Israel’s Nuclear Ambiguity

Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility

Egypt's gonna get one, too
Just to use on you know who
So Israel's getting tense
Wants one in self defense
"The Lord's our shepherd", says the Psalm
But just in case, we better get a bomb!

Tom Lehrer, Who's next? 1967

A number of subscribers have raised the question of Israel’s nuclear capabilities and what is known about them. Given the furore over Iran’s nuclear programme, which has led to years of sanctions, sabotage, and most recently military action and as yet no weapons, why is Israel able to get away with having weapons? One reason is that Israel, unlike Iran, has never pretended to support the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and never signed up to it. Iran ratified the treaty and its activities are therefore close to violating a treaty commitment. It only has convoluted explanations as to why it needs to enrich Uranium to levels suitable for weapons but quite unnecessary for a civilian nuclear programme, though that is all it claims it has. Israel does not bother to explain. It sticks stubbornly to a formula that is now 60 years old - it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East - and refuses to elaborate, other than to add that it does not intend to be the second either.

The whole non-proliferation regime is based on a higher hypocrisy as it allows a few states to possess nuclear weapons while denying them to others (‘drunkards demanding abstinence’). The comparison between Israel and Iran can be cited as another example of the double standards inherent in the regime. In the end, however, this is not about fairness but about the balance of power. The question is who has the strategic advantage and Israel refuses to concede that to Iran, just as before it was unwilling to concede any to Iraq and Syria when it attacked their nuclear facilities (in 1981 and 2007 respectively). Yet this still begs the question of how Israel gets away with it. Why is its nuclear capability not even talked about let alone subject to international scrutiny?

This is a question that has intrigued me throughout my career for it is not a new one. I addressed it half a century ago in my first article in a newspaper and in a professional journal. So please excuse me if I start with a bit of autobiography.

Nuclear Ambiguity in 1974

In November 1974 I was a junior research fellow at Nuffield College Oxford trying to finish my thesis when I got distracted by agreeing to sit on a panel at the University addressing the possibility of yet another Arab-Israeli War, just over a year after the previous one. I was preparing my contribution when a news story caught my eye. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, while in Cuba, had accused Israel of preparing for a war in which nuclear weapons could be used.

Like others working in the nuclear field I was aware of claims that Israel either had, or was closing to having, a small nuclear arsenal, and also that this was something that they deliberately did not talk about. I was also aware of the rumours that nuclear-tipped Jericho missiles had been readied for launch in October 1973 and also that this was one factor which led to Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s caution in pushing his forces forward after they crossed the Suez Canal, although that could more easily be explained by their vulnerability to Israeli aircraft once they moved beyond their air defence cover.

It later transpired that the issue was actively discussed by the Israeli government, especially during the early stages of the war when Israel was struggling to hold the line against Egyptian and Syrian advances. The idea of a demonstration shot was raised but dismissed. As the Israeli position strengthened the issue faded away.

I did not know that particular story then, but I found other snippets to suggest that Israel’s nuclear arsenal was encouraging Egyptian calculations to become more cautious. Mohammed Heykal, then the influential editor of the Cairo newspaper Al Ahram, had observed: ‘Israel either has these atomic bombs or is at least capable of producing them within six months.’ The interesting question to me was whether this evident but unacknowledged capability was already having a deterrent effect, injecting extra restraint into Arab strategic assessments. For my panel I concluded that a new war was unlikely for other reasons, but the nuclear issue did not seem irrelevant.

Not long after I found myself discussing the issue with Alastair Hetherington, then both a visiting fellow at Nuffield and editor of the Guardian. He was intrigued and asked me to write a piece for his paper. In this I expressed my scepticism about the likelihood of a new war, or that it would go nuclear. But I also wondered whether Israel might in the future find it necessary to make its nuclear deterrent more explicit should it face an existential threat, as it almost did in October 1973, this time without American support.

A few days after my piece appeared Israel’s president, Ephraim Katzir, broke the silence and spoke publicly of Israel’s ‘nuclear potential’. Hetherington, duly impressed by my prescience, asked me to write another article. This one linked Katzir’s statement to the continuing regional tensions but also to discussions then underway between the US and Egypt on the provision of a civilian nuclear reactor. The Israelis were worried about whether this would enable Egypt to start on its own weapons programme. For their part, the Egyptians had introduced a motion into the UN proposing a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, designed to put Israel on the spot regarding its nuclear intentions. (The Israeli response was that this was a good idea only as part of wider disarmament in the region).

