Israel and nuclear weapons

Before Dimona, 1949–1956 Israel's first prime minister David Ben-Gurion was "nearly obsessed" with obtaining nuclear weapons to prevent the Holocaust from reoccurring. He stated, "What Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Teller, the three of them are Jews, made for the United States, could also be done by scientists in Israel, for their own people." Ben-Gurion decided to recruit Jewish scientists from abroad even before the end of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War that established Israel's independence. He and others, such as head of the Weizmann Institute of Science and defense ministry scientist Ernst David Bergmann, believed and hoped that Jewish scientists such as Oppenheimer and Teller would help Israel. In 1949, a unit of the Israel Defense Forces Science Corps, known by the Hebrew acronym HEMED GIMMEL, began a two-year geological survey of the Negev. While a preliminary study was initially prompted by rumors of petroleum fields, one objective of the longer two year survey was to find sources of uranium; some small recoverable amounts were found in phosphate deposits. Excavation Before construction began it was determined that the scope of the project would be too large for the EMET and IAEC team, so Shimon Peres recruited Colonel Manes Pratt, then Israeli military attaché in Burma, to be the project leader. Building began in late 1957 or early 1958, bringing hundreds of French engineers and technicians to the Beersheba and Dimona area. In addition, thousands of newly immigrated Sephardi Jews were recruited to do digging; to circumvent strict labor laws, they were hired in increments of 59 days, separated by one day off. Creation of LEKEM By the late 1950s Shimon Peres had established and appointed a new intelligence service assigned to search the globe and clandestinely secure technology, materials and equipment needed for the program, by any means necessary. The new service would eventually be named LEKEM (pronounced LAKAM, the Hebrew acronym for 'Science liaison Bureau'). Peres appointed IDF Internal Security Chief, Benjamin Blumberg, to the task. As head of the LEKEM, Blumberg would rise to become a key figure in Israel's intelligence community, coordinating agents worldwide and securing the crucial components for the program. Rift between Israel and France When Charles de Gaulle became French President in late 1958 he wanted to end French–Israeli nuclear cooperation and said that he would not supply Israel with uranium unless the plant was opened to international inspectors, declared peaceful, and no plutonium was reprocessed. Through an extended series of negotiations, Shimon Peres finally reached a compromise with Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville over two years later, in which French companies would be able to continue to fulfill their contract obligations and Israel would declare the project peaceful. Due to this, French assistance did not end until 1966. However, the supply of uranium fuel was stopped earlier, in 1963. In 1960, the outgoing Eisenhower administration asked the Israeli government for an explanation for the mysterious construction near Dimona. Israel's response was that the site was a future textile factory, but that no inspection would be allowed. When Ben-Gurion visited Washington in 1960, he held a series of meetings with State Department officials, and was bluntly told that for Israel to possess nuclear weapons would affect the balance of power in the region. US pressure was such that reportedly, every high-level meeting and communication between the US and Israeli governments contained a demand for an inspection of Dimona. To increase pressure, Kennedy denied Ben-Gurion a meeting at the White House – when they met in May 1961, it was at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. The meeting itself was dominated by this issue. Ben-Gurion was evasive on the issue for two years, in the face of persistent US demands for an inspection. On March 25, 1963, President Kennedy and CIA Director John A. McCone discussed the Israeli nuclear program. According to McCone, Kennedy raised the "question of Israel acquiring nuclear capability," and McCone provided Kennedy with Kent's estimate of the anticipated negative consequences of Israeli nuclearization. According to McCone, Kennedy then instructed National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy to guide Secretary of State Dean Rusk, in collaboration with the CIA director and the AEC chairman, to submit a proposal "as to how some form of international or bilateral U.S. safeguards could be instituted to protect against the contingency mentioned." That also meant that the "next informal inspection of the Israeli reactor complex [must] …be undertaken promptly and... be as thorough as possible." As Yuval Ne'eman stated, it was immediately apparent to Eshkol and his advisers that Kennedy's demands were akin to an ultimatum, and thus constituted a crisis in the making. A stunned Eshkol, in his first and interim response, on July 17, requested more time to study the subject and for consultations. The premier noted that while he hoped that U.S-Israeli friendship would grow under his watch, "Israel would do what it had to do for its national security and to safeguard its sovereign rights." Barbour, apparently wanting to mitigate the bluntness of the letter, assured Eshkol that Kennedy's statement was "factual": Critics of strong U.S.