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Iran and Israel's Nuclear Weapons

By Joseph Cirincione | Friday, March 11, 2005

Despite all the attention given to Iran's nuclear moves, the other side of that equation — Israel's nuclear weapons — usually receives scant attention. The Carnegie Endowment's Joe Cirincione argues that Israel has a great interest in a Middle East free of nuclear weapons. He also argues that President Bush now has an opportunity to cut the Gordian knot.

For quite some time now, Washington officials have been pressuring the International Atomic Energy Agency to find Iran's nuclear power program in "material breach" of its treaty obligations not to develop nuclear weapons.

No nuclear plan — yet

The tough talk against Tehran has inadvertently put on the table a program that no one in Washington wants to discuss openly — Israel's nuclear weapons program.

Even if democratic transformations sweep the Middle East, a new Iraq and a new Iran would still want nuclear weapons as long as Israel has them.

In fact, the world does well to remember that most Middle East weapons programs began as a response to Israel's development of nuclear weapons. That program started in the early 1950s — and had secretly yielded a bomb by 1968.

Israel is now believed to have between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons, a stockpile of chemical weapons and a biological weapons program that may have developed several weapons agents.

Strategic omission

If you do not know much about Israel's programs, it is not surprising.

Israel is never mentioned in semi-annual reports the U.S. Congress requires the intelligence agencies to prepare on "the acquisition by foreign countries during the preceding six months of dual-use and other technology useful for the development or production of weapons of mass destruction."

A repeated pattern

With diplomatic currents in the region now running in President Bush's favor, this is precisely the time to intensify efforts to create a zone free of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the Middle East.

The agencies provide their assessment of programs in Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan and others, but Israel (and Egypt) are omitted. This pattern is repeated across the board.

For example, the 2003 report on the ballistic and cruise missile threat from the National Air and Space Intelligence Center lists 18 nations with missiles, including U.S. allies Bulgaria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Yemen, and Egypt — but not Israel.

Yet, Israel is the only nation in the Middle East with nuclear weapons and an array of medium-range missiles that could deliver them.

Selective ignorance

Of course, the United States does not see Israel as a threat — but other nations in the region do. That is the whole point.

By ignoring Israel's programs in order to protect the people of Israel, we may actually be increasing their danger.

Nuclear-free Middle East

It should be obvious that Israelis are better off in a region where no one has nuclear weapons than in one where many nations have them.

Of course, the United States does not see Israel as a threat — but other nations in the region do. That is the whole point.

That is why repeated UN resolutions have called for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons.

The United States, Israel and the Arab states have all supported this goal. In fact, for a few years in the 1990s regional talks on these issues appeared to make significant progress — but sputtered out as the Palestinian-Israeli peace process collapsed.

U.S. policy shift

That was then. Now, U.S. policy is based on a different assumption. It seeks to knock off evil regimes seeking these deadly arsenals while tolerating — even encouraging — their possession by states deemed responsible.

This policy can work piecemeal, as in Iraq, but cannot work systematically because the proliferation impetus transcends particular regimes.

Nuclear power politics

Proliferation issues arise in democracies as well as dictatorships.

Israel is the only nation in the Middle East with nuclear weapons and an array of medium-range missiles that could deliver them.

Even if democratic transformations sweep the Middle East, a new Iraq and a new Iran would still want nuclear weapons as long as Israel has them — and as long as they are seen as the currency of great powers.

The Iranian nuclear program began under the Shah in 1958, with the first U.S.-supplied reactor going online in 1967. The program will likely continue under future governments unless fundamental regional dynamics are altered.

Prevention over proliferation

While recognizing the genuine security concerns that gave rise to the Israeli programs, now may be the perfect moment to use the victories from a preventive war in Iraq to ensure that we do not have to wage one again.

Now is the time to put U.S. muscle behind long-standing U.S. policy of seeking a nuclear-free Middle East region.

Unnecessary nukes?

No one would deny the serious internal security issues confronting Israel. What is not appreciated, however, is that nuclear weapons are completely irrelevant to that struggle.

Israel is never mentioned in semi-annual reports the U.S. Congress requires the intelligence agencies to prepare.

Lost in the cycle of Palestinian-Israeli violence is the fact that Israel has never been more secure from external threats.

Its conventional forces can easily defeat any conceivable combination of Arab armies. One of its key regional opponents — Iraq — has just been eliminated.

Syria's forces are now retreating from Lebanon, the Taliban has been removed from power in Afghanistan and there is no longer a Soviet Union to arm and encourage Arab regimes hostile to Israel's existence. There is now a substantial U.S. military force in the region.

Thus, Israel has less need of nuclear weapons now than at any time in its history and it has a clear interest in preventing any other regional power from getting the one weapon that could offset its conventional superiority.

Opportunity for change

Arab and Muslim nations now believe that their suspicions of U.S. regional goals have been verified by the failure to turn up any chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in Iraq and continued threats to remove other regional governments.

Despite the recent progress in Israeli-Palestinian relations, many still doubt President Bush's commitment to a genuine negotiated settlement.

Bombs in the closet

Instead of confirming these suspicions, the United States could now prove them wrong by adopting an even-handed policy that views all nonconventional weapons in the Middle East as threats to regional peace and stability.

Lost in the cycle of Palestinian-Israeli violence is the fact that Israel has never been more secure from external threats.

Everyone already knows about Israel's bombs in the closet. Bringing them out into the open and putting them on the table as part of a regional deal may be the only way to prevent others from building their own bombs in their basements.

It will not be easy and will likely take years to fashion such an agreement. That is why there is no time to lose.

With diplomatic currents in the region now running in President Bush's favor, this is precisely the time to intensify efforts to create a zone free of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the Middle East.

President Bush may be in an ideal position to cut this knot of real and exaggerated security threats — a knot pulled tighter by Israel's undeclared possession of nuclear weapons and by its continuing conflict with the Palestinians and with neighboring Arab states that do not recognize its existence.

Joe Cirincione is the co-author of the March 2005 Carnegie report, "Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security," available online here.

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/

Nuclear Weapons

The Israeli nuclear weapons program grew out of the conviction that the Holocaust justified any measures Israel took to ensure its survival. Consequently, Israel has been actively investigating the nuclear option from its earliest days. In 1949, HEMED GIMMEL a special unit of the IDF's Science Corps, began a two-year geological survey of the Negev desert with an eye toward the discovery of uranium reserves. Although no significant sources of uranium were found, recoverable amounts were located in phosphate deposits.
The program took another step forward with the creation of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) in 1952. Its chairman, Ernst David Bergmann, had long advocated an Israeli bomb as the best way to ensure "that we shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter." Bergmann was also head of the Ministry of Defense's Research and Infrastructure Division (known by its Hebrew acronym, EMET), which had taken over the HEMED research centers (HEMED GIMMEL among them, now renamed Machon 4) as part of a reorganization. Under Bergmann, the line between the IAEC and EMET blurred to the point that Machon 4 functioned essentially as the chief laboratory for the IAEC. By 1953, Machon 4 had not only perfected a process for extracting the uranium found in the Negev, but had also developed a new method of producing heavy water, providing Israel with an indigenous capability to produce some of the most important nuclear materials.

For reactor design and construction, Israel sought the assistance of France. Nuclear cooperation between the two nations dates back as far as early 1950's, when construction began on France's 40MWt heavy water reactor and a chemical reprocessing plant at Marcoule. France was a natural partner for Israel and both governments saw an independent nuclear option as a means by which they could maintain a degree of autonomy in the bipolar environment of the cold war.

In the fall of 1956, France agreed to provide Israel with an 18 MWt research reactor. However, the onset of the Suez Crisis a few weeks later changed the situation dramatically. Following Egypt's closure of the Suez Canal in July, France and Britain had agreed with Israel that the latter should provoke a war with Egypt to provide the European nations with the pretext to send in their troops as peacekeepers to occupy and reopen the canal zone. In the wake of the Suez Crisis, the Soviet Union made a thinly veiled threat against the three nations. This episode not only enhanced the Israeli view that an independent nuclear capability was needed to prevent reliance on potentially unreliable allies, but also led to a sense of debt among French leaders that they had failed to fulfill commitments made to a partner. French premier Guy Mollet is even quoted as saying privately that France "owed" the bomb to Israel.

On 3 October 1957, France and Israel signed a revised agreement calling for France to build a 24 MWt reactor (although the cooling systems and waste facilities were designed to handle three times that power) and, in protocols that were not committed to paper, a chemical reprocessing plant. This complex was constructed in secret, and outside the IAEA inspection regime, by French and Israeli technicians at Dimona, in the Negev desert under the leadership of Col. Manes Pratt of the IDF Ordinance Corps.

Both the scale of the project and the secrecy involved made the construction of Dimona a massive undertaking. A new intelligence agency, the Office of Science Liasons,(LEKEM) was created to provide security and intelligence for the project. At the height construction, some 1,500 Israelis some French workers were employed building Dimona. To maintain secrecy, French customs officials were told that the largest of the reactor components, such as the reactor tank, were part of a desalinization plant bound for Latin America. In addition, after buying heavy water from Norway on the condition that it not be transferred to a third country, the French Air Force secretly flew as much as four tons of the substance to Israel.

Trouble arose in May 1960, when France began to pressure Israel to make the project public and to submit to international inspections of the site, threatening to withhold the reactor fuel unless they did. President de Gaulle was concerned that the inevitable scandal following any revelations about French assistance with the project, especially the chemical reprocessing plant, would have negative repercussions for France's international position, already on shaky ground because of its war in Algeria.

At a subsequent meeting with Ben-Gurion, de Gaulle offered to sell Israel fighter aircraft in exchange for stopping work on the reprocessing plant, and came away from the meeting convinced that the matter was closed. It was not. Over the next few months, Israel worked out a compromise. France would supply the uranium and components already placed on order and would not insist on international inspections. In return, Israel would assure France that they had no intention of making atomic weapons, would not reprocess any plutonium, and would reveal the existence of the reactor, which would be completed without French assistance. In reality, not much changed - French contractors finished work on the reactor and reprocessing plant, uranium fuel was delivered and the reactor went critical in 1964.

The United States first became aware of Dimona's existence after U-2 overflights in 1958 captured the facility's construction, but it was not identified as a nuclear site until two years later. The complex was variously explained as a textile plant, an agricultural station, and a metallurgical research facility, until David Ben-Gurion stated in December 1960 that Dimona complex was a nuclear research center built for "peaceful purposes."

There followed two decades in which the United States, through a combination of benign neglect, erroneous analysis, and successful Israeli deception, failed to discern first the details of Israel's nuclear program. As early as 8 December 1960, the CIA issued a report outlining Dimona's implications for nuclear proliferation, and the CIA station in Tel Aviv had determined by the mid-1960s that the Israeli nuclear weapons program was an established and irreversible fact.

United States inspectors visited Dimona seven times during the 1960s, but they were unable to obtain an accurate picture of the activities carried out there, largely due to tight Israeli control over the timing and agenda of the visits. The Israelis went so far as to install false control room panels and to brick over elevators and hallways that accessed certain areas of the facility. The inspectors were able to report that there was no clear scientific research or civilian nuclear power program justifying such a large reactor - circumstantial evidence of the Israeli bomb program - but found no evidence of "weapons related activities" such as the existence of a plutonium reprocessing plant.

Although the United States government did not encourage or approve of the Israeli nuclear program, it also did nothing to stop it. Walworth Barbour, US ambassador to Israel from 1961-73, the bomb program's crucial years, primarily saw his job as being to insulate the President from facts which might compel him to act on the nuclear issue, alledgedly saying at one point that "The President did not send me there to give him problems. He does not want to be told any bad news." After the 1967 war, Barbour even put a stop to military attachйs' intelligence collection efforts around Dimona. Even when Barbour did authorize forwarding information, as he did in 1966 when embassy staff learned that Israel was beginning to put nuclear warheads in missiles, the message seemed to disappear into the bureaucracy and was never acted upon.

