Imagine ISIS with a nuclear reactor: But for Israel’s 2007 air strike...

So you’re shocked at the scope of the ISIS attack in Paris? It could have been far worse if one little country hadn’t taken decisive action against a budding threat more than eight years ago.

The world is still reeling from the awful ISIS terror attacks in Paris on Nov. 13. They followed a series of ruthless strikes in Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, away from the large swaths of territory ISIS controls.

These plots abroad were new but should not have been unexpected: ISIS describes its goals as “enduring and expanding,” based on an explicitly apocalyptic ideology that seeks to draw the infidels into a battle that will hasten Judgment Day. Geography does not matter to them and Paris just marks a tactical but not a strategic shift.

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What is shocking, however, is that we learn now — only now — about ISIS dabbling with chemical and radioactive material in the heart of Europe. Over the summer came reports that ISIS had obtained radioactive materials from hospitals and research facilities captured in Iraq, with the likely goal being to develop a radioactive “dirty bomb.”

But they could have been much further along in that quest. In 2007, Syria was suspected of initiating a nuclear program — quite possibly designed to produce weapons-grade plutonium, with a sizable assist by North Korea. When it became clear that the United States — or anyone else for that matter — was not going to intervene, Israel went for it herself, and destroyed the Al Kibar nuclear reactor construction site, located in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor region.

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Despite serious concerns about Syrian retaliation, Israel acted out of conviction of the necessity of a strike and a belief that it is the supreme duty of a state to protect its citizens. That decision was validated four years later, when the International Atomic Energy Agency officially confirmed that the site had been a nuclear reactor.

Yet the fact that curiously has been missing from exhaustive analysis of ISIS and its capabilities is that had it never been destroyed, the reactor would have been smack in the center of Islamic State territory. Ponder for a moment what that might mean today.

No, I’m not conjuring fears of a suitcase nuclear weapon. But there has been a veritable race of terror groups, including Al Qaeda, to obtain weapons of mass “disruption” — disruption because the real threat of a dirty bomb, a conventional explosive packed with radioactive material, lies in the psychological and economic effects rather than actual destruction.

One last thought: When the United States and its allies fought in the first Gulf War in 1990-91, there was relief that Israel had, in a single, unilateral, coordinated air strike, put an end to the nuclear reactor at Osirak 10 years earlier in 1981. There was no longer the possibility of a nuclear blackmail by Saddam Hussein. Thinking about the Jewish State’s action at the Deir ez-Zur reactor site, now in ISIS territory, it might be time to thank Israel again.

Baitel is a fellow in the Program on Applied Decision Analysis at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at IDC Herzliya, Israel.