Introduction

Israel is the sixth nation in the world, and the first in the Middle East, to develop and acquire a nuclear weapons capability. Israel initiated its nuclear program in earnest in the mid-to-late 1950s, and by late 1966, it had completed the R&D phase of its first nuclear weapon device. Since 1970, Israel's status as a nuclear weapon state (NWS) has become an accepted international fact.

However, Israel's behavior as a NWS has been distinctly different from the behavior of the five official members of the nuclear club that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—the United States, Russia, France, China, and the United Kingdom; and India and Pakistan, which have not signed the NPT. While these nations have publicly declared their nuclear status, Israel, to this day, has never confirmed or denied its nuclear status and remains outside the NPT. Since Prime Minister Levi Eshkol pledged in the mid-1960s that "Israel will not be the first nation to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East," all his successors have adhered to this opaque declared policy, and this policy has become known as Israel's policy of "nuclear opacity" or ambiguity.

Israel is now an advanced NWS, in both quality and quantity of its arsenal. Estimates as to the size of Israel's nuclear arsenal vary and range from 100 to over 200 warheads.

History

The history of the Israeli nuclear project is still shrouded in a great deal of secrecy. As part of Israel's policy of nuclear opacity (see below), Israel's military censorship prohibits publication of any factual Israeli-based information on the nuclear project.[1] Consequently, only fragmentary bits and pieces of information on the topic have ever been published, and most commonly only in the form of unconfirmed press reports by the non-Israeli press. Thus, the historical narrative offered here is sketchy and incomplete. Its main source for the period up to 1970 is Avner Cohen's book Israel and the Bomb, while for the more recent period, it is based on various non-Israeli reports and publications (all unconfirmed), including the so-called Vanunu testimony, the disclosure made on 5 October 1986 in the London Sunday Times, based on a testimony of Mordechai Vanunu, a technician who had worked at the Dimona nuclear facility and subsequently broke his oath of secrecy.[2]

The Initiation Phase

David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was obsessed and driven by the vision that a nuclear capability would be the answer to Israel's security predicament. He considered the Arab-Israeli conflict to be deep and enduring, and, consequently, he believed that the resolution of the conflict could come only after the Arabs were compelled to accept the existence of the state of Israel. Until that time, Israel would have to rely on its sword. Furthermore, only technology, he believed, could provide Israel the qualitative edge necessary to overcome its inferiority in population, resources, and size. As Shimon Peres (his aide at the time) once put it, "Ben-Gurion believed that science could compensate us for what Nature has denied us."[3] This phrase is, in essence, the whole rationale for Israel's nuclear project.

Two other men were instrumental in making Ben-Gurion's nuclear vision a reality. The first was Professor Ernst David Bergmann, an organic chemist by training, who was Ben-Gurion's close scientific advisor. In 1952, Bergmann founded the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) as the vehicle through which to realize this nuclear vision. The second was Shimon Peres, then young director-general of the Ministry of Defense, who was the administrator-politician who promoted that vision. As the architect of the "special relations" between Israel and France in the mid-to-late 1950s, Peres was the man behind the French-Israeli nuclear deal under which the nuclear complex in Dimona was built. For all practical purposes, Peres was the chief executive of the project during its initiation stage (a role he filled until he left the Ministry of Defense in 1965).

From early on, Peres recognized that it would be impossible for Israel to fulfill its nuclear dream on its own. He concluded that Israel needed a major foreign nuclear supplier. In 1955, Israel was the second nation in the world to sign an agreement under the Eisenhower administration's "Atoms for Peace" program, but it soon recognized that this program could not be the prime vehicle for Israel through which to build an ambitious nuclear program aimed at military applications. France, on the other hand—which at the time was considering its own military nuclear program—seemed the most logical choice as the project's primary foreign supplier. The nuclear issue was clearly one of the underlying motives behind Peres' efforts to build the France-Israel alliance in the mid-to-late 1950s.