In early 1968, the CIA issued a report concluding that Israel had successfully started production of uclear weapons. This estimate, however, was based on an informal conversation between Carl Duckett, head of the CIA's Office of Science and Technology, and Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb. Teller said that, based on conversations with friends in the Israeli scientific and defense establishment, he had concluded that Israel was capable of building the bomb, and that the CIA should not wait for an Israeli test to make a final assessment because that test would never be carried out.

CIA estimates of the Israeli arsenal's size did not improve with time. In 1974, Duckett estimated that Israel had between ten and twenty nuclear weapons. The upper bound was derived from CIA speculation regarding the number of possible Israeli targets, and not from any specific intelligence. Because this target list was presumed to be relatively static, this remained the official American estimate until the early 1980s.

The actual size and composition of Israel's nuclear stockpile is uncertain, and is the subject of various estimates and reports. It is widely reported that Israel had two bombs in 1967, and that Prime Minister Eshkol ordered them armed in Israel's first nuclear alert during the Six-Day War. It is also reported that, fearing defeat in the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Israelis assembled 13 twenty-kiloton atomic bombs.

Israel could potentially have produced a few dozen nuclear warheads in the period 1970-1980, and might have possessed 100 to 200 warheads by the mid-1990s. In 1986 descriptions and photographs of Israeli nuclear warheads were published in the London Sunday Times of a purported underground bomb factory. The photographs were taken by Mordechai Vanunu, a dismissed Israeli nuclear technician. His information led some experts to conclude that Israel had a stockpile of 100 to 200 nuclear devices at that time.

By the late 1990s the U.S. Intelligence Community estimated that Israel possessed between 75-130 weapons, based on production estimates. The stockpile would certainly include warheads for mobile Jericho-1 and Jericho-2 missiles, as well as bombs for Israeli aircraft, and may include other tactical nuclear weapons of various types. Some published estimates even claimed that Israel might have as many as 400 nuclear weapons by the late 1990s. We believe these numbers are exaggerated.



The Dimona nuclear reactor is the source of plutonium for Israeli nuclear weapons, and the number of nuclear weapons that could have been produced by Israel can be estimated on the basis of the power level of this reactor. Information made public in 1986 by Mordechai Vanunu indicated that at that time, weapons grade plutonium was being produced at a rate of about 40 kilograms annually. If this figure corresponded with the steady-state capacity of the entire Dimona facility, analysts suggested that the reactor might have a power level of at least 150 megawatts, about twice the power level at which is was believed to be operating around 1970. To accomodate this higher power level, analysts had suggested that Israel had constructed an enlarged cooling system. An alternative interpretation of the information supplied by Vanunu was that the reactor's power level had remained at about 75 megawatts, and that the production rate of plutonium in the early 1980s reflected a backlog of previously generated material.

The upper and lower plausible limits on Israel's stockpile may be bounded by considering several variables, several of which are generic to any nuclear weapons program. The reactor may have operated an average of between 200 and 300 days annually, and produced approximately 0.9 to 1.0 grams of plutonium for each thermal megawatt day. Israel may use between 4 and 5 kilograms of plutonium per weapon [5 kilograms is a conservative estimate, and Vanunu reported that Israeli weapons used 4 kg].

The key variable that is specific to Israel is the power level of the reactor, which is variously reported to be at least 75 MWt and possibly as high as 200 MWt. New high-resolution satellite imagery provides important insight this matter. The imagery of the Dimona nuclear reactor was acquired by the Public Eye Project of the Federation of American Scientists from Space Imaging Corporation's IKONOS satellite. The cooling towers associated with the Dimona reactor are clearly visible and identifiable in satellite imagery. Comparison of recently acquired commercial IKONOS imagery with declassified American CORONA reconnaissance satellite imagery indicates that no new cooling towers were constructed in the years between 1971 and 2000. This strongly suggests that the reactor's power level has not been increased significantly during this period. This would suggest an annual production rate of plutonium of about 20 kilograms.

Based on plausible upper and lower bounds of the operating practices at the reactor, Israel could have thus produced enough plutonium for at least 100 nuclear weapons, but probably not significantly more than 200 weapons.

Some type of non-nuclear test, perhaps a zero yield or implosion test, occurred on 2 November 1966 [possibly at Al-Naqab in the Negev]. There is no evidence that Israel has ever carried out a nuclear test, although many observers speculated that a suspected nuclear explosion in the southern Indian Ocean in 1979 was a joint South African-Israeli test.


Sources and Resources
Bibliography of Israeli Nuclear Science Publications by Mark Gorwitz, June 2005
The Third Temple's Holy Of Holies: Israel's Nuclear Weapons Warner D. Farr, LTC, U.S. Army, September 1999
The Bomb That Never Is by Avner Cohen, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 2000, Vol 56, No. 3 pp.22-23
Israel and the Bomb Avner Cohen has provides a detailed account of of the political aspects of Israel's nuclear history that draws on thousands of American and Israeli government documents-most of them recently declassified and never before cited-and more than one hundred interviews with key individuals who played important roles in this story.
Obsessive secrecy undermines democracy By Reuven Pedatzur Ha'aretz. Tuesday, August 8, 2000 -- Cohen published "Israel and the Bomb" in the United States, and a Hebrew translation of the book has appeared here. In the eyes of the defense establishment, Cohen has committed a double sin.
Fighting to preserve the tattered veil of secrecy By Ronen Bergman The publication of Dr. Avner Cohen's book and of the Vanunu trial transcripts set off alarm bells for the Defense Ministry's chief of security, who is striving to protect the traditional opacity regarding Israel's nuclear affairs.
Blast, from the past to the present By Yirmiyahu Yovel Ha'aretz. 28 July 2000 -- If, in the context of the peace agreements and talks with the United States, Israel were to confirm its nuclear capability - while committing itself to no nuclear testing and pledging to build its defense system on conventional weapons as in the past - maybe then it might achieve at least de facto recognition, if not international legitimacy, for its nuclear weaponry, to be used only as a "last resort" and a tool for safeguarding peace after Israel withdraws.
Israel The Nuclear Potential of Individual Countries Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons Problems of Extension Appendix 2 Russian Federation Foreign Intelligence Service 6 April 1995
The Samson Option. Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy Seymour M Hersh, [New York: Random House, 1991]
Israel: Plutonium Production The Risk Report Volume 2 Number 4 (July-August 1996).
Israel: Uranium Processing and Enrichment The Risk Report Volume 2 Number 4 (July-August 1996).

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/farr.htm

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THE THIRD TEMPLE'S HOLY OF HOLIES:
ISRAEL'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Warner D. Farr, LTC, U.S. Army

The Counterproliferation Papers

Future Warfare Series No. 2

USAF Counterproliferation Center

Air War College

Air University

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama

September 1999

The Counterproliferation Papers Series was established by the USAF Counterproliferation Center to provide information and analysis to U.S. national security policy-makers and USAF officers to assist them in countering the threat posed by adversaries equipped with weapons of mass destruction. Copies of papers in this series are available from the USAF Counterproliferation Center, 325 Chennault Circle, Maxwell AFB AL 36112-6427. The fax number is (334) 953-7538; phone (334) 953-7538.

Counterproliferation Paper No. 2
USAF Counterproliferation Center
Air War College

Air University
Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 36112-6427

The internet address for the USAF Counterproliferation Center is:
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc-cps.htm

Contents:

Page

Disclaimer i

The Author ii

Acknowledgments iii

Abstract iv

I. Introduction 1

II. 1948-1962: With French Cooperation 3

III. 1963-1973: Seeing the Project Through to Completion 9

IV. 1974-1999: Bringing the Bomb Up the Basement Stairs 15

Appendix: Estimates of the Israeli Nuclear Arsenal 23

Notes 25

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this publication are those solely of the author and are not a statement of official policy or position of the U.S. Government, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, or the USAF Counterproliferation Center.

The Author

Colonel Warner D. “Rocky” Farr, Medical Corps, Master Flight Surgeon, U.S. Army, graduated from the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama before becoming the Command Surgeon, U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He also serves as the Surgeon for the U.S. Army Special Forces Command, U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command, and the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. With thirty-three years of military service, he holds an Associate of Arts from the State University of New York, Bachelor of Science from Northeast Louisiana University, Doctor of Medicine from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Masters of Public Health from the University of Texas, and has completed medical residencies in aerospace medicine, and anatomic and clinical pathology. He is the only army officer to be board certified in these three specialties. Solo qualified in the TH-55A Army helicopter, he received flight training in the T-37 and T-38 aircraft as part of his USAF School of Aerospace Medicine residency.

Colonel Farr was a Master Sergeant Special Forces medic prior to receiving a direct commission to second lieutenant. He is now the senior Special Forces medical officer in the U.S. Army with prior assignments in the 5th, 7th, and 10th Special Forces Groups (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, in Vietnam, the United States, and Germany. He has advised the 12th and 20th Special Forces Groups (Airborne) in the reserves and national guard, served as Division Surgeon, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), and as the Deputy Commander of the U.S. Army Aeromedical Center, Fort Rucker, Alabama.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge the assistance, guidance and encouragement from my Air War College (AWC) faculty research advisor, Dr. Andrew Terrill, instructor of the Air War College Arab-Israeli Wars course. Thanks are also due to the great aid of the Air University librarians. The author is also indebted to Captain J. R. Saunders, USN and Colonel Robert Sutton, USAF. Who also offered helpful suggestions.

Abstract

This paper is a history of the Israeli nuclear weapons program drawn from a review of unclassified sources. Israel began its search for nuclear weapons at the inception of the state in 1948. As payment for Israeli participation in the Suez Crisis of 1956, France provided nuclear expertise and constructed a reactor complex for Israel at Dimona capable of large-scale plutonium production and reprocessing. The United States discovered the facility by 1958 and it was a subject of continual discussions between American presidents and Israeli prime ministers. Israel used delay and deception to at first keep the United States at bay, and later used the nuclear option as a bargaining chip for a consistent American conventional arms supply. After French disengagement in the early 1960s, Israel progressed on its own, including through several covert operations, to project completion. Before the 1967 Six-Day War, they felt their nuclear facility threatened and reportedly assembled several nuclear devices. By the 1973 Yom Kippur War Israel had a number of sophisticated nuclear bombs, deployed them, and considered using them. The Arabs may have limited their war aims because of their knowledge of the Israeli nuclear weapons. Israel has most probably conducted several nuclear bomb tests. They have continued to modernize and vertically proliferate and are now one of the world's larger nuclear powers. Using “bomb in the basement” nuclear opacity, Israel has been able to use its arsenal as a deterrent to the Arab world while not technically violating American nonproliferation requirements.


The Third Temple's Holy of Holies:
Israel's Nuclear Weapons

Warner D. Farr

I. Introduction

This is the end of the Third Temple.

- Attributed to Moshe Dayan

during the Yom Kippur War[1]

As Zionists in Palestine watched World War II from their distant sideshow, what lessons were learned? The soldiers of the Empire of Japan vowed on their emperor's sacred throne to fight to the death and not face the inevitability of an American victory. Many Jews wondered if the Arabs would try to push them into the Mediterranean Sea. After the devastating American nuclear attack on Japan, the soldier leaders of the empire reevaluated their fight to the death position. Did the bomb give the Japanese permission to surrender and live? It obviously played a military role, a political role, and a peacemaking role. How close was the mindset of the Samurai culture to the Islamic culture? Did David Ben-Gurion take note and wonder if the same would work for Israel?[2] Could Israel find the ultimate deterrent that would convince her opponents that they could never, ever succeed? Was Israel's ability to cause a modern holocaust the best way to guarantee never having another one?

