In all those years, although it has been an open secret that Israel possessed nuclear weapons, it has never been admitted, even by those governments that helped Israel acquire them. One side note to the recent coverage of the war was the existence of a small nuclear device that Israel intended to explode inside Egypt if it felt it was going to lose the war. Israel had long wanted a nuclear weapon of its own, but was isolated diplomatically in the years after its founding in But by the mids, that had changed.
Western powers were so concerned at the rise of Arab nationalism, and in particular the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser, that they conspired in to use Israel to attack Egypt and bring down Nasser.
That plan failed, but it began a long association between the West and Israel. By the end of the s, there were hundreds of French scientists and technicians living in Dimona, teaching Israelis how to master the nuclear fuel cycle. Later, other western countries, including Britain, helped. In the years since, the Israelis openly lied to the United States during inspections, supported brutal regimes like Apartheid South Africa in order to get its hands on materials, conducted test explosions in violation of international treaties, spied on allies and censored the press at home.
Milchan's life story is colourful, and unlikely enough to be the subject of one of the blockbusters he bankrolls. In the documentary, Robert de Niro recalls discussing Milchan's role in the illicit purchase of nuclear-warhead triggers.
I just wanted to know," De Niro says. Israel's my country. Milchan was not shy about using Hollywood connections to help his shadowy second career. At one point, he admits in the documentary, he used the lure of a visit to actor Richard Dreyfuss's home to get a top US nuclear scientist, Arthur Biehl, to join the board of one of his companies. According to Milchan's biography, by Israeli journalists Meir Doron and Joseph Gelman, he was recruited in by Israel's current president, Shimon Peres, who he met in a Tel Aviv nightclub called Mandy's, named after the hostess and owner's wife Mandy Rice-Davies, freshly notorious for her role in the Profumo sex scandal.
Milchan, who then ran the family fertiliser company, never looked back, playing a central role in Israel's clandestine acquisition programme. He was responsible for securing vital uranium-enrichment technology, photographing centrifuge blueprints that a German executive had been bribed into temporarily "mislaying" in his kitchen. The same blueprints, belonging to the European uranium enrichment consortium, Urenco, were stolen a second time by a Pakistani employee, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who used them to found his country's enrichment programme and to set up a global nuclear smuggling business, selling the design to Libya, North Korea and Iran.
For that reason, Israel's centrifuges are near-identical to Iran's, a convergence that allowed Israeli to try out a computer worm, codenamed Stuxnet, on its own centrifuges before unleashing it on Iran in Arguably, Lakam's exploits were even more daring than Khan's. In , it organised the disappearance of an entire freighter full of uranium ore in the middle of the Mediterranean.
In what became known as the Plumbat affair, the Israelis used a web of front companies to buy a consignment of uranium oxide, known as yellowcake, in Antwerp. The yellowcake was concealed in drums labelled "plumbat", a lead derivative, and loaded onto a freighter leased by a phony Liberian company.
The sale was camouflaged as a transaction between German and Italian companies with help from German officials, reportedly in return for an Israeli offer to help the Germans with centrifuge technology. When the ship, the Scheersberg A, docked in Rotterdam, the entire crew was dismissed on the pretext that the vessel had been sold and an Israeli crew took their place.
The ship sailed into the Mediterranean where, under Israeli naval guard, the cargo was transferred to another vessel. US and British documents declassified last year also revealed a previously unknown Israeli purchase of about tons of yellowcake from Argentina in or , without the safeguards typically used in nuclear transactions to prevent the material being used in weapons.
Israel had few qualms about proliferating nuclear weapons knowhow and materials, giving South Africa's apartheid regime help in developing its own bomb in the s in return for tons of yellowcake.
Israel's nuclear reactor also required deuterium oxide, also known as heavy water, to moderate the fissile reaction. For that, Israel turned to Norway and Britain. In , Israel managed to buy 20 tons of heavy water that Norway had sold to the UK but was surplus to requirements for the British nuclear programme. Both governments were suspicious that the material would be used to make weapons, but decided to look the other way. In documents seen by the BBC in British officials argued it would be "over-zealous" to impose safeguards.