Now fully engaged with the topic, I followed this up with an article the next year in the journal Survival. Part of this was to summarise what was in the public domain. (much of which had been collected by Fuad Jabber when a research student in California). It was known that France had supplied Israel with a nuclear reactor in the 1950s, and that the atomic establishments of the two countries had been close. The reactor at Dimona had attracted the suspicions of the Kennedy administration which Israel had managed to deflect. Later in the 1960s the Johnson administration appeared to have concluded that the best way to stop Israel ‘going nuclear’, or at least doing so explicitly, was to keep it well supplied with conventional forces so that it did not need to rely on nuclear threats.

The other part of my article was to argue that Israel was unlikely to change its policy of ambiguity. Since 1965 its line had been that it would not be ‘the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.’ At the time it had no weapons but now it probably had though it was still not prepared to say that it had made the introduction. When pressed about what Katzir had said, the official Israeli response was to distinguish between having the scientific technical knowledge and applying it.

In my article I surmised that this would continue. If Israel came out as a nuclear power, others would be forced to react. The Arabs would be under pressure to show they could do the same and would look to the Soviet Union to back them, which it would be loath to do, while the US would be under pressure to cut off military assistance to Israel. My basic argument was that Israel was still better off with US conventional military support than it would be with nothing to rely upon but its own nuclear deterrent.

Nuclear Ambiguity to 2025

As a history of Israel’s nuclear programme these articles are now very dated. So much more is now known about the origins of the programme, which goes back almost to the founding of the state. We have a lot more detail on the key policy decisions - to work closely with the French, not to rely solely on nuclear deterrence but to see it only as backup to conventional strength, and to construct the first bombs just before the 1967 war, just in case.

Yet I was at least correct about the durability of Israel’s nuclear ambiguity. Perhaps if it faced a mortal threat the policy would become more explicit, but while it has been involved in numerous fights and skirmishes over the past 50 years, reaching a crescendo over the past year, the 1973 war was the last time it felt truly at risk from a neighbouring state.

As intriguing as Israel’s own persistence with the policy is the fact that others go along with it. It is not as if its capability is completely hidden in secrecy. In 1986 there was the notorious case of Mordechai Vanunu, who had worked at Dimona on the Israeli nuclear programme as he became opposed to Israeli security policy in general and its nuclear policy in particular. In 1986 he reached London and gave his story and supporting materials to the Sunday Times, which led the paper to conclude that Israel had sufficient material for 100 bombs. Before the story was published Vanunu was persuaded to leave London for Rome where he was abducted by Israeli agents and taken back to Jerusalem for a treason trial at which he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. While this was an exceptional case, in that Vanunu came with documents and pictures, there have been regular media reports about Israel’s nuclear capabilities. A leaked email from former Secretary of State Colin Powell in 2016, for example, mentioned Israel having 200 weapons ‘all targeted on Tehran.’

With a stockpile of at least 200 weapons how can it claim to have not introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East? The answer is because it has never tested a weapon. All acknowledged nuclear powers have deliberately demonstrated their capability with a test of a nuclear device. We also now know that in 1969 a deal was done between Prime Minister Golda Meir and President Richard Nixon in which the US agreed to turn a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear capabilities and not pressure it into joining the non-proliferation treaty, in return for Israel not drawing attention to their capabilities and especially not testing.

Yet if that was the deal it is not clear that Israel kept to it. In 1979 an American Vela satellite (designed to watch out for atmospheric nuclear tests) picked up a flash from what seemed like a nuclear explosion in the Indian Ocean close to the South African shore. Although South Africa had its own nuclear programme, and built its own weapons, which it eventually gave up, it was also close to Israel at this time. The best explanation of the explosion was that South Africa had facilitated an Israeli nuclear test, on the assumption that it would not be detected.

What is not hidden is the means of delivery. Israel has the three standard forms of delivery - aircraft (F-15 and F-16), by Dolphin-class submarine-launched cruise missiles, and by the Jericho series of long-range ballistic missiles.

Will Ambiguity Last?

Israel’s nuclear capability barely counts as a secret. Israel is content for others to believe that it has the capability, which is why it is probably not bothered by occasional speculation. It currently does not need to emphasise nuclear deterrence for its security and so there is no need to be more explicit. In 2022, for example, the then Prime Minister Yair Lapid spoke to the Israel Atomic Energy Commission about Israel’s ‘defensive and offensive capabilities, and what is referred to in the foreign media as “other capabilities”,’ before adding, ‘These other capabilities keep us alive and will keep us alive as long as we and our children are here.’ At the same time, it is probably aware that constant references to its own nuclear force could detract from its complaints about Iran’s nuclear endeavours.