The use of unconventional weapons in the Middle East is not new. The British had used chemical artillery shells against the Turks at the second battle of Gaza in 1917. They continued chemical shelling against the Shiites in Iraq in 1920 and used aerial chemicals in the 1920s and 1930s in Iraq.[3]

Israel's involvement with nuclear technology starts at the founding of the state in 1948. Many talented Jewish scientists immigrated to Palestine during the thirties and forties, in particular, Ernst David Bergmann. He would become the director of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission and the founder of Israel's efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Bergmann, a close friend and advisor of Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, counseled that nuclear energy could compensate for Israel's poor natural resources and small pool of military manpower. He pointed out that there was just one nuclear energy, not two, suggesting nuclear weapons were part of the plan.[4] As early as 1948, Israeli scientists actively explored the Negev Desert for uranium deposits on orders from the Israeli Ministry of Defense. By 1950, they found low-grade deposits near Beersheba and Sidon and worked on a low power method of heavy water production.[5]

The newly created Weizmann Institute of Science actively supported nuclear research by 1949, with Dr. Bergmann heading the chemistry division. Promising students went overseas to study nuclear engineering and physics at Israeli government expense. Israel secretly founded its own Atomic Energy Commission in 1952 and placed it under the control of the Defense Ministry.[6] The foundations of a nuclear program were beginning to develop.

II. 1948-1962: With French Cooperation

It has always been our intention to develop a nuclear potential.

- Ephraim Katzir[7]

In 1949, Francis Perrin, a member of the French Atomic Energy Commission, nuclear physicist, and friend of Dr. Bergmann visited the Weizmann Institute. He invited Israeli scientists to the new French nuclear research facility at Saclay. A joint research effort was subsequently set up between the two nations. Perrin publicly stated in 1986 that French scientists working in America on the Manhattan Project and in Canada during World War II were told they could use their knowledge in France provided they kept it a secret.[8] Perrin reportedly provided nuclear data to Israel on the same basis.[9] One Israeli scientist worked at the U.S. Los Alamos National Laboratory and may have directly brought expertise home.[10]

After the Second World War, France's nuclear research capability was quite limited. France had been a leading research center in nuclear physics before World War II, but had fallen far behind the U.S., the U.S.S.R., the United Kingdom, and even Canada. Israel and France were at a similar level of expertise after the war, and Israeli scientists could make significant contributions to the French effort. Progress in nuclear science and technology in France and Israel remained closely linked throughout the early fifties. Israeli scientists probably helped construct the G-1 plutonium production reactor and UP-1 reprocessing plant at Marcoule.[11] France profited from two Israeli patents on heavy water production and low-grade uranium enrichment.[12] In the 1950s and into the early 1960s, France and Israel had close relations in many areas. France was Israel's principal arms supplier, and as instability spread through French colonies in North Africa, Israel provided valuable intelligence obtained from contacts with sephardic Jews in those countries.

The two nations collaborated, with the United Kingdom, in planning and staging the Suez Canal-Sinai operation against Egypt in October 1956. The Suez Crisis became the real genesis of Israel's nuclear weapons production program. With the Czech-Egyptian arms agreement in 1955, Israel became worried. When absorbed, the Soviet-bloc equipment would triple Egyptian military strength. After Egypt's President Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran in 1953, Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion ordered the development of chemical munitions and other unconventional munitions, including nuclear.[13] Six weeks before the Suez Canal operation, Israel felt the time was right to approach France for assistance in building a nuclear reactor. Canada had set a precedent a year earlier when it had agreed to build a 40-megawatt CIRUS reactor in India. Shimon Peres, the Director-General of the Defense Ministry and aide to Prime Minister (and Defense Minister) David Ben-Gurion, and Bergmann met with members of the CEA (France's Atomic Energy Commission). During September 1956, they reached an initial understanding to provide a research reactor. The two countries concluded final agreements at a secret meeting outside Paris where they also finalized details of the Suez Canal operation.[14]

For the United Kingdom and France, the Suez operation, launched on October 29, 1956, was a total disaster. Israel's part was a military success, allowing it to occupy the entire Sinai Peninsula by 4 November, but the French and British canal invasion on 6 November was a political failure. Their attempt to advance south along the Suez Canal stopped due to a cease-fire under fierce Soviet and U.S. pressure. Both nations pulled out, leaving Israel to face the pressure from the two superpowers alone. Soviet Premier Bulganin and President Khrushchev issued an implicit threat of nuclear attack if Israel did not withdraw from the Sinai.

On 7 November 1956, a secret meeting was held between Israeli foreign minister Golda Meir, Shimon Peres, and French foreign and defense ministers Christian Pineau and Maurice Bourges-Manoury. The French, embarrassed by their failure to support their ally in the operation, found the Israelis deeply concerned about a Soviet threat. In this meeting, they substantially modified the initial understanding beyond a research reactor. Peres secured an agreement from France to assist Israel in developing a nuclear deterrent. After further months of negotiation, agreement was reached for an 18-megawatt (thermal) research reactor of the EL-3 type, along with plutonium separation technology. France and Israel signed the agreement in October 1957.[15] Later the reactor was officially upgraded to 24 megawatts, but the actual specifications issued to engineers provided for core cooling ducts sufficient for up to three times this power level, along with a plutonium plant of similar capacity. Data from insider reports revealed in 1986 would estimate the power level at 125-150 megawatts.[16] The reactor, not connected to turbines for power production, needed this increase in size only to increase its plutonium production. How this upgrade came about remains unknown, but Bourges-Maunoury, replacing Mollet as French prime minister, may have contributed to it.[17] Shimon Peres, the guiding hand in the Israeli nuclear program, had a close relationship with Bourges-Maunoury and probably helped him politically.[18]

Why was France so eager to help Israel? DeMollet and then de Gaulle had a place for Israel within their strategic vision. A nuclear Israel could be a counterforce against Egypt in France's fight in Algeria. Egypt was openly aiding the rebel forces there. France also wanted to obtain the bomb itself. The United States had embargoed certain nuclear enabling computer technology from France. Israel could get the technology from America and pass it through to France. The U.S. furnished Israel heavy water, under the Atoms for Peace program, for the small research reactor at Soreq. France could use this heavy water. Since France was some years away from nuclear testing and success, Israeli science was an insurance policy in case of technical problems in France's own program.[19] The Israeli intelligence community's knowledge of past French (especially Vichy) anti-Semitic transgressions and the continued presence of former Nazi collaborators in French intelligence provided the Israelis with some blackmail opportunities.[20] The cooperation was so close that Israel worked with France on the preproduction design of early Mirage jet aircraft, designed to be capable of delivering nuclear bombs.[21]

French experts secretly built the Israeli reactor underground at Dimona, in the Negev desert of southern Israel near Beersheba. Hundreds of French engineers and technicians filled Beersheba, the biggest town in the Negev. Many of the same contractors who built Marcoule were involved. SON (a French firm) built the plutonium separation plants in both France and Israel. The ground was broken for the EL-102 reactor (as it was known to France) in early 1958.

Israel used many subterfuges to conceal activity at Dimona. It called the plant a manganese plant, and rarely, a textile plant. The United States by the end of 1958 had taken pictures of the project from U-2 spy planes, and identified the site as a probable reactor complex. The concentration of Frenchmen was also impossible to hide from ground observers. In 1960, before the reactor was operating, France, now under the leadership of de Gaulle, reconsidered and decided to suspend the project. After several months of negotiation, they reached an agreement in November that allowed the reactor to proceed if Israel promised not to make nuclear weapons and to announce the project to the world. Work on the plutonium reprocessing plant halted. On 2 December 1960, before Israel could make announcements, the U.S. State Department issued a statement that Israel had a secret nuclear installation. By 16 December, this became public knowledge with its appearance in the New York Times. On 21 December, Ben-Gurion announced that Israel was building a 24-megawatt reactor “for peaceful purposes.”[22]

Over the next year, relations between the U.S. and Israel became strained over the Dimona reactor. The U.S. accepted Israel's assertions at face value publicly, but exerted pressure privately. Although Israel allowed a cursory inspection by well known American physicists Eugene Wigner and I. I. Rabi, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion consistently refused to allow regular international inspections. The final resolution between the U.S. and Israel was a commitment from Israel to use the facility for peaceful purposes, and to admit an U.S. inspection team twice a year. These inspections began in 1962 and continued until 1969. Inspectors saw only the above ground part of the buildings, not the many levels underground and the visit frequency was never more than once a year. The above ground areas had simulated control rooms, and access to the underground areas was kept hidden while the inspectors were present. Elevators leading to the secret underground plutonium reprocessing plant were actually bricked over.[23] Much of the information on these inspections and the political maneuvering around it has just been declassified.[24]

One interpretation of Ben-Gurion's “peaceful purposes” pledge given to America is that he interpreted it to mean that nuclear weapon development was not excluded if used strictly for defensive, and not offensive purposes. Israel's security position in the late fifties and early sixties was far more precarious than now. After three wars, with a robust domestic arms industry and a reliable defense supply line from the U.S., Israel felt much more secure. During the fifties and early sixties a number of attempts by Israel to obtain security guarantees from the U.S. to place Israel under the U.S. nuclear umbrella like NATO or Japan, were unsuccessful. If the U.S. had conducted a forward-looking policy to restrain Israel's proliferation, along with a sure defense agreement, we could have prevented the development of Israel's nuclear arsenal.

One common discussion in the literature concerns testing of Israeli nuclear devices. In the early phases, the amount of collaboration between the French and Israeli nuclear weapons design programs made testing unnecessary. In addition, although their main efforts were with plutonium, the Israelis may have amassed enough uranium for gun-assembled type bombs which, like the Hiroshima bomb, require no testing. One expert postulated, based on unnamed sources, that the French nuclear test in 1960 made two nuclear powers not one—such was the depth of collaboration.]25] There were several Israeli observers at the French nuclear tests and the Israelis had “unrestricted access to French nuclear test explosion data.”[26] Israel also supplied essential technology and hardware.[27] The French reportedly shipped reprocessed plutonium back to Israel as part of their repayment for Israeli scientific help.

However, this constant, decade long, French cooperation and support was soon to end and Israel would have to go it alone.

III. 1963-1973: Seeing the Project to Completion

To act in such a way that the Jews who died in the gas chambers would be the last Jews to die without defending themselves.

- Golda Meir[28 ]

Israel would soon need its own, independent, capabilities to complete its nuclear program. Only five countries had facilities for uranium enrichment: the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, and China. The Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, or NUMEC, in Apollo, Pennsylvania was a small fuel rod fabrication plant. In 1965, the U.S. government accused Dr. Zalman Shapiro, the corporation president, of “losing” 200 pounds of highly enriched uranium. Although investigated by the Atomic Energy Commission, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other government agencies and inquiring reporters, no answers were available in what was termed the Apollo Affair.[29] Many remain convinced that the Israelis received 200 pounds of enriched uranium sometime before 1965.[30] One source links Rafi Eitan, an Israeli Mossad agent and later the handler of spy Jonathan Pollard, with NUMEC.[31] In the 1990s when the NUMEC plant was disassembled, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission found over 100 kilograms of plutonium in the structural components of the contaminated plant, casting doubt on 200 pounds going to Israel.[32]

The joint venture with France gave Israel several ingredients for nuclear weapons construction: a production reactor, a factory to extract plutonium from the spent fuel, and the design. In 1962, the Dimona reactor went critical; the French resumed work on the underground plutonium reprocessing plant, and completed it in 1964 or 1965. The acquisition of this reactor and related technologies was clearly intended for military purposes from the outset (not “dual-use”), as the reactor has no other function. The security at Dimona (officially the Negev Nuclear Research Center) was particularly stringent. For straying into Dimona's airspace, the Israelis shot down one of their own Mirage fighters during the Six-Day War. The Israelis also shot down a Libyan airliner with 104 passengers, in 1973, which had strayed over the Sinai.[33] There is little doubt that some time in the late sixties Israel became the sixth nation to manufacture nuclear weapons. Other things they needed were extra uranium and extra heavy water to run the reactor at a higher rate. Norway, France, and the United States provided the heavy water and “Operation Plumbat” provided the uranium.

