Good Evening Iran, Syria, Israel Has Nuclear Weapons

Israel founding fathers, David Ben-Gurion (l) Shimon Peres (r).
Peres, who is often targeted by Israel's Left, is reputed to have created Israel's nuclear deterrence.

By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency

Jerusalem----December 11......According to the Jerusalem Post, Israel's Channel 10 TV news, Reuters and The Washington Post, Israel has publicly announced it's possession of nuclear weapons.

In a story attributed to The Jerusalem Post staff and Post reporter Anshel Pfeffer, Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert admitted this evening that Israel possessed nuclear weapons.

Israel has never admitted to having nuclear weapons,but few international experts ever questioned the Jewish state's presence on the world's list of nuclear powers. Its nuclear capability is arguably the most secretive weapons of mass destruction program in the world.

Unlike Iran and North Korea - two countries whose alleged nuclear ambitions have recently come to the fore - Israel has never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, designed to prevent the global spread of nuclear weapons. As a result, it is not subject to inspections and the threat of sanctions by the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Post cites an interview with the German television network SAT 1, Olmert was asked about the statement by US defense minister Robert Gates regarding Israel's nuclear ability. The prime minister became enraged when he was asked if the fact that Israel possessed nuclear power weakened the West's position against Iran.

"Israel is a democracy and does not threaten anyone," he exclaimed. The only thing we have tried to do is to live without (threats of) terror, but we have never threatened anyone with annihilation. Iran explicitly, openly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map." Olmert then went on to admit Israel's nuclear capability. "Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel and Russia?" he said, adding that those countries had nuclear weapons but they did not threaten any one with it.

The Israel prime minister said that the difference was that those countries were "cultured nations" who did not threaten the world's principles with nuclear destruction. Israel has constrained itself for decades by insisting on a policy of 'amimut,' nuclear ambiguity or opacity, never admitting to our real capabilities, necessitating local journalists to add the line 'according to foreign sources' every time they report on Israel's alleged nuclear weapons. This policy proved successful in preventing the kind of international pressure to disarm that might have been caused by an open admission to having the bomb, but it's not very useful when confronted with an enemy freely using nuclear information and disinformation to suit its interest of the moment.

"The major problem in the Middle-East is not the presence of nuclear weapons held by civilized, democratic nations, but rather that these nuclear weapons might get into the hands of vogue regimes and radical Islamic counties such as Iran and Syria," Dr. Raanan Gissin, former senior spokesperson of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the Israel News Agency.

"Iran and Syria support genocide which makes the presence of these weapons in both Damascus and Tehran a destabilizing force in the Middle East. In the hands of civilized countries it provides a clear and honest deterrence. The minute these weapons are in the hands Islamic terrorists and Iran and Syria which support such groups as Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, we then witness destabilization in the Middle-East in most extreme perspective. Iran, Syria and other Islamic nations that support 'wiping Israel off the map' must and will be stopped by all means from acquiring nuclear weapons."

The extent of Israel's nuclear capability has been the subject of often wildly inaccurate intelligence estimates since the 1960s, when the country's nuclear reactor, at Dimona in the Negev desert, came online. The suspicion and fog surrounding this question are constructive, because they strengthen our deterrent said Shimon Peres, former Israel Prime Minister.

Evidence may have first emerged when a former worker at the plant, Mordechai Vanunu, gave a British newspaper descriptions and photographs of Israeli nuclear warheads. Vanunu's evidence led to a sharp upwards revision of the number of nuclear warheads Israel was believed to possess - to at least 100 - and possibly as many as 200. By way of comparison, India and Pakistan - the most recent members of the "nuclear club" - are widely believed to have about 20 warheads each. They successfully carried out nuclear weapons tests in 1998, leading to fears of an escalated conflict between the two rival South Asian powers.

There is no evidence that Israel has ever carried out a nuclear test, but there is speculation that a suspected nuclear explosion in the southern Indian Ocean in 1979 was a joint Israeli-South African test.

Shortly after its creation as a Jewish homeland in 1948 and following the horrors of the Holocaust, in which six million European Jews were murdered, Israel began showing an interest in acquiring nuclear weapons - the "ultimate deterrent".

