In 1981 the Israeli Air Force carried out a preemptive air strike on an Iraqi nuclear reactor. The raid was completely successful, due in no small part to the surprise the Israelis achieved against Iraqi air defenses. You can read more about it here:
Operation Opera
During the 1960s and '70s the Iraqi government vigorously pursued a nuclear development program. Unable to find assistance from France or Italy in obtaining a reactor for power or plutonium production, the Iraqi government was finally able to convince France to sell them a small research reactor with fuel and personnel training in 1976. While the reactor was small and unsuitable to produce the stuff of nuclear weapons as designed, Israel determined that any advance which carried the possibility of a nuclear-armed Arab neighbor was unacceptable. The government of Menachem Begin began serious planning for the attack in 1980, and the decision to carry it out was hotly contested within his cabinet.
While Operation Opera was clearly a blow to Iraq, whether it did anything productive for Israel is up for debate. Diplomacy in the Middle East has never been easy, and preemptive air strikes have a way of making people even less amenable to cool-headed thinking. It's difficult to make the case that Iraq's research reactor posed any credible existential threat to Israel, but like the United States 22 years later, Begin's government was eager to buy the story painted by the intelligence on Iraq.
Hopefully we've learned our lesson on that one.
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