After the 1967 war, France stopped supplies of uranium to Israel. These supplies were from former French colonies of Gabon, Niger, and the Central Africa Republic.[34] Israel had small amounts of uranium from Negev phosphate mines and had bought some from Argentina and South Africa, but not in the large quantities supplied by the French. Through a complicated undercover operation, the Israelis obtained uranium oxide, known as yellow cake, held in a stockpile in Antwerp. Using a West German front company and a high seas transfer from one ship to another in the Mediterranean, they obtained 200 tons of yellow cake. The smugglers labeled the 560 sealed oil drums “Plumbat,” which means lead, hence “Operation Plumbat.”[35] The West German government may have been involved directly but remained undercover to avoid antagonizing the Soviets or Arabs.[36] Israeli intelligence information on the Nazi past of some West German officials may have provided the motivation.[37]

Norway sold 20 tons of heavy water to Israel in 1959 for use in an experimental power reactor. Norway insisted on the right to inspect the heavy water for 32 years, but did so only once, in April 1961, while it was still in storage barrels at Dimona. Israel simply promised that the heavy water was for peaceful purposes. In addition, quantities much more than what would be required for the peaceful purpose reactors were imported. Norway either colluded or at the least was very slow to ask to inspect as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) rules required.[38] Norway and Israel concluded an agreement in 1990 for Israel to sell back 10.5 tons of the heavy water to Norway. Recent calculations reveal that Israel has used two tons and will retain eight tons more.[39]

Author Seymour Hersh, writing in the Samson Option says Prime Minister Levi Eshkol delayed starting weapons production even after Dimona was finished.[40] The reactor operated and the plutonium collected, but remained unseparated. The first extraction of plutonium probably occurred in late 1965. By 1966, enough plutonium was on hand to develop a weapon in time for the Six-Day War in 1967. Some type of non-nuclear test, perhaps a zero yield or implosion test, occurred on November 2, 1966. After this time, considerable collaboration between Israel and South Africa developed and continued through the 1970s and 1980s. South Africa became Israel's primary supplier of uranium for Dimona. A Center for Nonproliferation Studies report lists four separate Israel-South Africa “clandestine nuclear deals.” Three concerned yellowcake and one was tritium.[41] Other sources of yellowcake may have included Portugal.[42]

Egypt attempted unsuccessfully to obtain nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union both before and after the Six-Day War. President Nasser received from the Soviet Union a questionable nuclear guarantee instead and declared that Egypt would develop its own nuclear program.[43 ] His rhetoric of 1965 and 1966 about preventive war and Israeli nuclear weapons coupled with overflights of the Dimona rector contributed to the tensions that led to war. The Egyptian Air Force claims to have first overflown Dimona and recognized the existence of a nuclear reactor in 1965.[44 ] Of the 50 American HAWK antiaircraft missiles in Israeli hands, half ringed Dimona by 1965.[45] Israel considered the Egyptian overflights of May 16, 1967 as possible pre-strike reconnaissance. One source lists such Egyptian overflights, along with United Nations peacekeeper withdrawal and Egyptian troop movements into the Sinai, as one of the three “tripwires” which would drive Israel to war.[46] There was an Egyptian military plan to attack Dimona at the start of any war but Nasser vetoed it.[47] He believed Israel would have the bomb in 1968.[48] Israel assembled two nuclear bombs and ten days later went to war.[49] Nasser's plan, if he had one, may have been to gain and consolidate territorial gains before Israel had a nuclear option.[50] He was two weeks too late.

The Israelis aggressively pursued an aircraft delivery system from the United States. President Johnson was less emphatic about nonproliferation than President Kennedy-or perhaps had more pressing concerns, such as Vietnam. He had a long history of both Jewish friends and pressing political contributors coupled with some first hand experience of the Holocaust, having toured concentration camps at the end of World War II.[51] Israel pressed him hard for aircraft (A-4E Skyhawks initially and F-4E Phantoms later) and obtained agreement in 1966 under the condition that the aircraft would not be used to deliver nuclear weapons. The State Department attempted to link the aircraft purchases to continued inspection visits. President Johnson overruled the State Department concerning Dimona inspections.[52] Although denied at the time, America delivered the F-4Es, on September 5, 1969, with nuclear capable hardware intact.[53]

The Samson Option states that Moshe Dayan gave the go-ahead for starting weapon production in early 1968, putting the plutonium separation plant into full operation. Israel began producing three to five bombs a year. The book Critical Mass asserts that Israel had two bombs in 1967, and that Prime Minister Eshkol ordered them armed in Israel's first nuclear alert during the Six-Day War.[54] Avner Cohen in his recent book, Israel and the Bomb, agrees that Israel had a deliverable nuclear capability in the 1967 war. He quotes Munya Mardor, leader of Rafael, the Armament Development Authority, and other unnamed sources, that Israel “cobbled together” two deliverable devices.[55]

Having the bomb meant articulating, even if secretly, a use doctrine. In addition to the “Samson Option” of last resort, other triggers for nuclear use may have included successful Arab penetration of populated areas, destruction of the Israeli Air Force, massive air strikes or chemical/biological strikes on Israeli cities, and Arab use of nuclear weapons.[56]

In 1971, Israel began purchasing krytrons, ultra high-speed electronic switching tubes that are “dual-use," having both industrial and nuclear weapons applications as detonators. In the 1980s, the United States charged an American, Richard Smith (or Smyth), with smuggling 810 krytrons to Israel.[57] He vanished before trial and reportedly lives outside Tel Aviv. The Israelis apologized for the action saying that the krytrons were for medical research.[58] Israel returned 469 of the krytrons but the rest, they declared, had been destroyed in testing conventional weapons. Some believe they went to South Africa.[59] Smyth has also been reported to have been involved in a 1972 smuggling operation to obtain solid rocket fuel binder compounds for the Jericho II missile and guidance component hardware.[60] Observers point to the Jericho missile itself as proof of a nuclear capability as it is not suited to the delivery of conventional munitions.[61]

On the afternoon of 6 October 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel in a coordinated surprise attack, beginning the Yom Kippur War. Caught with only regular forces on duty, augmented by reservists with a low readiness level, Israeli front lines crumbled. By early afternoon on 7 October, no effective forces were in the southern Golan Heights and Syrian forces had reached the edge of the plateau, overlooking the Jordan River. This crisis brought Israel to its second nuclear alert.

Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, obviously not at his best at a press briefing, was, according to Time magazine, rattled enough to later tell the prime minister that “this is the end of the third temple,” referring to an impending collapse of the state of Israel. “Temple” was also the code word for nuclear weapons. Prime Minister Golda Meir and her “kitchen cabinet” made the decision on the night of 8 October. The Israelis assembled 13 twenty-kiloton atomic bombs. The number and in fact the entire story was later leaked by the Israelis as a great psychological warfare tool. Although most probably plutonium devices, one source reports they were enriched uranium bombs. The Jericho missiles at Hirbat Zachariah and the nuclear strike F-4s at Tel Nof were armed and prepared for action against Syrian and Egyptian targets. They also targeted Damascus with nuclear capable long-range artillery although it is not certain they had nuclear artillery shells.[62]

U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was notified of the alert several hours later on the morning of 9 October. The U.S. decided to open an aerial resupply pipeline to Israel, and Israeli aircraft began picking up supplies that day. Although stockpile depletion remained a concern, the military situation stabilized on October 8th and 9th as Israeli reserves poured into the battle and averted disaster. Well before significant American resupply had reached Israeli forces, the Israelis counterattacked and turned the tide on both fronts.

On 11 October, a counterattack on the Golan broke the back of Syria's offensive, and on 15 and 16 October, Israel launched a surprise crossing of the Suez Canal into Africa. Soon the Israelis encircled the Egyptian Third Army and it was faced with annihilation on the east bank of the Suez Canal, with no protective forces remaining between the Israeli Army and Cairo. The first U.S. flights arrived on 14 October.[63] Israeli commandos flew to Fort Benning, Georgia to train with the new American TOW anti-tank missiles and return with a C-130 Hercules aircraft full of them in time for the decisive Golan battle. American commanders in Germany depleted their stocks of missiles, at that time only shared with the British and West Germans, and sent them forward to Israel.[64]

Thus started the subtle, opaque use of the Israeli bomb to ensure that the United States kept its pledge to maintain Israel's conventional weapons edge over its foes.[65] There is significant anecdotal evidence that Henry Kissinger told President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, that the reason for the U.S. airlift was that the Israelis were close to “going nuclear.”[66]

A similar Soviet pipeline to the Arabs, equally robust, may or may not have included a ship with nuclear weapons on it, detected from nuclear trace emissions and shadowed by the Americans from the Dardanelles. The Israelis believe that the Soviets discovered Israeli nuclear preparations from COSMOS satellite photographs and decided to equalize the odds.[67] The Soviet ship arrived in Alexandria on either 18 or 23 October (sources disagree), and remained, without unloading, until November 1973. The ship may have represented a Soviet guarantee to the Arab combatants to neutralize the Israeli nuclear option.[68] While some others dismiss the story completely, the best-written review article concludes that the answer is “obscure.” Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev threatened, on 24 October, to airlift Soviet airborne troops to reinforce the Egyptians cut off on the eastern side of the Suez Canal and put seven Soviet airborne divisions on alert.[69] Recent evidence indicates that the Soviets sent nuclear missile submarines also.[70] Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine claimed that the two Soviet SCUD brigades deployed in Egypt each had a nuclear warhead. American satellite photos seemed to confirm this. The U.S. passed to Israel images of trucks, of the type used to transport nuclear warheads, parked near the launchers.[71] President Nixon's response was to bring the U.S. to worldwide nuclear alert the next day, whereupon Israel went to nuclear alert a third time.[72] This sudden crisis quickly faded as Prime Minister Meir agreed to a cease-fire, relieving the pressure on the Egyptian Third Army.

Shimon Peres had argued for a pre-war nuclear demonstration to deter the Arabs. Arab strategies and war aims in 1967 may have been restricted because of a fear of the Israeli “bomb in the basement,” the undeclared nuclear option. The Egyptians planned to capture an eastern strip next to the Suez Canal and then hold. The Syrians did not aggressively commit more forces to battle or attempt to drive through the 1948 Jordan River border to the Israeli center. Both countries seemed not to violate Israel proper and avoided triggering one of the unstated Israeli reasons to employ nuclear weapons.[73] Others discount any Arab planning based on nuclear capabilities.[74] Peres also credits Dimona with bringing Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem to make peace.[75] This position was seemingly confirmed by Sadat in a private conversation with Israeli Defense Minister Ezer Weizman.[76]

At the end of the Yom Kippur War (a nation shaking experience), Israel has her nuclear arsenal fully functional and tested by a deployment. The arsenal, still opaque and unspoken, was no longer a secret, especially to the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union.

IV. 1974-1999: Bringing the Bomb up the Basement Stairs

Never Again!