Israeli-French nuclear discussions about a major nuclear deal had been initiated prior to the 1956 Suez campaign—a brief armed conflict in which Israel, with the backing of Britain and France, attacked Egypt in response to the Arab nation's blockading of the Suez Canal and its support of border-area attacks by Arab fighters. But it was that joint military campaign - and in particular the Soviet Union's veiled nuclear threats against both countries during the campaign - that gave impetus to the sensitive talks between Israel and France. Still, it took Peres another year of on-and-off negotiations to produce the entire package, during which time a heated- but quiet - debate took place in Israel itself about the technological, financial, and political feasibility and desirability of the project. Ultimately, however, it was Prime Minister Ben-Gurion's project, and he gave the necessary support to Peres to complete the deal.

In early 2007, a biography about Shimon Peres was published which revealed new information regarding the signing of the French-Israeli nuclear deal, indicating that the deal may have been signed a day earlier than previously thought. According to the author, Michael Bar-Zohar, Shimon Peres persuaded French Prime Minister Maurice Bourges-Maunoury to backdate the deal by one day. This was done because of the fact that the government of Bourges-Maunoury had fallen the day before which would have annulled the deal had it become known at the time.[4] The French-Israeli nuclear deal was secretly signed in Paris on 3 October 1957. The details of the bilateral agreement are still unknown, but it is believed to have consisted of two sets of agreements. The first was a political agreement between the two governments; it was general and vague and dealt with the political and legal obligations of the two parties. The second was a technical agreement between the two nations' nuclear commissions; it referred to the specifics of the scientific and technological cooperation between the two states. According to French author Pierre Pean, the most sensitive aspects of the package were not spelled out in any of the official documents but were left as verbal understandings. Pean suggests also that the governmental documents did not reflect the full scope of the Dimona deal. For example, the most sensitive and secret component of the entire package, the reprocessing plant, apparently has no explicit reference in the official documents.[5]

Sometime in early 1958, Israel started the excavation and construction work at the Dimona site. When French President de Gaulle learned soon after his election about the secret project, he acted to end French participation in it, but it took almost a year until his decision was translated into meaningful action. When de Gaulle informed Ben-Gurion in June 1960 about his decision, Israel decided to complete the project on its own.[6]

Not until December 1960, almost three years after the Dimona project had been initiated, did the United States learn about it. As the departing Eisenhower administration made its discovery public, it demanded an Israeli explanation as to the nature of the project. In response, the Israeli government told the U.S. government that the new project was for "peaceful purposes." On 23 December 1960, Ben-Gurion informed the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) that the 24-megawatt (MW) research reactor under construction would be "peaceful," designed for scientific, industrial, and medical applications. This was the first and last time that the Israeli government made a public statement about the Dimona project.[7]

In retrospect, this statement entailed the strategy that Israel would use to overcome U.S. opposition to the project in the early mid-1960s. From the outset, the Israeli nuclear case posed a great challenge to U.S. nonproliferation policy. President Kennedy was determined to thwart Israel's efforts to acquire a nuclear capability, fearing that it could undermine his nonproliferation efforts. He firmly insisted that U.S. scientists be allowed to visit Dimona to verify Israel's claims that the facility was not for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons. Such a visit took place in May 1961, setting the stage for a meeting between Ben-Gurion and President Kennedy. The meeting resulted in the nuclear issue being removed from the Israeli-U.S. agenda for two years.

Two years later, as construction at Dimona neared completion, Kennedy reapplied the pressure on Israel over Dimona. In a tough exchange of letters with Prime Ministers Ben-Gurion and Levi Eshkol (who replaced Ben-Gurion in July 1963), Kennedy demanded semi-annual U.S. inspection visits in Dimona, threatening that bilateral relations would be "seriously jeopardized" if Israel did not comply with his demands. By late August 1963, after weeks of intense consultations, Israel appeared to agree with Kennedy's demands - or at least so Kennedy was led to believe.

By the time U.S. scientists began the visits to Dimona in early 1964 according to the Kennedy-Eshkol deal, Kennedy had been assassinated, and President Johnson was less committed to nonproliferation in general and to the Israel case in particular. While Kennedy's effort to halt the Israeli nuclear project failed, it shaped the very special mode under which Israel became a NWS. The United States was not in a position to stop the Israeli nuclear program - Israel, by that time, was already fully committed to creating a nuclear option - but U.S. policies determined the way in which Israel acquired the bomb. Israel developed the bomb opaquely, in a manner that avoided defying U.S. nonproliferation policies. A policy of ambiguity was born.

