Category Archives: Israel

On Israeli Nuclear Disclosure

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I had a couple of thoughts the other week during a conference about Iran’s nuclear program. I will note that someone else has almost certainly done more thinking about this issue than I and that these thoughts are likely unoriginal. Any interested readers please weigh in.

I know that many people worry that Israeli disclosure of its nuclear weapons could destabilize the region, lead to nuclear or CBW proliferation, etc. Now, I have no more desire than anyone else for this social science experiment to be carried out, but I’m not sure that disclosure really would be so bad.

The reasoning is fairly simple – since both governments and the public in Israel’s neighborhood already assume that Israel has nuclear weapons, it’s not clear that Israeli disclosure would be a game-changer sufficient to compel regional governments to take the _very_ significant step of developing their own nuclear weapons.

To elaborate…

First, it seems unlikely that governments would make radical chanegs to their military forces, since their material security situations would remain unchanged.

Second, there would, one imagines, be a spike in public anger over Israeli disclosure, but, since the information wouldn’t be new, it’s not at all clear that such anger would be sufficient to produce what, again, would be pretty drastic changes in regional governments’ policies.

The most likely impact I can think of is that some countries may take additional steps to augment their conventional or CW arsenals, since those options are considerably easier than developing nuclear weapons.

Those steps would not be trivial, but my point is that public discussions of this topic often lack sufficient nuance.

Arab League on Israeli Nuclear Disclosure

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The potential impact of an Israeli decision to disclose its nuclear arsenal crossed my mind today when I saw “this AP story”:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/961275.html about a statement from the Arab League.

I couldn’t find an English version of the original statement, but this is how the article described it:

*As soon as Israel announces it has nuclear weapons, the Arabs will announce their withdrawal from the Nonproliferation Treaty,* the statement said.

[snip]

Arab countries, all of which are signatories to the treaty, have long called for a nuclear-free Middle East and expressed their concern over Israel’s apparent possession of nuclear weapons.

They said that *if Israel admitted to having the weapons, they would call on the UN Security Council to pressure Israel to destroy its nuclear arsenal and bring its other atomic installation under international inspection.*

If this did not happen, Arab countries would leave the treaty and not sign any new one until Israel itself joined.

Ack.

Late 60s U.S. Intel on Chinese Nukes

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About a month ago, the Nixon Library declassified a bunch of documents. A “selection”:http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/mandatoryreview.php#selection of them is available online.

Most of the attention was directed toward “this memo”:http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/mr/071969_israel.pdf about Israel’s nuclear weapons program. But there are some other intriguing items.

For example, in the middle of a 1969 “Memorandum of Conversation”:http://www.nixonlibrary.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/mr/082169_korea.pdf regarding talks between Nixon and ROK President Pak, Nixon reveals a US intel assessment of China’s future nuclear arsenal:

bq. President Nixon: According to our intelligence, Communist
China will have *25 to 50 ICBM’s by 1976* which can hit targets in the U.S.

You may have noticed that this didn’t happen by 1976. Nor has it happened 31 years after 1976.

I’m not a Chinese nuke specialist, so I’m not sure how new this is. But a good illustration of the point.

Incidentally, Nixon also explained in the same conversation that China’s arsenal was motivating his decision to deploy a missile-defense network:

bq. Nixon:…without the ABM network a nuclear armed China might be able to use nuclear blackmail against non-nuclear countries in Asia and pose a danger to the U.S. That is why this subject is so important for the defense and security of the Free World.

Fortunately, the Free World is still here.

*Update:* Some related Israel documents can be found “here.”:http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/index.htm

Israel Still Has Nuclear Weapons

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I think. Dana P is “still not sure.”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1531/dana-p-talks-about-israels-nukes

From a “couple weeks back:”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071023-8.html

Q One other question. *Is there any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?*

MS. PERINO: Helen, we’ve talked about this before and I’m going to —

Q No, no, no, *you’ve never answered it.*

MS. PERINO: *I know.* (Laughter.)

Q How can you threaten a country that may have them, and know that another country does have them?

MS. PERINO: Helen, I’m going to let those countries speak for themselves.