- Reportedly welded on the
first Israeli nuclear bomb[77]

Shortly after the 1973 war, Israel allegedly fielded considerable nuclear artillery consisting of American 175 mm and 203 mm self-propelled artillery pieces, capable of firing nuclear shells. If true, this shows that Dimona had rapidly solved the problems of designing smaller weapons since the crude 1967 devices. If true, these low yield, tactical nuclear artillery rounds could reach at least 25 miles. The Israeli Defense Force did have three battalions of the 175mm artillery (36 tubes), reportedly with 108 nuclear shells and more for the 203mm tubes. Some sources describe a program to extend the range to 45 miles. They may have offered the South Africans these low yield, miniaturized, shells described as, “the best stuff we got.”[78] By 1976, according to one unclassified source, the Central Intelligence Agency believed that the Israelis were using plutonium from Dimona and had 10 to 20 nuclear weapons available.[79]

In 1972, two Israeli scientists, Isaiah Nebenzahl and Menacehm Levin, developed a cheaper, faster uranium enrichment process. It used a laser beam for isotope separation. It could reportedly enrich seven grams of Uranium 235 sixty percent in one day.[80] Sources later reported that Israel was using both centrifuges and lasers to enrich uranium.[81]

Questions remained regarding full-scale nuclear weapons tests. Primitive gun assembled type devices need no testing. Researchers can test non-nuclear components of other types separately and use extensive computer simulations. Israel received data from the 1960 French tests, and one source concludes that Israel accessed information from U.S. tests conducted in the 1950s and early 1960s. This may have included both boosted and thermonuclear weapons data.[82] Underground testing in a hollowed out cavern is difficult to detect. A West Germany Army Magazine, Wehrtechnik, in June 1976, claimed that Western reports documented a 1963 underground test in the Negev. Other reports show a test at Al-Naqab, Negev in October 1966.[83]

A bright flash in the south Indian Ocean, observed by an American satellite on 22 September 1979, is widely believed to be a South Africa-Israel joint nuclear test. It was, according to some, the third test of a neutron bomb. The first two were hidden in clouds to fool the satellite and the third was an accident—the weather cleared.[84] Experts differ on these possible tests. Several writers report that the scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory believed it to have been a nuclear explosion while a presidential panel decided otherwise.[85] President Carter was just entering the Iran hostage nightmare and may have easily decided not to alter 30 years of looking the other way.[86] The explosion was almost certainly an Israeli bomb, tested at the invitation of the South Africans. It was more advanced than the “gun type” bombs developed by the South Africans.[87] One report claims it was a test of a nuclear artillery shell.[88] A 1997 Israeli newspaper quoted South African deputy foreign minister, Aziz Pahad, as confirming it was an Israeli test with South African logistical support.[89]

Controversy over possible nuclear testing continues to this day. In June 1998, a Member of the Knesset accused the government of an underground test near Eilat on May 28, 1998. Egyptian “nuclear experts” had made similar charges. The Israeli government hotly denied the claims.[90]

Not only were the Israelis interested in American nuclear weapons development data, they were interested in targeting data from U.S. intelligence. Israel discovered that they were on the Soviet target list. American-born Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard obtained satellite-imaging data of the Soviet Union, allowing Israel to target accurately Soviet cities. This showed Israel's intention to use its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent political lever, or retaliatory capability against the Soviet Union itself. Israel also used American satellite imagery to plan the 7 June 1981 attack on the Tammuz-1 reactor at Osiraq, Iraq. This daring attack, carried out by eight F-16s accompanied by six F-15s punched a hole in the concrete reactor dome before the reactor began operation (and just days before an Israeli election). It delivered 15 delay-fused 2000 pound bombs deep into the reactor structure (the 16th bomb hit a nearby hall). The blasts shredded the reactor and blew out the dome foundations, causing it to collapse on the rubble. This was the world's first attack on a nuclear reactor.[91]

Since 19 September 1988, Israel has worked on its own satellite recon- naissance system to decrease reliance on U.S. sources. On that day, they launched the Offeq-1 satellite on the Shavit booster, a system closely related to the Jericho-II missile. They launched the satellite to the west away from the Arabs and against the earth's rotation, requiring even more thrust. The Jericho-II missile is capable of sending a one ton nuclear payload 5,000 kilometers. Offeq-2 went up on 3 April 1990. The launch of the Offeq-3 failed on its first attempt on 15 September 1994, but was successful 5 April 1995.[92]

Mordechai Vanunu provided the best look at the Israeli nuclear arsenal in 1985 complete with photographs.[93] A technician from Dimona who lost his job, Vanunu secretly took photographs, immigrated to Australia and published some of his material in the London Sunday Times. He was subsequently kidnapped by Israeli agents, tried and imprisoned. His data shows a sophisticated nuclear program, over 200 bombs, with boosted devices, neutron bombs, F-16 deliverable warheads, and Jericho warheads.[94] The boosted weapons shown in the Vanunu photographs show a sophistication that inferred the requirement for testing.[95] He revealed for the first time the underground plutonium separation facility where Israel was producing 40 kilograms annually, several times more than previous estimates. Photographs showed sophisticated designs which scientific experts say enabled the Israelis to build bombs with as little as 4 kilograms of plutonium. These facts have increased the estimates of total Israeli nuclear stockpiles (see Appendix A).[96] In the words of one American, “[the Israelis] can do anything we or the Soviets can do.”[97] Vanunu not only made the technical details of the Israeli program and stockpile public but in his wake, Israeli began veiled official acknowledgement of the potent Israeli nuclear deterrent. They began bringing the bomb up the basement stairs if not out of the basement.

Israel went on full-scale nuclear alert again on the first day of Desert Storm, 18 January 1991. Seven SCUD missiles were fired against the cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa by Iraq (only two actually hit Tel Aviv and one hit Haifa). This alert lasted for the duration of the war, 43 days. Over the course of the war, Iraq launched around 40 missiles in 17 separate attacks at Israel. There was little loss of life: two killed directly, 11 indirectly, with many structures damaged and life disrupted.[98] Several supposedly landed near Dimona, one of them a close miss.[99] Threats of retaliation by the Shamir government if the Iraqis used chemical warheads were interpreted to mean that Israel intended to launch a nuclear strike if gas attacks occurred. One Israeli commentator recommended that Israel should signal Iraq that “any Iraqi action against Israeli civilian populations, with or without gas, may leave Iraq without Baghdad.”[100] Shortly before the end of the war the Israelis tested a “nuclear capable” missile which prompted the United States into intensifying its SCUD hunting in western Iraq to prevent any Israeli response.[101] The Israeli Air Force set up dummy SCUD sites in the Negev for pilots to practice on—they found it no easy task.[102] American government concessions to Israel for not attacking (in addition to Israeli Patriot missile batteries) were:

Allowing Israel to designate 100 targets inside Iraq for the coalition to destroy,
Satellite downlink to increase warning time on the SCUD attacks (present and future),
“Technical parity with Saudi jet fighters in perpetuity.”[103]
All of this validated the nuclear arsenal in the minds of the Israelis. In particular the confirmed capability of Arab states without a border with Israel, the so-called “second tier” states, to reach out and touch Israel with ballistic missiles confirmed Israel's need for a robust first strike capability.][104] Current military contacts between Israel and India, another nuclear power, bring up questions of nuclear cooperation.[105] Pakistani sources have already voiced concerns over a possible joint Israeli-Indian attack on Pakistan's nuclear facilities.[106] A recent Parameters article speculated on Israel's willingness to furnish nuclear capabilities or assistance to certain states, such as Turkey.[107] A retired Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Amnon Shahak, has declared, “all methods are acceptable in withholding nuclear capabilities from an Arab state.”[108]

As the Israeli bomb comes out of the basement, open discussion, even in Israel, is occurring on why the Israelis feel they need an arsenal not used in at least two if not three wars. Avner Cohen states: “It [Israel] must be in a position to threaten another Hiroshima to prevent another holocaust.”[109] In July 1998 Shimon Peres was quoted in the Jordan Times as saying, “We have built a nuclear option, not in order to have a Hiroshima, but to have an Oslo,”[110] referring to the peace process.

One list of current reasons for an Israeli nuclear capability is:

To deter a large conventional attack,
To deter all levels of unconventional (chemical, biological, nuclear) attacks,
To preempt enemy nuclear attacks,
To support conventional preemption against enemy nuclear assets,
To support conventional preemption against enemy non-nuclear (conventional, chemical, biological) assets,
For nuclear warfighting,
The “Samson Option” (last resort destruction).[111]
The most alarming of these is the nuclear warfighting. The Israelis have developed, by several accounts, low yield neutron bombs able to destroy troops with minimal damage to property.[112] In 1990, during the Second Gulf War, an Israeli reserve major general recommended to America that it “use non-contaminating tactical nuclear weapons” against Iraq.[113] Some have speculated that the Israelis will update their nuclear arsenal to “micronukes” and “tinynukes” which would be very useful to attack point targets and other tactical or barrier (mining) uses.[114] These would be very useful for hardened deeply buried command and control facilities and for airfield destruction without exposing Israeli pilots to combat.[115] Authors have made the point that Israeli professional military schools do not teach nuclear tactics and would not use them in the close quarters of Israel. Many Israeli officers have attended American military schools where they learned tactical use in crowded Europe.[116]

However, Jane's Intelligence Review has recently reported an Israeli review of nuclear strategy with a shift from tactical nuclear warheads to long range missiles.[117] Israel always has favored the long reach, whether to Argentina for Adolph Eichmann, to Iraq to strike a reactor, Entebbe for hostages, Tunisia to hit the PLO, or by targeting the Soviet Union's cities. An esteemed Israeli military author has speculated that Israel is pursuing an R&D program to provide MIRVs (multiple independent reentry vehicles) on their missiles.[118]

The government of Israel recently ordered three German Dolphin Class 800 submarine, to be delivered in late 1999. Israel will then have a second strike capability with nuclear cruise missiles, and this capability could well change the nuclear arms race in the Middle East.[119] Israeli rhetoric on the new submarines labels them “national deterrent” assets. Projected capabilities include a submarine-launched nuclear missile with a 350-kilometer range.[120] Israel has been working on sea launch capability for missiles since the 1960s.[121] The first basing options for the new second-strike force of nuclear missile capable submarines include Oman, an Arab nation with unofficial Israeli relations, located strategically near Iran.[122] A report indicates that the Israel Defense Ministry has formally gone to the government with a request to authorize a retaliatory nuclear strike if Israel was hit with first strike nuclear weapons. This report comes in the wake of a recent Iran Shihab-3 missile test and indications to Israel that Iran is two to three years from a nuclear warhead.[123] Israeli statements stress that Iran's nuclear potential would be problem to all and would require “American leadership, with serious participation of the G-7 . . . .”[124]

A recent study highlighted Israel's extreme vulnerability to a first strike and an accompanying vulnerability even to a false alarm.[125] Syria's entire defense against Israel seems to rest on chemical weapons and warheads.[126] One scenario involves Syria making a quick incursion into the Golan and then threatening chemical strikes, perhaps with a new, more lethal (protective-mask-penetrable) Russian nerve gas if Israel resists.[127] Their use would drive Israel to nuclear use. Israeli development of an anti- missile defense, the Arrow, a fully fielded (30-50[128]) Jericho II ballistic missile, and the soon-to-arrive strategic submarine force, seems to have produced a coming change in defense force structure. The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, quotes the Israeli Chief of Staff discussing the establishment of a “strategic command to . . . prepare an adequate response to the long term threats. . . ”[129]

The 1994 accord with Jordan, allowing limited Israeli military presence in Jordanian skies, could make the flying distance to several potential adversaries considerably shorter.[130] Israel is concerned about Iran's desire to obtain nuclear weapons and become a regional leader, coupled with large numbers of Shiite Moslems in southern Lebanon. The Israeli Air Force commanding general issued a statement saying Israel would “consider an attack” if any country gets “close to achieving a nuclear capability.”[131] The Israelis are obviously considering actions capable of stopping such programs and are buying aircraft such as the F-15I with sufficient operational range. At the first delivery of these 4,000 kilometer range fighters, the Israeli comment was, “the aircraft would help counter a growing nuclear threat.”[132] They consider such regional nation nuclear programs to be a sufficient cause for war. Their record of accomplishment is clear: having hit the early Iraqi nuclear effort, they feel vindicated by Desert Storm. They also feel that only the American and Israeli nuclear weapons kept Iraq's Saddam Hussein from using chemical or biological weapons against Israel.[133]