In 1952, the Israel Atomic Energy Commission was formed and began working closely with the Israeli military. By 1953, a process for extracting uranium found in the Negev desert was perfected and a new method of producing heavy water was developed - providing Israel with its own capability to produce some of the most important nuclear materials. Mordechai Vanunu in 1986, after being captured by Israel's secret service Mordechai Vanunu: Viewed as a traitor and a spy by most Israelis For reactor design and construction, Israel sought and received the assistance of France.

According to Washington-based website GlobalSecurity.org, a secret agreement between the two nations saw construction of the Dimona plant begin in the late 1950s. The complex was variously described as a textile plant, an agricultural station and a metallurgical research facility until 1960, when Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion stated that it was a nuclear research centre built for "peaceful purposes".

From its early suspicions that Israel had nuclear ambitions - overflights by U-2 spy planes revealed Dimona's construction in 1958 - the United States expressed concern. During the 1960s, US inspectors visited Dimona several times but were unable to obtain an accurate picture of the activities carried out there.

In 1968, a US Central Intelligence Agency report concluded that Israel had begun to produce nuclear weapons. Years of speculation about the size of Israel's nuclear arsenal followed.

The Vanunu affair In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, who had worked as a technician at the Dimona complex, gave London's Sunday Times newspaper detailed information about Israel's nuclear programme that led observers to declare Israel the world's sixth largest nuclear power. Before he could reveal more to the media, Vanunu became the victim of a classic "honey trap".

He was lured out of hiding in London by a female Israeli secret agent who persuaded him that she wanted to meet him in Rome. Once there, he was drugged by other Israel agents and brought home. Later that year, he was jailed for 18 years after a trial for treason that was held in secret. Viewed as a traitor and a spy by most Israelis, Vanunu remains in prison to this day and has spent most of his sentence in solitary confinement. Israel's former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, widely regarded as the father of Israel's nuclear weapons program, testified at the trial that Vanunu had done serious damage to Israel's security.

Mr Peres subsequently said: "A certain amount of secrecy must be maintained in some fields. The suspicion and fog surrounding this question are constructive, because they strengthen our deterrent."

Other states in the Middle East, many of them strong supporters of the Palestine cause, have expressed deep concern about the existence of an Israeli nuclear weapons programme. They also accuse the US of operating a regional policy of double-standards, ignoring Israel's weapons programmes while insisting that others - notably pre-war Iraq, Iran and Syria - are a threat to peace because of their alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Israel's existence has been openly threatend by both Iran and Syria. In October 2005 Iran's new president repeating a remark from a former ayatollah that Israel should be "wiped out from the map," insisting that a new series of attacks will destroy the Jewish state, and lashing out at Muslim countries and leaders that acknowledge Israel.

The remarks by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - reported by Islamic Republic News Agency - coincided with a month-long protest against Israel called "World without Zionism" and with the approach of Jerusalem Day. World without Zionism is a nationwide event the planners intend to hold annually, and Ahmadinejad made the remarks during a meeting with protesting students at the Interior Ministry. Ahmadinejad quoted a remark from Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, who said that Israel "must be wiped out from the map of the world."

The president then said: "And God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism," according to a quote published by IRNA.

According to Reuters, Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisen, who accompanied the prime minister on a trip to Germany on Monday, said he did not mean to say that Israel possessed or aspired to acquire nuclear weapons. "No he wasn't saying anything like that," she said. Israel Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mark Regev said Olmert had meant to categorize the four nations as democracies to set them apart from Iran, and was not referring to their potential nuclear capabilities or aspirations.

Olmert's statements drew fire from Israel politicians across the political spectrum. MK Yuval Steinitz responded to Olmert's statement by calling for the prime minister to resign. "It harms the 50 years of ambiguity and it continues a long line of irresponsible statements, an example being the remark regarding the captured Israeli soldiers in Lebanon," added Steinitz.

Meretz-Yahad chairman Yossi Beilin called the prime minister's remarks "irresponsible to the point of recklessness," adding, "I am in doubt as to whether he is a man who should serve as prime minister," he added.

The Jerusalem Post in an updated story states: "Israel has constrained itself for decades by insisting on a policy of 'amimut,' nuclear ambiguity or opacity, never admitting to its real capabilities, necessitating local journalists to add the line 'according to foreign sources' every time they report on Israel's alleged nuclear weapons."