Dana P Talks About Israel’s Nukes

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Or, you know, doesn’t.

During a “recent press briefing,”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/10/20071009-4.html Helen Thomas asked about nuclear weapons in the Middle East. WH Press Secretary Dana Perino tiptoed around the elephant in the room:

Q (Off mike) — the White House has a driving interest in keeping nuclear arms out of Iran, I’d like to ask you, *does any country in the Middle East have nuclear arms?*

MS. PERINO: Well, *I would leave it to those countries to announce whether they do or not. I think that there’s public information about that, Helen.*

Q No, no, no. I want to know if White House knows if there — what do you mean they’re going to announce it?

MS. PERINO: I’m not prepared to say anything beyond what has been publicly stated.

Q So you don’t know whether any other country in the Middle East has nuclear arms?

MS. PERINO: Helen, *I will let those countries speak for themselves.*

Q Or you refuse to say?

MS. PERINO: *I’ll just refuse to say it.*

Israeli NSG Proposal

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ACA has posted an interesting “Israeli proposal”:http://armscontrol.org/pdf/20070927_Israeli_NSG_Proposal.pdf submitted to the NSG last March. It details a criteria-based approach for future NSG-states cooperation with countries that never bothered to sign the NPT.

Both the proposal and the “accompanying media advisory”:http://armscontrol.org/pressroom/2007/20070927_IsraelNSG.asp make for interesting reading. For geeks, anyway.

Olmert on Iran

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Apologies for the light blogging as of late. Deadlines and all that…

Anyway, this is potentially of interest. Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert offered a relatively low-key assessment of Iran’s nuclear program in a 22 April broadcast on Reshet Bet Radio:

OLMERT: *I recommend in every issue, and in these sensitive issues too, not to conduct a policy on the basis of panic and self-intimidation. There is no need for that.* There is a huge unprecedented effort by the entire international community, in order to succeed in preventing Iran from turning into a nuclear power —

Q: — but in the meantime, the centrifuges are spinning and increasing in numbers.

OLMERT: The fact is that the Security Council has already passed two resolutions unanimously which implement unprecedented sanctions on Iran, and we have the basis to assume that these steps, eventually, will also achieve the results which we did not know if we can expect — in advance. It is a process which will still continue.

*I think that there is a possibility to cause, even without a military operation, that Iran will not be nuclear.* From time to time I hear the declarations of Iran’s leaders and *I’m telling you that Iran is far from crossing the technological threshold.*

Unfortunately, *it is as far as I wished it would be, but it is not as close as it is pretending to be.* And I believe that the continued international efforts which Israel is part of, will eventually achieve the goal, and *there is no need to get caught up in all kinds of apocalyptic prophecies which have no basis in reality.*

Polonium-210 And Olmert Nuclear Gaffe

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No, there is no connection, apart from the fact that these are two subjects I don’t need to write about, now that “Jane”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1324/polonium-210-mysteries-continue and “Jeffrey”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1321/israel-and-nuclear-opacity have addressed them. So go read.

Oh, and Jeffrey “says he still likes me”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1325/administrivia.

You should also all check out “this band.”:http://www.messupthemess.com/

Have a good rest-of-weekend.

Vanunu on Israeli Nuclear Arsenal

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Jeffrey’s “post”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1015/spying-on-the-bomb about the National Security Archives’ recently-released documents related to the South African and French nuclear arsenals reminded me that Mordechai Vanunu issued his estimate of the Israeli nuclear weapons arsenal this past December.

Vanunu, in a 21 December interview with _Voyenny Parad_, said:

Question: Do you know how many nuclear bombs Israel has?

Mordechai Vanunu: When I worked at Dimona, nuclear materials were already being produced there – plutonim, lithium, tritium, and others. Enough to make ten nuclear bombs per year. In other words, starting from 1985, Israel has over 200 nuclear warheads by now.

It’s a bit old, but “this paper”:http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cpc-pubs/farr.htm from the USAF Counterproliferation Center contains a series of estimates of the Israeli arsenal (see Appendix A).

ACA uses an estimate of “75-200 nuclear weapons”:http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat.asp , FYI.