Israel and weapons of mass destruction

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Israel is very widely believed to possess a substantial arsenal of nuclear weapons and intermediate-range ballistic missiles to deliver them. There is also speculation that it may have chemical and biological weapons programs. Israel acceded to the Geneva Protocol on February 20, 1969.

1 Nuclear weapons
2 Chemical weapons
3 Biological weapons
4 External links

Nuclear weapons

The Israeli government refuses to officially confirm or deny that it has a nuclear weapon program, and has an official Policy of Vagueness on this subject, saying only that it would not be the first to "introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East" [1]. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country not to sign or ratify the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) since Oman acceded on January 23, 1997.

The United States had been opposed to Israel acquiring the bomb - an August 2005 BBC investigation showed that in the late 1950s the US rejected an Israeli request to sell it heavy water, because of Israel's refusal to guarantee it would be used only for civilian purposes. Consequently, because the world's largest supplier of heavy water, Norway, did not have enough stock, Britain sold Israel 20 tons of surplus heavy water, without requiring safeguards, or informing the US. The decision to ship 10 tons in June 1959, and another 10 tons a year later, appears to have been made entirely by civil servants at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, without political involvement. A 1961 request for a further five tons was declined - again without ministerial involvement - after a Daily Express report the year before on Israel's activities at Dimona had made the issue too politically sensitive.[2]

The first public revelation of Israel's nuclear capability (as opposed to development programme) came in the London-based Sunday Times on October 5, 1986, which printed information provided by Mordechai Vanunu, formerly employed at the Negev Nuclear Research Center, a facility located in the Negev desert south of Dimona. For publication of state secrets, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison for treason and espionage. Although there had been much speculation prior to Vanunu's revelations that the Dimona site was creating nuclear weapons, Vanunu's information indicated that Israel had also built thermonuclear weapons.

In 1998, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres admitted publicly that Israel "built a nuclear option, not in order to have a Hiroshima but an Oslo." [3]. The "nuclear option" may refer to a nuclear weapon or to the nuclear reactor in Dimona, which Israel claims is used for scientific research. ("Hiroshima" refers to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, while "Oslo" refers to the Oslo Peace Accords). Peres, in his capacity as the Director General of the Ministry of Defense in the early 1960s, was responsible for building Israel's nuclear capability.

According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, based on Vanunu's information, Israel has approximately 100-200 nuclear explosive devices and a Jericho missile delivery system. A United States Defense Intelligence Agency report (leaked and published in the book "Rumsfeld's War" by journalist Richard Scarborough in 2004) puts the number of weapons at 82. The difference might lie in the amount of material Israel has on store versus assembled weapons.

Israel has operated three modern German-built Dolphin class submarines [4] since 1999. Various reports indicate that these submarines are equipped with American-made Harpoon missiles modified to carry small nuclear warheads [5] and/or the larger Israeli-made 'Popeye Turbo' cruise missiles, originally developed for air-to-ground strike capability [6].

No known nuclear weapons test has been conducted within Israel, although the boosted weapons shown in Vanunu's photographs may well have required testing. It is also possible that the Israelis received results from French nuclear testing in the 1960s. Another story has it that, it was Britain who assisted Israel in 1958. In June 1976, the West Germany Army Magazine, Wehrtechnik, claimed that a 1963 underground test took place in the Negev, and other reports indicate that some type of non-nuclear test, perhaps a zero yield or implosion test, may have occurred on 2 November 1966. In September 1979, a Vela satellite may have detected a 3 kiloton oceanic nuclear explosion near to South Africa, accompanied by underwater acoustic and ionospheric effects which may have been a joint nuclear test between Israel and South Africa (see Vela Incident).

Chemical weapons

Israel has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). There are speculations that a chemical weapons program might be located at the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) in Nes Ziona. Professor Marcus Klingberg, deputy director of the institute, was sentenced in 1983 to 18 years in prison for being a Soviet spy, a matter so sensitive that it was kept secret for a decade.

190 liters of dimethyl methylphosphonate, a CWC schedule 2 chemical used in the synthesis of Sarin nerve gas, was discovered in the cargo of El Al Flight 1862 after it crashed in 1992 en-route to Tel Aviv. Israel insisted the material was non-toxic, was to have been used to test filters that protect against chemical weapons, and that it had been clearly listed on the cargo manifest in accordance with international regulations. The shipment was from a U.S. chemical plant to the IIBR under a U.S. Department of Commerce licence. [7]

In 1993, the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment WMD proliferation assessment recorded Israel as a country generally reported as having undeclared offensive chemical warfare capabilities.