It was during the years of the Johnson administration that Israel crossed the technological nuclear threshold. While Israel completed the R&D; work on its first nuclear device sometime in late 1966, it continued to pledge to the Johnson administration that "it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the region." Clearly, Israel was committed to having a nuclear option, but this did not mean necessarily a commitment to becoming a NWS. In fact, Israeli hesitation as to the future of its nuclear program seemed to intensify in the wake of a major accident at the Dimona facility in December 1966, which caused the shutdown of the nuclear plant for three months.

Crossing the Nuclear Threshold

The 1967 Six-Day War was a turning point in Israel's nuclear history. In Israel and the Bomb, author Avner Cohen revealed that on the eve of the Six-Day War, in late May 1967, Israeli engineers improvised rudimentary, but operational, nuclear weapons—the first time that Israel assembled nuclear devices.[8] The 1967 war brought about a new political and strategic reality, as well as domestic changes in Israel itself that significantly decreased Israel's nuclear inhibition. The fear that Israeli nuclear development could bring about a Middle East war was moot now. With its victory in the 1967 war, Israel had passed the vulnerable transition period with little opportunity for an Arab reaction.

However, by 1968 a new factor came into the picture and started to play a significant role in Israel's nuclear behavior. The advent of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), co-sponsored and signed by the United States in the summer of 1968, reshaped the U.S.-Israeli dialogue on the nuclear issue. By November 1968, against the background of strong U.S. pressure to join the NPT - a demand that was linked to the first sale of Phantom aircraft to Israel - Israel told the United States that, given its unique security needs, it could not sign the NPT at the present time. President Johnson ultimately approved the Phantom deal without linking it to Israeli concession on the NPT issue.

Less than one year later, in September 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir reached a secret agreement with President Richard Nixon on the Israeli nuclear issue. Meir explained to Nixon why Israel had been compelled to develop a nuclear capability, why it could not sign the NPT, but also stated that Israel would not become a declared nuclear power. That meant, operationally, that Israel would not test nuclear devices, would not declare itself a NWS, and would not use its nuclear status capability for diplomatic gains, but keep its bomb "in the basement." While Israel would not join the NPT, it would not defy it either.

In the wake of the Meir-Nixon agreement, the United States ended its annual visits in Dimona; in addition, the United States no longer pressured Israel to sign the NPT, adopting instead a de-facto policy of "don't ask, don't tell." This policy was perceived by both Israeli and U.S. policymakers as the only possible policy, both for Israel and the United States, capable of addressing both the uniqueness of Israel's nuclear case in tandem with the United State's own commitment to the nonproliferation regime. To this day, all Israeli and U.S. governments have adhered to this policy, and likewise, all subsequent U.S. administrations have looked the other way on the Israeli nuclear case.

In July 1970, the New York Times disclosed that Israel was considered by the U.S. intelligence community to be a NWS.[9] Shortly after, Israel started to deploy its first nuclear-capable missiles, the Jericho-I, a delivery system that had been initially built by a French contractor but, due to the French embargo, was transferred to Israel and completed in one of the plants of the Israeli Aviation Industries. By the time of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel was already a small nuclear power.

The 1973 Yom Kippur War had a nuclear dimension even though the full drama has never been told (or even officially confirmed). It has been reported that during the early phase of the war, Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan readied the nuclear weapons infrastructure, apparently even proposing to Prime Minister Golda Meir to arm the weapons in case Israel suddenly reached the point of "last resort." It is believed that Prime Minister Meir refused to concede to Dayan's "last resort" thinking, and did not authorize the arming of the weapons. U.S. intelligence picked up signs that Israel put its nuclear-capable Jericho missiles on high alert—apparently in a way that was designed to be noticed. In her decision not to follow Dayan's advise, Meir raised the bar on the issue of "last resort": situations of "last resort" that could invoke use of nuclear weapons would be the most extreme situations a nation like Israel could ever face, and should be limited only to situations in which Israel's survival was at stake. Israel's policy of nuclear opacity had survived.

