordan air base.

Jordan Air Base gave warnings to him but Mossad had till then hacked the Syrian Air Force's system and informed Jordan from there that it was Syria's test flight and it was returning back. Jordan did nothing as they knew Syria was also having a MiG-21. Then two Israeli planes surrounded Munir's MiG-21 and helped him to have a safe landing at Hatzor Air Base. Finally the wait was over. Israeli officers were seeing MiG-21 for the very first time and it is said that when the plane landed in Israel, all the senior officers had tears in their eyes.

Israel then analyzed MiG-21, learned its strength and weaknesses, it's technology everything. This helped them to damage 6 Syrian MiG-21 during the Six-day War. USA also requested Israel to gave them the plane so that they can build a better plane than this after analyzing MiG-21. Israel, agreed and under the 'Have Doughnut' program, USA in January 1968 examined the whole plane and later came up with their F-16 fighter plane, better than MiG-21.

Join Telegram Channel here : https://telegram.me/QrioSum