Israel, like Iran, has desires of regional power. The 1956 alliance with France and Britain might have been a first attempt at regional hegemony. Current debate in the Israeli press considers offering Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and perhaps Syria (after a peace agreement) an Israeli nuclear umbrella of protection.[134] A nuclear Iran or Iraq might use its nuclear weapons to protect some states in the region, threaten others, and attempt to control oil prices.[135]

Another speculative area concerns Israeli nuclear security and possible misuse. What is the chain of decision and control of Israel's weapons? How susceptible are they to misuse or theft? With no open, frank, public debate on nuclear issues, there has accordingly been no debate or information on existing safeguards. This has led to accusations of “monolithic views and sinister intentions.”[1360] Would a right wing military government decide to employ nuclear weapons recklessly? Ariel Sharon, an outspoken proponent of “Greater Israel” was quoted as saying, “Arabs may have the oil, but we have the matches.”[137] Could the Gush Emunim, a right wing religious organization, or others, hijack a nuclear device to “liberate” the Temple Mount for the building of the third temple? Chances are small but could increase as radicals decry the peace process.[138] A 1997 article reviewing the Israeli Defense Force repeatedly stressed the possibilities of, and the need to guard against, a religious, right wing military coup, especially as the proportion of religious in the military increases.[139 ]

Israel is a nation with a state religion, but its top leaders are not religious Jews. The intricacies of Jewish religious politics and rabbinical law do affect their politics and decision processes. In Jewish law, there are two types of war, one obligatory and mandatory (milkhemet mitzvah) and the one authorized but optional (milkhemet reshut).[140] The labeling of Prime Minister Begin's “Peace for Galilee” operation as a milchemet brera (“war of choice”) was one of the factors causing it to lose support.[141] Interpretation of Jewish law concerning nuclear weapons does not permit their use for mutual assured destruction. However, it does allow possession and threatening their use, even if actual use is not justifiable under the law. Interpretations of the law allow tactical use on the battlefield, but only after warning the enemy and attempting to make peace. How much these intricacies affect Israeli nuclear strategy decisions is unknown.[142]

The secret nature of the Israeli nuclear program has hidden the increasing problems of the aging Dimona reactor and adverse worker health effects. Information is only now public as former workers sue the government. This issue is now linked to continued tritium production for the boosted anti-tank and anti-missile nuclear warheads that Israeli continues to need. Israel is attempting to obtain a new, more efficient, tritium production technology developed in India.[143]

One other purpose of Israeli nuclear weapons, not often stated, but obvious, is their “use” on the United States. America does not want Israel's nuclear profile raised.[144] They have been used in the past to ensure America does not desert Israel under increased Arab, or oil embargo, pressure and have forced the United States to support Israeli diplomatically against the Soviet Union. Israel used their existence to guarantee a continuing supply of American conventional weapons, a policy likely to continue.[145]

Regardless of the true types and numbers (see Appendix A) of Israeli nuclear weapons, they have developed a sophisticated system, by myriad methods, and are a nuclear power to be reckoned with. Their nuclear ambiguity has served their purposes well but Israel is entering a different phase of visibility even as their nuclear capability is entering a new phase. This new visibility may not be in America's interest.[146] Many are predicting the Israeli nuclear arsenal will become less useful “out of the basement” and possibly spur a regional arms race. If so, Israel has a 5-10 year lead time at present before mutual assured destruction, Middle East style, will set in. Would regional mutual second strike capability, easier to acquire than superpower mutual second strike capability, result in regional stability? Some think so.[147] Current Israeli President Ezer Weizman has stated “the nuclear issue is gaining momentum [and the] next war will not be conventional.[148]


Appendix A

Estimates of the Israeli Nuclear Arsenal





Notes

1. Hersh, Seymour M., The Samson Option. Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (New York: Random House, 1991), 223.

2. Aronson, Slomo and Brosh, Oded, The Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East, the Opacity Theory, and Reality, 1960-1991-An Israeli Perspective (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1992), 20.

3. Karsh, Efraim, Between War and Peace: Dilemmas of Israeli Security (London, England: Frank Cass, 1996), 82.

4. Cohen, Avner, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 16.

5. Cordesman, Anthony, Perilous Prospects: The Peace Process and the Arab-Israeli Military Balance (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1996), 118.

6. Pry, Peter, Israel's Nuclear Arsenal (Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1984), 5-6.

7. Quoted in Weissman, Steve and Krosney, Herbert. The Islamic Bomb: The Nuclear Threat to Israel and the Middle East. (New York, New York: Times Books, 1981), 105.

8. “Former Official Says France Helped Build Israel's Dimona Complex.” Nucleonics Week October 16, 1986, 6.

9. Milhollin, Gary, “Heavy Water Cheaters.” Foreign Policy (1987-88): 101-102.

10. Cordesman, 1991, 127.

11. Federation of American Scientists, “Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program.” 10 December 1997, n.p. On-line. Internet, 27 October 1998. Available from http://www.fas.org/nuke/hew/Israel/Isrhist.html.

12. Nashif, Taysir N., Nuclear Weapons in Israel (New Delhi: S. B. Nangia Books, 1996), 3.

13. Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, 48-49.

14. Bennett, Jeremy, The Suez Crisis. BBC Video. n.d. Videocassette and Raviv, Dan and Melman, Yossi. Every Spy a Prince. The Complete History of Israel's Intelligence Community. (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1990), 63-69.

15. Weissman and Krosney, 112.

16. “Revealed: The Secrets of Israel's Nuclear Arsenal” (London) Sunday Times No. 8,461, 5 October 1986, 1, 4-5.

17. Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, 57-59.

18. Peres, Shimon, Battling for Peace. A Memoir (New York, New York: Random House, 1995), 122.

19. Pry, 10.

20. Loftus, John and Aarons, Mark, The Secret War Against the Jews. How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People (New York, New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1994), 287-303.

21. Green, Stephen, Taking Sides. America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1984), 152.

22. Cohen, Avner, “Most Favored Nation.” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 51, no. 1 (January-February 1995): 44-53.

23. Hersh, The Samson Option, 196.

24. See Cohen, Avner, “Israel's Nuclear History: The Untold Kennedy-Eshkol Dimona Correspondence.” Journal of Israeli History, 1995 16, no. 2, 159-194 and Cohen, Avner, Comp. “Recently Declassified 1963 Correspondence between President Kennedy and Prime Ministers Ben-Gurion and Eshkol.” Journal of Israeli History, 1995 16, no. 2, 195-207. Much of the documentation has been posted to http:\\www.seas.gwu.edu/nsarchive/israel.

25. Weissman and Krosney, op. cit.,114-117

26. Cohen, op. cit., Israel and the Bomb, 82-83.

27. Spector, Leonard S., The Undeclared Bomb (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Ballinger Publishers, 1988), 387 (n.22).

28. Quoted in Stevens, Elizabeth. “Israel's Nuclear Weapons—A Case Study.” 14 pages. On line. Internet, 23 October 1998. Available from
http://infomanage.com/nonproliferation/naj...sraelinucs.html.

29. Green, Taking Sides, 148-179 and Raviv, Dan and Melman, Yossi, 1990, 197-198.

30. Weissman and Krosney, 119-124.

31. Black, Ian and Morris, Benny, Israel's Secret Wars. A history of Israel's Intelligence Services (New York, New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991), 418-419.

32. Hersh, 257.

33. Green, Stephen, Living by the Sword: America and Israel in the Middle East, 1968-1987 (London: Faber, 1988), 63-80.

34. Cordesman, 1991, 120.

35. Weissman and Krosney, 124-128 and Raviv, Dan and Melman, Yossi, 1990, 198-199.

36. Spector, The Undeclared Bomb, 395(n. 57).98-199

37. Raviv, Dan and Melman, Yossi, 1990, 58.

38. Milhollin, 100-119.

39. Stanghelle, Harold, “Israel to sell back 10.5 tons.” Arbeiderbladet, Oslo, Norway, 28 June 1990 in: Center for Nonproliferation Studies, “Nuclear Developments,” 28 June 1990, 34-35; on-line, Internet 22 November 1998, available from http://cns.miis.edu.

40. Hersh, op. cit., 139.

41. Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “Israeli Friends,” ISIS Report, May 1994, 4; on-line, Internet 22 November 1998, available from http://cns.miis.edu.

42. Abecasis, Rachel, “Uranium reportedly offered to China, Israel.” Radio Renascenca, Lisbon, 9 December 1992 quoted in Center for Nonproliferation, “Proliferation Issues,” 23 December, 1992, 25; on-line, Internet 22 November 1998, available from http://cns.miis.edu.

43. Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, op. cit., 231-232 and 256-257.

44. Nordeen, Lon O., Nicolle, David, Phoenix over the Nile (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1996), 192-193.

45. O'Balance, Edgar, The Third Arab-Israeli War (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 54.

46. Brecher, Michael, Decision in Crisis. Israel, 1967 and 1973 (Berkley, California: University of California Press, 1980), 104, 230-231.

47. Cohen, Avner. “Cairo, Dimona, and the June 1967 War.” Middle East Journal 50, no. 2 (Spring 1996), 190-210.

48. Creveld, Martin van. The Sword and the Olive. A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force (New York, New York: Public Affairs, 1998), 174.

49. Burrows, William E. and Windrem, Robert, Critical Mass. The Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World (New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 282-283.

50. Aronson, Shlomo, Israel's Nuclear Options, ACIS Working Paper No. 7. Los Angeles, California: University of California Center for Arms Control and International Security, 1977, 3, and Sorenson, David S., “Middle East Regional Studies-AY99,” Air War College: Maxwell Air Force Base, AL, 542.

51. Hersh, op. cit., 126-128.

52. Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, op. cit., 210-213.

53. Spector, Leonard S., “Foreign-Supplied Combat Aircraft: Will They Drop the Third World Bomb?” Journal of International Affairs 40, no. 1(1986): 145 (n. 5) and Green, Living by the Sword, op. cit., 18-19.

54. Burrows and Windrem, op. cit., 280.

55. Cohen, op. cit., Israel and the Bomb, 237.

56. Ibid., 273-274.

57. Milhollin, op. cit., 103-104.

58. Raviv, Dan and Melman, Yossi, Friend in Deed: Inside the U.S.-Israel Alliance (New York New York: Hyperion, 1994), 299.

59. Burrows and Windrem, op. cit., 464-465 and Raviv, Dan and Melman, Yossi, op. cit., 1990, 304-305.

60. Spector, The Undeclared Bomb, op. cit., 179.

61. Dowty, Alan. “Israel and Nuclear Weapons.” Midstream 22, no. 7 (November 1976), 8-9.

62. Hersh, op. cit., 217, 222-226, and Weissman and Krosney, op. cit., 107.

63. Green, op. cit., Living by the Sword, 90-99.

64. Loftus and Aarons, op. cit., 316-317.

65 Smith, Gerard C. and Cobban, Helena. “A Blind Eye To Nuclear Proliferation.” Foreign Affairs 68, no. 3(1989), 53-70.

66. Hersh, op. cit., 230-231.

67. O'Balance, Edgar, No Victor, No Vanquished. The Yom Kippur War (San Rafael, California: Presido Press, 1978), 175.

68. Ibid., 234-235 and Aronson, S, op. cit., 15-18.

69. Spector, The Undeclared Bomb, op. cit., 396 (n. 62); Garthoff, Raymond L., Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institute, 1994), 426, n76 and Bandmann, Yona and Cordova, Yishai. “The Soviet Nuclear Threat Towards the Close of the Yom Kippur War.” Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 1980 5, no. 1, 107-9.