Nuclear Opacity: From Improvisation to Semi-Permanent National Posture

Israel's nuclear history in the period from 1973 until the first Gulf War in 1990-91 can be recounted along two distinct themes. First, it was the period in which Israel's policy of nuclear opacity was transformed from a short-lived improvisation to a semi-permanent strategic posture. In retrospect, the period from 1974 to 1990 was the golden age of nuclear opacity. By the end of the period, Israelis came to view the policy as a great strategic success because it provided Israel the benefits of existential deterrence at a very low political cost. Nuclear opacity became an indispensable pillar in its national security doctrine. In particular, the policy of nuclear opacity seemed to have removed the nuclear issue from the U.S.-Israeli agenda, without restricting Israel's freedom of action in this field. For Israeli strategists, opacity was the best of all possible worlds. Even Vanunu's public disclosure of Dimona's secrets in 1986 (see footnote 2 and below) was not politically sufficient to shake Israel's posture of opacity.

Second, it was a period of rapid growth for Israel's nuclear arsenal, with Israel taking advantage of its freedom of action under opacity. It is widely believed (and supported by Vanunu's information) that during this period, Israel's nuclear arsenal made a major transformation. Israel no longer possessed a dozen or so low-yield first-generation bombs; it expanded and modernized its arsenal, which became qualitatively advanced and quantitatively sizable.

It is important to look at the lessons of the 1973 war in order to understand these changes. In the eyes of most Israeli strategists and military historians, Israel almost reached the brink, the moment of "last resort." Had the Syrians been able to cross the Jordan River, this could have called for "last resort" nuclear use. Yet, it appears that Israel's dozen or so bombs did not fit such a use. To stop armor columns moving on the Golan Heights, in the proximity of Israeli troops, Israel needed low-yield weapons for tactical use. But, presumably, Israel lacked such weapons. Also, if some Israeli leaders (such as Dayan) had concerns about the Soviet Union, Israel had no weapons to constitute even a minimum deterrence vis-à-vis the Soviet Union.

According to Vanunu, since the mid-1970s, Israel had expanded and modernized its nuclear infrastructure in Dimona to be able to produce new types of advanced nuclear weaponry, small and large, and in greater quantities. Some sources believe that during that period Israel produced both larger advanced weapons (boosted, and possibly even thermonuclear) as well as advanced tactical weapons (possibly enhanced radiation weapons). In addition, by the mid-to-late 1970s, Israel started the development of the Jericho-II missile, a ballistic missile with an operational range of 1,500 kilometers or more. The Jericho-II was tested in the late 1980s, and it was deployed in 1989-90.

Israel significantly expanded its nuclear capability throughout that period, but it did not move to establish a secured second-strike capability. While apparently there were occasional discussions about this, operational and costly decisions were deferred. The underlying assumption that guided Israel's strategic planning was that Israel's regional nuclear monopoly was still holding, and if and when this situation changed, Israel would have ample time to adjust. This assessment was reinforced by the success of Israel's attack on the Iraqi Osiraq reactor in 1981. Until the late 1980s, Israel assumed that Saddam's nuclear vision was for all practical purposes dead. But this assumption came under scrutiny by the late 1980s. As the Iran-Iraq War came to a close, Iraq emerged as a regional Arab power with strong nuclear aspirations. In 1990, before Iraq invaded Kuwait, Israeli strategists believed that Israel and Iraq were on a path to conflict within a few years.

