Amid war with Iran Israel maintains ambiguity about its own N-programme

 

 

 

ISRAEL says it is determined to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme because its archenemy’s furtive efforts to build an atomic weapon are a threat to its existence. What’s not-so-secret is that for decades Israel has been believed to be the Middle East’s only nation with nuclear weapons, even though its leaders have refused to confirm or deny their existence.

 

Israel’s ambiguity has enabled it to bolster its deterrence against Iran and other enemies, experts say, without triggering a regional nuclear arms race or inviting preemptive attacks. Israel is one of just five countries that aren’t party to a global nuclear nonproliferation treaty. That relieves it of international pressure to disarm, or even to allow inspectors to scrutinise its facilities. On Sunday, the US military struck three nuclear sites in Iran, inserting itself into Israel’s effort to destroy Iran’s programme. Israel opened its Negev Nuclear Research Centre in the remote desert city of Dimona in 1958, under the country’s first leader, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. After it opened, Israel kept the work at Dimona hidden for a decade, telling United States’ officials it was a textile factory, according to a 2022 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an academic journal.

 

Relying on plutonium produced at Dimona, Israel has had the ability to fire nuclear warheads since the early 1970s, according to that article, co-authored by Hans M. Kristensen, director of Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists, and Matt Korda, a researcher at the same organisation. Israel’s policy of ambiguity suffered a major setback in 1986, when Dimona’s activities were exposed by a former technician at the site, Mordechai Vanunu. He provided photographs and descriptions of the reactor to ‘The Sunday Times of London’. Vanunu served 18 years in prison for treason, and is not allowed to meet with foreigners or leave the country. Experts estimate Israel has between 80 and 200 nuclear warheads, although they say the the lower end of that range is more likely. Israel also has stockpiled as much as 1,110 kilograms of plutonium, potentially enough to make 277 nuclear weapons, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a global security organisation.