-Israel relations might complicate the diplomatic relationship if Dimona was left uninspected. In 1968, the CIA stated in a top-secret National Intelligence Estimate that Israel had nuclear weapons. This assessment was given to President Lyndon B. Johnson. The basis for this claim was the CIA's belief, although never proven, that the uranium that went missing in the Apollo Affair had been diverted to Israel (Seymour Hersh claims that during the plant decommissioning nearly all of the missing uranium was recovered trapped in the facility pipes or accounted for.), as well as evidence gathered from NSA electronic eavesdropping on Israeli communications, which proved that the Israeli Air Force had engaged in practice bombing runs that only made sense for the delivery of nuclear weapons. According to Israeli historian Avner Cohen, author of Israel and the Bomb, historical evidence indicates that when Nixon met with Israeli prime minister Golda Meir at the White House in September 1969, they reached a secret understanding, where Israel would keep its nuclear program secret and refrain from carrying out nuclear tests, and the United States would tolerate Israel's possession of nuclear weapons and not press it to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). British and Norwegian aid Top secret British documents obtained by BBC Newsnight show that Britain made hundreds of secret shipments of restricted materials to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. These included specialist chemicals for reprocessing and samples of fissile material—uranium-235 in 1959, and plutonium in 1966, as well as highly enriched lithium-6, which is used to boost fission bombs and fuel hydrogen bombs. The investigation also showed that Britain shipped 20 tons of heavy water directly to Israel in 1959 and 1960 to start up the Dimona reactor. The transaction was made through a Norwegian front company called Noratom, which took a 2% commission on the transaction. Britain was challenged about the heavy water deal at the International Atomic Energy Agency after it was exposed on Newsnight in 2005. British foreign minister Kim Howells claimed this was a sale to Norway. But a former British intelligence officer who investigated the deal at the time confirmed that this was really a sale to Israel and the Noratom contract was just a charade. The Foreign Office finally admitted in March 2006 that Britain knew the destination was Israel all along. Israel admits running the Dimona reactor with Norway's heavy water since 1963. French engineers who helped build Dimona say the Israelis were expert operators, so only a relatively small portion of the water was lost during the years since the reactor was first put into operation. Criticality In 1961, the Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion informed the Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker that a pilot plutonium-separation plant would be built at Dimona. British intelligence concluded from this and other information that this "can only mean that Israel intends to produce nuclear weapons". Between 1963 and 1966, about 90 tons of yellowcake were allegedly shipped to Israel from Argentina in secret. By 1965 the Israeli reprocessing plant was completed and ready to convert the reactor's fuel rods into weapons grade plutonium. Costs The exact costs for the construction of the Israeli nuclear program are unknown, though Peres later said that the reactor cost $80 million in 1960, half of which was raised by foreign Jewish donors, including many American Jews. Some of these donors were given a tour of the Dimona complex in 1968. Weapons production, 1966–present on November 11, 1968 Israel is believed to have begun full-scale production of nuclear weapons following the 1967 Six-Day War, although it had built its first operational nuclear weapon by December 1966. Spider () was the name for the devices. The name for the plan was Operation Shimshon (), named after the death of Samson in Judges 16:30. It was also referred to as Operation Samson, codename "Samson" (), or (). General Yaakov also sometimes called the plan ''''. (). Another CIA report from 1968 states that "Israel might undertake a nuclear weapons program in the next several years." Moshe Dayan, then Defense Minister, believed that nuclear weapons were cheaper and more practical than indefinitely growing Israel's conventional forces. He convinced the Labor Party's finance minister Pinchas Sapir of the value of commencing the program by giving him a tour of the Dimona site in early 1968, and soon after Dayan decided that he had the authority to order the start of full production of four to five nuclear warheads a year. Hersh stated that it is widely believed that the words "Never Again" were welded, in English and Hebrew, onto the first warhead. In order to produce plutonium the Israelis needed a large supply of uranium ore. In 1968, the Mossad purchased 200 tons from Union Minière du Haut Katanga, a Belgian mining company, on the pretense of buying it for an Italian chemical company in Milan. Once the uranium was shipped from Antwerp it was transferred to an Israeli freighter at sea and brought to Israel. The orchestrated disappearance of the uranium, named Operation Plumbat, became the subject of the 1978 book The Plumbat Affair. Estimates as to how many warheads Israel has built since the late 1960s have varied, mainly based on the amount of fissile material that could have been produced and on the revelations of Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu. 