During the buildup of the first Gulf War, and as a reaction to Iraqi missile threats, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir issued an unveiled threat to Iraq without directly referring to the Israeli nuclear arsenal: “all those who threaten us should know that whoever dares strike Israel will be struck hard and in the most severe way,” adding that ”…Israel has a very strong deterrent capability.”[10] Defense Minister Moshe Ayan went even further by warning Saddam Hussein about Israeli weapons, “which the world does not yet know about.”[11] During an Arrow anti-missile test in August 1990, intended to underscore Israeli missile capabilities, military officials spoke of “other responses” to potential Iraqi chemical attacks on Israeli territory.[12]

The post-Gulf War nuclear developments, both in Iraq and Iran, compounded by the international community's intelligence failure in detecting Iraq's nuclear program, were critical in Israel's strategic decision to establish its own sea-based strategic force. The Israeli Navy had been pushing for a small fleet of modern diesel submarines for “strategic purposes” since the early 1980s, and after long negotiations with Germany, the Thyssen-Nordseewerke shipyard in Emden, and the Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG shipyard in Kiel were chosen as the contractors to build three modern diesel-electric 1900-ton Dolphin-class submarines, equipped with ten 21-inch multipurpose tubes capable of launching torpedoes, mines, and cruise missiles.[13][14] In June 2000, the Sunday Times broke a story about an alleged Israeli test-launch of a nuclear capable submarine-launched-cruise-missile (SLCM) in the Indian ocean, using the newly commissioned Dolphin submarines. According to unconfirmed reports the missile hit its target at a range of around 1500km.[15] It is believed that the alleged test missile was based on the Israeli Popeye, an ALCM with a range of 250-300kms.[16] Israel has categorically denied the allegations about the missile tests in the Indian Ocean.[17] In 2003, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Israeli and American officials announced that Israel had deployed U.S. supplied Harpoon ASCMs on its Dolphin submarines and modified the missiles to carry nuclear warheads.[19] Prominent missile experts believe this to be a real possibility, though the range of the Harpoon armed with an Israeli nuclear warhead would probably be decreased to around 90kms due to the added weight. In November 2005, Israel signed a contract worth $1.17 billion with Germany for the construction of two more attack submarines, the first of which is planned to be completed by 2012.[20] These factors underline that having secured a sea launch capability, Israel has, or is well on its way to having its own nuclear triad with sea, land, and air launched options.

On 21 April 2004, after 18 years in an Israeli prison, nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was released. However, in July 2007, Vanunu was sentenced to an additional six months in prison after violating a gag order that had been placed on him that forbade him from further disclosing details about the nuclear program.[21] The Israeli government also set severe restrictions on his movements and conduct after his initial release from prison in 2004. In July of the same year, the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission launched an official website providing only general details about Israel's civilian nuclear program. Later that month International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohammed El-Baradei visited Israel to meet with government officials. Despite El-Baradei's visit, Israel continues to assert that it will not discuss disarmament issues until after a comprehensive Middle Eastern peace agreement has been reached.

In an interesting development in early 2007, following the progress of the U.S.-India nuclear deal, Israeli officials lobbied their American counterparts to convince the NSG to allow Israel to conduct nuclear trade without being subjected to full-scope safeguards. Even though the U.S. declined this request,[22] Israel nonetheless presented a plan to the NSG suggesting an objective set of criteria to judge whether to allow nuclear trade with non-NPT states. The proposal was greeted unenthusiastically; and the Bush administration only reiterated its stance that the India deal could not be seen as a precedent for other non-NPT states.[23] These efforts by Israel to lobby the NSG have come at a time when the Israeli government has expressed an active interest in nuclear energy generation.[24] This has been confirmed by the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission in an official statement, citing an increasing shortage in indigenous electricity production capacity and the government’s wish to reduce dependency on imported energy sources.[25]

In August 2007, National Infrastructure Minister, Ben-Eliezer told a gathering of engineers of the Israel Electric Corporation (ICE), that he would soon submit a proposal to the government that suggests building a nuclear power plant at Shivta, on the border with Egypt in the South of Israel. According to Ben-Eliezer, the plan calls for the construction of a 1,200 to 1,500MW plant over nine years.[26] So far there have been no discussions with any foreign vendors about reactor exports, but it is understood that Israel will be looking to U.S. supplied reactor technology. Furthermore, it is believed that the plan would entail similar provisions as those in the U.S.-India nuclear deal, i.e., that the supplied reactor would be put under safeguards, with other Israeli nuclear facilities being exempt.[27] Presently, all cooperation with Israel in the nuclear field is limited to safety and it remains to be seen what steps Israel takes in moving forward on its plans for civilian nuclear power generation.