70. Cherkashin, Nikolai, “On Moscow's Orders.” R

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=1834353&page=1
Israeli Top Brass Not Convinced About Iran's Nuclear MightIsrael Will Follow Diplomatic Lead Instead of Striking Out on Its Own

By SIMON McGREGOR WOOD

April 12, 2006 — Several of Israel's military brass are urging caution over Iran's claims to have enriched uranium.

In interviews in the Israeli media and on the radio, two of Israel's most senior military commanders said they believed Iran was still a long way from producing a nuclear weapon.

Because Israel is considered to be on the front line of the Iranian nuclear danger and has been the target of explicit threats by the Iranian president, the country's posture on the nuclear showdown issue is carefully followed by the international community.

Diplomacy Before Strikes

In 1981, the Israeli Air Force destroyed the embryonic nuclear ambitions of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, sending planes to bomb the country's nuclear reactor at Osirek. Some in the international community assume that Israel has already planned similar but more complex operations against Iran's scattered facilities.

In recent weeks, however, Israeli leaders have stressed that suspicions that Iran intends to build its own bomb are well founded, and that Iran's nuclear program is a threat not just to Israel but to the whole world.

Speaking on Israel's Army Radio this morning, Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz said the international community should not see Iran's uranium enrichment as the significant breakthrough Iran's leaders were making it out to be.

"The Iranians aren't there yet. It will take them time before they achieve nuclear capability," he said. "I think things will change in this process and we shouldn't see this as a foregone conclusion."

When asked about possible Israeli plans to strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, Halutz said Israel should follow the diplomatic lead of the international community but hinted this may change.

"We shouldn't look for Israeli solutions, nor recommend them. Everything has its time," he said.

In interviews with two of Israel's top-selling newspapers this morning, the head of military intelligence Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin warned that President Ahmadinejad's claim "is intended to strengthen Iran in its negotiations with the international community."
He went on to say, however, that the limited uranium enrichment success claimed by the Iranians meant they had crossed a technological threshold, and he warned "they could reach a nuclear bomb within about three years, by the end of the decade."

But he emphasized that the Iranians had a long way to go before they could produce weapons-grade uranium.

"This is significant progress, but the fact that they can ride a bike does not mean that they will be able to ride at 80 kilometers per hour [50 miles per hour] without falling off," Yadlin said.

Both men would not say whether Israel was planning its own military strike option against Iran's nuclear program, though most people in Israel assume that such plans exist.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6041200477.html

Israel wary of Iran's atomic progress

By Luke Baker
Reuters
Wednesday, April 12, 2006; 10:16 AM

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel reacted cautiously on Wednesday to news of Iran's successful enrichment of uranium, saying that while a threat to the Jewish state existed, diplomacy remained the best way of trying to rein in Tehran.

Elder statesman Shimon Peres described Iran's announcement as "worrying and frustrating," but said patience was needed.

"The United States has placed this issue at the top of its agenda. I do not recommend that we should be involved," he told Israel Radio. "I am sure the United States is aware of the expected danger and the matter is in its hands."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who announced on Tuesday that Iran had produced low-grade enriched uranium suitable for power stations, threatened last year to "wipe Israel off the map," provoking international condemnation.

Iran's latest move is a serious setback to efforts by the U.N. Security Council to have Tehran halt its enrichment work. The development could now prompt Western powers, who fear Iran is planning to build nuclear weapons, to consider imposing sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Washington said it would discuss the way forward with other members of the Security Council, but gave no timeframe.

Despite the caution expressed by Peres and other senior officials, some Israelis were alarmed by Iran's announcement and said they wanted to see Israel take unilateral action.

"It's clear what Israel has to do -- Iran poses a real danger to Israel and we have to form a response. Any actions Israel takes from now on will be completely justified," said Ghandi Shapira, 50, a computer technician in Jerusalem.

NO BOMB YET

Given U.S. efforts to curb Iran's nuclear plans through international diplomacy, experts say Israel cannot pursue any plans for a go-it-alone mission like the 1981 bombing raid that destroyed Iraq's atomic reactor at Osiraq.

Israel's chief of staff Dan Halutz told Army Radio that while Iran had taken a "significant step," it had a long way to go before it could produce a nuclear bomb. And even if they did, he said he wasn't convinced Israel would be the first target.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, is expected to visit Tehran this week to seek fuller Iranian cooperation with the Council and the IAEA.

U.S. President George W. Bush's administration has played down reports that it is drawing up plans for possible air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, insisting it wants to resolve the confrontation through diplomacy.

Israel's chief of military intelligence, Amos Yadlin, urged an acceleration of efforts to stop Iran's enrichment program.

"The announcements from Tehran are a bargaining chip. They are meant to move the debate to the next point," he told Israel's Haaretz newspaper.

He told the daily Yedioth Ahronoth that Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in around three years, assuming its program continued to advance at the current rate.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Saul and Tali Caspi in Jerusalem)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/...g,1,69294.story
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Experts see any strike against Iran as problem

By Mike Dorning
Washington Bureau
Published April 12, 2006, 7:30 PM CDT


WASHINGTON -- A U.S. military strike against Iran and its nuclear facilities, now under discussion in policy circles, would most likely take the form of air strikes against selected targets. But given Iran's long reach in the Middle East, analysts say the risks for the U.S. could entail everything from stepped-up terrorist activity to escalating violence in Iraq.

Analysts describe a military strike against Iran as a complex strategic choice. Conceivable scenarios range from a special forces campaign of assassinations and sabotage to a full-scale invasion, but the most likely option would be air strikes, either the bombing of a few key nuclear facilities or a broader campaign against Iran's technological and military infrastructure.

An air strike would probably delay Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons a maximum of two to four years, military and regional analysts said. Even that impact depends on accurate targeting of nuclear-related facilities, though intelligence may well be incomplete or include erroneous targets, analysts cautioned. And an attack could cause Iran to redouble efforts to build a nuclear bomb.

"The consequence might be anywhere between setting them back two years to accelerating the program," said Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel who taught at the National War College and has run war games on military options against Iran.

While a ground invasion might oust Iran's clerical regime, the operation would be a formidable undertaking. The U.S. military already is stretched thin in Iraq. The Iranian military is more sophisticated than was Saddam Hussein's army. And Iran is a geographically more difficult battle space, with a land area four times as large as Iraq, a population nearly three times as large and more mountainous terrain.

Military action against Iran could provoke an array of potential responses, experts said. The United States would have to prepare for an aggressive campaign of suicide bombings or other terrorist reprisals from such groups as the Iranian-linked Hezbollah. Oil prices might spike, either because of an Iranian cutoff of exports to world oil markets or harassment of shipping in the Persian Gulf. Iran could launch missiles—potentially armed with chemical weapons—against Israel, Arab allies of the U.S. in the Persian Gulf region or U.S. troops based in Iraq.

Violence in Iraq probably would increase, particularly in the Shiite-dominated southern regions that so far have been relatively calm. A strike against Iran would antagonize Shiite militias, which have close ties to Iran, and cleric Moqtada Sadr, who leads one such militia and has twice mounted uprisings against U.S. troops. Sadr already has threatened a revolt if Iran is attacked. A broad network of Iranian intelligence agents now in Iraq also could instigate or assist with attacks against U.S. troops.

U.S reprisals against Iraqi counterattacks, analysts suggest, could lead to a cycle of response and counter-response.

"You have to be ready for an open-ended war with the Iranians. This is a very big deal. It's not a simple matter of an easy strike," said Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst and National Security Council official who was an influential advocate of the Iraq invasion.

Discussion of military options against Iran has intensified as diplomatic efforts to halt Iran's nuclear program have dragged on without resolution. This week, Iran announced that it had successfully enriched uranium for the first time. Though Iranian leaders maintain that the uranium will be used solely for fuel in a peaceful nuclear energy program, the step also is an important breakthrough for production of nuclear weapons.

While President Bush this week dismissed the idea of military action against Iran as "wild speculation," he did not deny reports that the administration is developing plans for air strikes and has long said all options are on the table.

Other public pronouncements from the White House also have laid the rhetorical groundwork for the use of military force. In January, Bush described a nuclear-armed Iran as "a grave threat to the security of the world," words reminiscent of the language he used before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Vice President Cheney threatened "meaningful consequences" if Iran does not abandon its nuclear program. And a new National Security Strategy released last month called Iran the most serious challenge to the U.S.

Nonetheless, it is unclear how much weight the Bush administration is giving the possibility of a military strike. Public hints of military preparations could serve as a negotiating tactic to coerce Iran into making concessions and demonstrate U.S. resolve to the Chinese and Russian governments, which have resisted imposing economic sanctions on Iran.

Among the potential economic sanctions would be a ban on world exports of gasoline to Iran, which despite its plentiful oil supply imports petroleum products because of insufficient refinery capacity. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) has spoken out in favor of that option, which could be enforced by a naval quarantine, as President John Kennedy did during the Cuban Missile Crisis four decades ago.

"The critical thing is we should not start any shooting," Kirk said. "This is a political struggle as much as a military one, and I think the side that shoots first weakens its political case."

Should Bush decide to attack Iran, the most likely option would be some form of air strike, analysts said. Essentially, the president would choose between a limited strike against air defenses and a few key nuclear facilities or a broader campaign. A broader strike might target all known nuclear-related facilities.

In an effort to reduce Iran's capacity for reprisals, other targets might include suspected chemical production plants, mobile ballistic missiles that could be used against Iraq or other Middle Eastern countries and anti-ship missile batteries that could be used to attack tanker traffic in the Persian Gulf. Other military, intelligence and political targets might also be included to weaken the regime.

Anthony Cordesman, a former Defense Department official who is now an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, projects that a strike against two or three key nuclear facilities could be accomplished with a combination of B-2 Bombers, carrier-based aircraft and sea-launched cruise missiles. The attack would probably require 100 or more flight sorties, including fighter escorts and refuelers.

A broader campaign could take several weeks to two months, he projected, and require as many as a thousand or more cruise missiles and strike sorties, even before counting fighter escorts and refueling missions.

Still, it would be difficult to eliminate the mobile missiles that could threaten Israel, Persian Gulf states and U.S bases in Iraq.

Richard Russell, a former CIA Middle East analyst who is now a professor at the military's National Defense University, said, "They can hide and move. We learned in the 1990 [Persian Gulf] war that we weren't all that good at getting rid of them, though we diverted a significant amount of air power to the task."

Even targeting the nuclear program can be problematic.

William Nash, a retired Army major general who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, "In Iraq, every bit of intelligence we dropped on the UN inspectors turned up a dry hole. Give me one good reason we should trust our intelligence this time."





Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

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US ex-official urges talks with IranadvertisementRelated information

All Financial Times NewsRichard Armitage, deputy secretary of state during President George W. Bush's first term, has urged the Bush administration to hold talks with Iran over its nuclear programme.

Mr Armitage said Washington would benefit from talking to Tehran on a range of issues, including Iran's nuclear aspirations. The Bush administration has so far resisted calls from its European allies to engage Iran directly over its alleged nuclear weapons programme.

Recent investing newsBush job-approval ratings remain low US ex-official urges talks with Iran Relic of cold war policy hits deportation plans Military calls intensify for Rumsfeld to go Google entices Microsoft users with online diary
"It merits talking to the Iranians about the full range of our relationship...everything from energy to terrorism to weapons to Iraq," Mr Armitage told the Financial Times in an interview. "We can be diplomatically astute enough to do it without giving anything away."

"I saluted not talking to the Iranians solely about Iraq because it seems to give them a bigger stake in the outcome of the country than they deserve."

Asked whether the US could successfully persuade China and Russia to agree to place sanctions on Iran, Mr Armitage suggested that it would be possible, but he questioned how meaningful they would be.

"You could get travel bans and things of this nature on certain people," he said. "China and Russia would be able to sell it to the Iranians as 'look, this is a piece of cake, it is limited and targeted'. I think there is a small possibility but we are a ways away from that.