Why have other countries gone along with this? Because as soon as Israel’s nuclear arsenal becomes an established fact they would be obliged to do something about it. This was the reasoning behind the 1969 deal between Meir and Nixon, as the US government recognised that not much could be done about Israel having nuclear weapons, but feared the international consequences, including others demanding the right to their own arsenals, if this became widely known. As Henry Kissinger explained:

‘In this case, public knowledge is almost as dangerous as possession itself. This is what might spark a Soviet nuclear guarantee for the Arabs, tighten the Soviet hold on the Arabs and increase the danger of our involvement. What this means is that, while we might ideally like to halt actual Israeli possession, what we really want at a minimum may be just to keep Israeli possession from becoming an established international fact.’

There is an interesting epistemological issue when it comes to distinguishing what might be reasonably considered a ‘fact’ and what reaches the higher status of an ‘established international fact’. The distinction is between something that might be well understood, and can influence behaviour, and an issue that is impossible to ignore.

Israel’s determination to keep a known fact from becoming an internationally established one now largely has the effect of suppressing discussion both inside and outside Israel about the strategic relevance of its nuclear arsenal, at a time when its international position is changing.

Israel began to develop its nuclear option in the 1950s when relations with the United States were not particularly close and it felt it could not rely on anyone else for its security. As it forged a closer relationship with the US in the 1960s the nuclear programme remained a hedge against being abandoned by Washington. (It was abandoned by France after the 1967 War). The nuclear option had to be kept in the background because successive Israeli governments did not want to jeopardise their relationship with the US. It was still considered a second best to a friendly American government ready to provide military assistance and diplomatic support. This policy has been pursued successfully.

But this a very different world from 1969, when Meir spoke to Nixon, let alone to when I first got interested in 1974. The sort of existential threats that shaped Israel’s early nuclear developments - Arab armies potentially moving into Israel’s populated areas or a loss of key conventional capabilities - no longer seem so pressing. Only possible future threats of weapons of mass destruction from hostile states provides a continuing rationale.

At one level Israel enjoys unprecedented security, in that it has established diplomatic relations with Arab states, Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’ has been diminished along with its nuclear programme. At another level, while the Palestinian cause has been severely weakened by the campaigns in Gaza and the West Bank, that issue will never go away and the methods used by Israel and the intense suffering caused have also resulted in widespread international condemnation and deep divisions inside Israel and the diaspora.

If one looks at shifting attitudes towards Israel across the US political spectrum, and for that matter in European countries, I suspect that the lasting legacy of recent events will be relations with Israel that are less close. In these circumstances Israel might rely more on nuclear deterrence as the ultimate guarantor of its security, though it is of no relevance to the residual source of its insecurity, which is the continuing political failure to address the Palestine issue.

None of this provides a pressing reason for Israel to suddenly end its nuclear ambiguity with a deliberate statement confirming what is already known. As likely is that over time it will not put much effort into pretending that it is not really a nuclear power.

Bibliographical note

For the record my two Guardian pieces, both with the heading ‘Nuclear Cloud over the Middle East’, appeared in the paper on 27 November 1974 and 4 December 1974. The Survival article, ‘Israel’s Nuclear Policy’, appeared in the journal in 1975 (17:3, 114–120.) The first book to pull together the available evidence was Fuad Jabber, Israel and Nuclear Weapons: Present Options and Future Strategies (London: Chatto & Windus, 1971). A number of other books have addressed the issue since including Seymour Hersh’s unreliable The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy (New York: Random House, 1991). Avner Cohen has set the standards for serious scholarship on the topic. His Israel and the Bomb, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999) is the standard one volume account of Israel’s bomb programme. In his later The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb (New York Columbia University Press, 2010) he argues that the taboo inside Israel on a serious discussion of nuclear options and is outdated. For an in-depth discussion of the 1969 Meir-Nixon conversation see Or Rabinowitz and Nicholas L. Miller. “Keeping the Bombs in the Basement: U.S. Nonproliferation Policy toward Israel, South Africa, and Pakistan.” International Security, vol. 40, no. 1, 2015, pp. 47–86. Rabinowitz also discusses this and the Vela test in her book, Bargaining on Nuclear Tests: Washington and its Cold War Deal, (Oxford University Press, 2014). On Vanunu see Yoel Cohen, Whistleblower of Dimona: Israel, Vanunu, and the Bomb, (London: Lynne Reiner, 2003). A useful summation of current knowledge on Israel’s nuclear history and current capabilities is Hans M. Kristensen & Matt Korda, ‘Israeli nuclear weapons, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, (2022), 78:1, 38-50.