Key Sources and Notes:
[1]When Israeli researcher and author Avner Cohen published, without censorship approval, his book Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998)—a political history of the Israeli nuclear project until 1970 based on some exclusive Israeli sources—the Israeli authorities interrogated him at length and considered filing charges against him. This case highlighted the extreme sensitivity of the subject and the effort of the Israeli authorities to ban Israeli-based historical research on the subject.
[2] This was the first, and only, time in which an insider from the Israeli nuclear program divulged information on the program. Those revelations implied that Israel's nuclear program is more sophisticated and advanced than it had been commonly estimated until then. Some analysts interpreted the information Vanunu provided and concluded that Israel's nuclear arsenal may be at the level of 100 to 200 weapons, possibly even some thermonuclear weapons.
[3] Shimon Peres, Battling for Peace: A Memoir (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995), p. 132.
[4] Pierre Pean, Les Deux Bombes (Paris: Fayard, 1981), pp. 95-96, 110.
[5] "Author says Shimon Peres persuaded France to backdate nuclear deal with Israel in 1957," International Herald Tribune, 20 March 2007.
[6] Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, pp. 73-75.
[7] Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, pp. 79-97.
[8] Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, pp. 273-276.
[9] Hedrick Smith, "U.S. Assumes the Israelis Have A-Bomb or its Parts," New York Times, 18 July 1970.
[10] Bob Hepburn, “Israel on full alert after Iraqi threat,” The Toronto Star, 26 December, 1990.
[11] Andrew Meisels, “Israel vows it can defeat Iraq even without U.S. help,” The Washington Times, 24 September, 1990.
[12] Andrew Meisels, “Israeli missile test sends a message to Baghdad,” The Washington Times, 10 August, 1990.
[13] Joseph Cirincione, Jon Wolfsthal, and Miriam Rajkumar, “Deadly Arsenals,” 2nd edition, Carnegie Endownment for Peace: Washington D.C., 2005.
[14] Ed Blanche, “Israel denies sub-launched missile tests, Jane’s Missiles and Rockets, 1 August 2000.
[15] Uzi Mahnaimi and Matthew Campbell, “Israel makes nuclear waves with submarine missile test,” Sunday Times, 18 June 2000.
[16] “Popey Turbo,” Federation of American Scientists, www.fas.org/ nuke/ guide/ israel/ missile/ popeye-t.htm.
[17] Ed Blanche, “Israel denies sub-launched missile tests, Jane’s Missiles and Rockets, 1 August 2000.
[18] Peter Beaumont, Conel Urquhart, “Israel fits nuclear arms in submarines,” The Observer, 12 October 2003.
[19] Schechter, “Harpoon missile story politically motivated,” The Jerusalem Post, 13 October, 2003.
[20] Alon Ben-David, “Israel looks to acquire more German submarines,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, 30 November 2005.
[21] Nir Hason, "Court Returns Israeli 'Nuclear Whistleblower' Vanunu to Jail for Violating Parole." in OSC Document GMP20070702735002, 2 July 2007.
[22] Mark Hibbs, “US rebuffed Israeli request for exemption from NSG trade rule,” Nuclear Fuel, 1 January 2007.
[23] Glenn Kessler, “Israel submits nuclear trade plan, move may complicate efforts to win exemption for India,” The Washington Post, 30 September 2007.
[24] Neal Sandler, “Israel's infrastructure minister hints at support of nuclear power,” Nucleonics Week, 25 January 2007.
[25] Neal Sandler, “Israel considering building nuclear plant, AEC confirms,” Nucleonics Week, 15 Fenruary 2007.
[26] Neal Sandler, Mark Hibbs, and Daniel Horner, “Israel counting on US-India deal to further power reactor project,” Nucleonics Week, 16 August 2007.
[27] Neal Sandler, Mark Hibbs, and Daniel Horner, “Israel counting on US-India deal to further power reactor project,” Nucleonics Week, 16 August 2007.

	Updated November 2008