He said the administration could afford to be patient "for a while" on Iran because Tehran would not have access to a nuclear weapon for some time, and also because the IAEA, Russians and Chinese were all putting pressure on the Islamist republic.

Speaking about Iraq, Mr Armitage emphasised that he was not an opponent of the war, but he said things were "going badly".

"We haven't been able to train the police and armed forces sufficiently quickly," said Mr Armitage. "They have not been able to put together a government of national unity this long after the election. There is less oil, less water, available now than there was a year ago, a year and a half ago. They are exporting less oil. So I think that one has to say that things are going badly."

But he stressed that the US needed to "stay the course" and give the Iraqi government time to "stand on its own feet". He also welcomed the recent speeches by Mr Bush on Iraq, saying it would help to bolster US public opinion.

Mr Armitage was instrumental during the first Bush administration in seeking to improve relations with India, including discussions about providing India with access to nuclear technology. But while he welcomed the recent improvement in US-India relations, he expressed some reservations about the nuclear deal the Bush administration recently concluded with Delhi.

"I thought that over time it would be possible to cap enrichment or something like that and so do much less damage to our non- proliferation goals...I worry a bit that we should have gotten a better deal," said Mr Armitage.

But he said he disagreed with critics who argue that the deal would damage non-proliferation goals by inspiring Iran and North Korea because "they are basically rogue states anyway". He said Congress would probably "grudgingly" go along with the deal but would attach some conditions.

Mr Armitage was less optimistic about the success of the six-party talks aimed at resolving nuclear tensions on the Korean peninsula, saying it was going to be "very hard to dislodge North Korea from their nuclear weapons".

"From their point of view, the only reason the US has anything to do with them [and] the main reason other countries are providing food and energy is because they have nuclear weapons," he said.

Mr Armitage suggested that the gradual integration of North Korea and South Korea over time might encourage Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons. He said the administration could afford to be patient with North Korea.

"North Korea is not an insane nation. It is not a crazy nation. One could argue that Kim Jong-il has played a low hand very, very skilfully," said Mr Armitage.

But asked whether he expected the six-party talks to be successful, he said: "Not in a dramatic fashion...or in the near future. I would be delighted, but I don't see it."

Mr Armitage, who is considered an Asia expert, said the Bush administration also needs to pay more attention to Asia, although he acknowledged that officials have been understandingly preoccupied with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The whole centre of gravity of the world is shifting to Asia [in terms of] demographics, size of the economies, need for raw material, usage of petroleum, and sizes of the military," said Mr Armitage. "We have to wake up and spend plenty of attention and time on it."

Ahead of the visit of Chinese president Hu Jintao to Washington next week, Mr Armitage said the Sino-US relationship was a "little mixed" but "not bad".

"There is a growing recognition about China as a power in the ascent and there is a question out there about what China will do with their new ascension," he said.

"[China] has many of the trappings of a global power - a man in space, hosting of the Olympics, she is active in our own hemisphere with police officers in Haiti, and a lot of activities in the Southern hemisphere. So she is acting like a country that has great power aspirations."

The Bush administration has raised concerns about whether the rise of China will be peaceful, and the Pentagon has warned that the expansion of the Chinese military exceeds the potential threats facing the country. Asked whether he expected China's rise to be peaceful, Mr Armitage responded: "I think so, but we have to keep our eyes open."

Mr Armitage, a strong proponent of the view that the US-Japan relationship is a keystone of the US defence posture in the Asia-Pacific region, said Japan was "absolutely" living up to its obligations under the US-Japanese defence relationship. He stressed that the country had undergone major political and economic changes in recent years that were helping strengthen ties between the countries.

"You have never seen such movement in Japan as you have seen over the past five years…In the military sphere, in the famous words 'we showed the flag and boots on the ground', they've done it," said Mr Armitage.

"Who would have imagined Japan...refuelling American warships in the Persian Gulf and down in the Indian Ocean. Who would have imagined seeing Japan using its [Self Defence Forces] to aid Tsunami victims in Southeast Asia and in Sri Lanka."

The US and Japan are currently trying to hammer out the final details of a deal that would reduce the number of US forces in Japan, including moving 8,000 marines from Okinawa to Guam. The Pentagon, which wants Japan to pay 75 per cent of the $10bn it estimates the move will cost, has been frustrated by what it sees as an unwillingness by Japan to foot its share of the burden.

Mr Armitage said he expected both sides would compromise over the Guam move, partly because the US is "spending a lot of money on other areas which are very important to Japan not least the reason of which is the access to oil".

Discussing Sino-Japanese frictions, Mr Armitage stressed that "the maintenance of warm economic ties and cold politics is not sustainable in the long run", but he said he expected the politician tensions to work themselves out over time.

"I think what you are seeing is a phenomenon that has never happened before in Asia. For the first time in Asian history, there are two equal players on the scene at the same time," he said.

Copyright 2006 Financial Times

http://www.antiwar.com/pena/?articleid=8844

April 13, 2006
Iran: The Nuclear Option

Charles Peña
According to New Yorker columnist Seymour Hersh, the Bush administration is contemplating "the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against [Iran's] underground nuclear sites." Presumably, the B61-11 nuclear bomb can be configured with yields low enough to be categorized as a mini-nuke, i.e., sub- or only a few kilotons. Currently considered a "dumb bomb," theoretically, the B61-11 could be mated with GPS guidance to achieve the same precision as the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), which where used to great effect
in Afghanistan and Iraq. Also, the B61-11 could theoretically be outfitted with the the BLU-113 hardened steel-tipped warhead to penetrate more than 30 feet of concrete and a delayed-action fuse to penetrate the structure before exploding, thereby concentrating the destructive force on the inside of the target instead of on the surface. Therefore, on paper, the United States has a low-yield nuclear bunker-busting capability – more commonly referred to as a mini-nuke.

Advocates of these mini-nukes argue that they are needed because adversaries are building underground facilities to conceal and protect their weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs, such as Iran's nuclear program. They also contend that because mini-nukes have a relatively small yield, they are less destructive and therefore more usable – that is, they would be relatively benign compared to using a nuclear weapon detonated above ground and would inflict less collateral damage.

It is worth noting, however, that nuclear tests conducted in the 1960s (named "Plowshare") using relatively low-yield weapons buried 30 meters or deeper underground resulted in craters the diameter of a football field, with 10 to 50 percent of the mass of the crater resulting in local radioactive fallout extending as far as several kilometers. According to Princeton University physicist Robert W. Nelson, a "one kiloton earth-penetrating 'mini-nuke' used in a typical third-world urban environment would spread a lethal dose of radioactive fallout over several square kilometers, resulting in tens of thousands civilian casualties." So a mini-nuke might cause considerably less damage than a "conventional" nuclear weapon, but the damage would still likely be very considerable.

Any consideration of using mini-nukes against Iran should be tempered by the experience of the Iraq war – the first test case of the Bush administration's policy of preemption. Iraq highlights the problem of combining mini-nukes and preemption: the Bush administration's threshold for preemption – and thus for the possible use of nuclear weapons – is at best, ambiguous, and at worst, dangerously low. By the standards set forth in the latest incarnation of the National Security Strategy of the United States – "to forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively in exercising our inherent right of self-defense" – the simple existence of conditions where one of many possible outcomes might be the emergence of a threat is sufficient to preempt. Thus, the litmus test is the plausible allegation of a potential threat but not the convincing proof of the existence of such a threat. Speculation about unknown future intentions and capabilities of potential enemies becomes a casus belli.

Prior to going to war, the administration alleged that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, including the possibility of being on the verge of acquiring a nuclear weapon. More ominously, the administration claimed that Saddam Hussein could give WMD to al-Qaeda terrorists. But more than three years after invading Iraq, no WMD have been found. Moreover, the CIA has found no evidence that Hussein tried to transfer WMD to terrorists, al-Qaeda or otherwise. In other words, all the hoopla about Iraqi WMD amounted to – at best – next to nothing.

Thus, the reality of Iraq compared to the prewar rhetoric hardly creates confidence that mini-nukes would only be used when circumstances warrant. In fact, the Iraq war suggests just the opposite. If the administration had had mini-nukes, it might have used them in a preemptive fashion on the slim pretext of alleged WMD (which didn't exist), which supposedly would have been given to al-Qaeda terrorists, who weren't in league with the former regime in Baghdad.

The inability to find any WMD to date highlights another problem with the possible use of precision mini-nukes to destroy WMD facilities: very precise delivery of weapons to the wrong place. Before and during the Iraq war, administration officials implied that they were relatively certain where WMD were located, including aerial photographs shown by Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations Security Council when he made the administration's case for military action in February. But suspected WMD locations have turned up empty. So even if Iraq had WMD (if you are willing to believe Hussein was so good at hiding them that they still can't be found after three years of searching), had the United States used mini-nukes, it might have used nuclear weapons against the wrong targets, i.e., facilities that did not contain any WMD.

Moreover, unlike in June 1981, when Israel conducted a successful preemptive attack against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, Iran's nuclear program consists of tens – if not hundreds – of potential targets. And many of those targets are co-located in highly populated areas. So even the most precise strikes are likely to result in large numbers of civilian casualties.

The Iraq war also calls into the question the usability of mini-nukes. On at least two occasions, U.S. intelligence indicated that Saddam Hussein was thought to be in underground bunkers that were subsequently attacked with conventional weapons. If Hussein was arguably the highest value target in Iraq during the war, then a good case could have been made for using a nuclear weapon like the B61-11 to assure killing him and decapitating the regime, which was part of the overall U.S. war strategy. But the fact that the United States chose not to use the B61-11 during the Iraq war suggests that either (a) even a relatively low-yield nuclear weapon detonated underground would produce too much damage, particularly if located in a densely populated urban area such as Baghdad or ( there is a real stigma or aversion to U.S. first use of nuclear weapons, even against adversaries who cannot retaliate in kind.

What is troubling – if Seymour Hersh is to be believed – is that the White House is unwilling to take the preemptive nuclear strike option against Iran off the table, which implies that both (a) and ( above may not hold. As Hersh points out, many senior officials in the Bush administration – including National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone – have previously advocated using nuclear weapons against high-value targets. But in the final analysis, mini-nukes and preemption are a dangerous combination that could undermine deterrence and make the United States less secure. If rogue-state leaders believe that the United States has targeted them for regime change – regardless of any actions they might take short of abdicating power to a new leader deemed acceptable by the United States – and is willing to use nuclear weapons preemptively, they may feel they have nothing to lose by using what they can, including WMD, to strike at the United States first.

Furthermore, if rogue-state leaders do not possess the long-range military capability to directly attack the United States, and if preemptive regime change is thought to be inevitable, the natural barriers for those leaders to form alliances with terrorist organizations will be eroded, and the incentive for them to see terrorism – and possibly supplying terrorists with WMD – as the only way to retaliate against the United States will increase.

To be sure, a nuclear-armed Iran would be an unwelcome development. But unless the so-called "mad mullahs" in Tehran are suicidal, there is every reason to believe that the overwhelmingly superior (both in numbers and technology) U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal will act as a powerful deterrent. And even though the Iranian regime has ties to terrorist organizations, there is no evidence that rogue regimes would provide WMD – including nuclear weapons – to terrorists. Finally, using nuclear weapons against Iran would confirm that the United States is engaged in a war to destroy Islam and likely unleash even more unwelcome developments.

- Iran One Step Closer To Nukes
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Iran_One_S...r_To_Nukes.html

Washington (UPI) Apr 13, 2006 - Just days after strong rumors of a possible preemptive U.S. and/or Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities circulated like wildfire around the Washington Beltway, Iran announced it has taken its nuclear program forward.

- Iran's Military Believes Its Nuclear Programme Unstoppable
http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Irans_Mili...nstoppable.html