For its part, Norway carried out only one inspection visit, in Israel's nuclear-weapons project could never have got off the ground, though, without an enormous contribution from France. The country that took the toughest line on counter-proliferation when it came to Iran helped lay the foundations of Israel's nuclear weapons programme, driven by by a sense of guilt over letting Israel down in the Suez conflict, sympathy from French-Jewish scientists, intelligence-sharing over Algeria and a drive to sell French expertise and abroad.
On the way back he told an aide: "It's exactly like a meeting of gangsters. Everyone is putting his gun on the table, if you have no gun you are nobody. So we must have a nuclear programme.
And as it built its arsenal, Paris solds material assistance to other aspiring weapons states, not just Israel. 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 attack on the Tammuz-1 reactor at Osiraq, Iraq. This daring attack, carried out by eight Fs accompanied by six Fs 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 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. Since 19 September , Israel has worked on its own satellite recon- naissance system to decrease reliance on U. 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, kilometers. Offeq-2 went up on 3 April The launch of the Offeq-3 failed on its first attempt on 15 September , but was successful 5 April Mordechai Vanunu provided the best look at the Israeli nuclear arsenal in complete with photographs.
He was subsequently kidnapped by Israeli agents, tried and imprisoned. His data shows a sophisticated nuclear program, over bombs, with boosted devices, neutron bombs, F deliverable warheads, and Jericho warheads. 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. 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 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. All of this validated the nuclear arsenal in the minds of the Israelis. 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.
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. Many Israeli officers have attended American military schools where they learned tactical use in crowded Europe. 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.
The government of Israel recently ordered three German Dolphin Class submarine, to be delivered in late 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.
Projected capabilities include a submarine-launched nuclear missile with a kilometer range. 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.
A recent study highlighted Israel's extreme vulnerability to a first strike and an accompanying vulnerability even to a false alarm. Israeli development of an anti- missile defense, the Arrow, a fully fielded [] Jericho II ballistic missile, and the soon-to-arrive strategic submarine force, seems to have produced a coming change in defense force structure. The accord with Jordan, allowing limited Israeli military presence in Jordanian skies, could make the flying distance to several potential adversaries considerably shorter.
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.
Israel, like Iran, has desires of regional power. The 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. 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.
Chances are small but could increase as radicals decry the peace process. 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. 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. 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. America does not want Israel's nuclear profile raised.
Israel used their existence to guarantee a continuing supply of American conventional weapons, a policy likely to continue. 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. If so, Israel has a 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. Hersh, Seymour M. Quoted in Weissman, Steve and Krosney, Herbert. Internet, 27 October Nashif, Taysir N. Nangia Books, , 3. Bennett, Jeremy, The Suez Crisis. BBC Video. Videocassette and Raviv, Dan and Melman, Yossi. Every Spy a Prince. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, , Peres, Shimon, Battling for Peace. Martin's Griffin, , Green, Stephen, Taking Sides. Spector, Leonard S. Quoted in Stevens, Elizabeth. On line. Internet, 23 October Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
Nordeen, Lon O. Brecher, Michael, Decision in Crisis. Cohen, Avner. Creveld, Martin van. The Sword and the Olive. Burrows, William E. Burrows and Windrem, op. Dowty, Alan. Hersh, op. Spector, The Undeclared Bomb , op. Brownlow, Cecil. Nuclear weapons in Egypt, artillery buildup at Guantanamo, Communist concentrations in Vietnam aimed at political gains. New York, New York: , Tauris, , On line: Internet, 22 November and Kelley, Robert.
McKinnon, Dan. Bullseye One Reactor. Garrity, Patrick J. Cohen, Eliezer. Quoted in Sorenson, op. Dowler, Thomas W. Burrows, and Windrem, op. Terrill, W. Will Assad go for the Golan?
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