's photograph of a Negev Nuclear Research Center glove box containing nuclear materials in a model bomb assembly, one of about 60 photographs he later gave to the British press By 1969, U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird believed that Israel might have a nuclear weapon that year. Later that year, U.S. President Richard Nixon in a meeting with Israeli prime minister Golda Meir pressed Israel to "make no visible introduction of nuclear weapons or undertake a nuclear test program", so maintaining a policy of nuclear ambiguity. Before the Yom Kippur War, Peres nonetheless wanted Israel to publicly demonstrate its nuclear capability to discourage an Arab attack, and fear of Israeli nuclear weapons may have discouraged Arab military strategy during the war from being as aggressive as it could have been. The CIA believed that Israel's first bombs may have been made with highly enriched uranium stolen in the mid-1960s from the U.S. Navy nuclear fuel plant operated by the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, where sloppy material accounting would have masked the theft. By 1974, the U.S. intelligence community believed Israel had stockpiled a small number of fission weapons, and by 1979 were perhaps in a position to test a more advanced small tactical nuclear weapon or thermonuclear weapon trigger design. The CIA believed that the number of Israeli nuclear weapons stayed from 10 to 20 from 1974 until the early 1980s. By the mid 2000s estimates of Israel's arsenal ranged from 75 to 400 nuclear warheads. If highly enriched uranium is being produced in substantial quantities, then Israel's nuclear arsenal could be much larger than estimated solely from plutonium production. In 1991 alone, as the Soviet Union dissolved, nearly 20 top Jewish Soviet scientists reportedly emigrated to Israel, some of whom had been involved in operating nuclear power plants and planning for the next generation of Soviet reactors. In September 1992, German intelligence was quoted in the press as estimating that 40 top Jewish Soviet nuclear scientists had emigrated to Israel since 1989. The US denied an export license for a Cray supercomputer to Israel in 1989, but approved them in 1994 and in 1996. A 1987 Pentagon-sponsored study concluded that Technion – Israel Institute of Technology scientists develop Israeli nuclear missile re-entry vehicles and work at the Dimona site, while Hebrew University of Jerusalem scientists work at the Soreq site where thermonuclear explosion simulation code is developed. The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control cited critics concerned that the sale would set a poor precedent when considering supercomputer sales to the nuclear-armed states of China, India, and Pakistan. In a 2010 interview, Uzi Eilam, former head of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, told the Israeli daily Maariv that the nuclear reactor in Dimona had been through extensive improvements and renovations and is now functioning as new, with no safety problems or hazard to the surrounding environment or the region. ==Nuclear testing==

According to Lieutenant Colonel Warner D. Farr in a report to the US Air Force Counterproliferation Center, much lateral proliferation happened between pre-nuclear Israel and France, stating "the French nuclear test in 1960 made two nuclear powers, not one—such was the depth of collaboration" and that "the Israelis had unrestricted access to French nuclear test explosion data," minimizing the need for early Israeli testing, although this cooperation cooled following the success of the French tests. In June 1976, a West Germany army magazine, Wehrtechnik ("defense technology"), claimed that Western intelligence reports documented Israel conducting an underground test in the Negev in 1963. The book Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East: Dimensions and Responsibilities by Taysir Nashif cites other reports that on November 2, 1966, the country may have carried out a non-nuclear test, speculated to be zero yield or implosion in nature in the Israeli Negev desert. Avner Cohen, professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and Director of the Education Program and Senior Fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, stated regarding the Vela incident that "Now, 40 years later, there is a scientific and historical consensus that it was a nuclear test and that it had to be Israeli." In what it called the "Last Secret of the Six-Day War", The New York Times reported that in the days before the 1967 Six-Day War Israel planned to insert a team of paratroopers by helicopter into the Sinai, set up, and remote detonate a nuclear bomb on command from the prime minister and military command on a mountaintop as a warning to belligerent surrounding states. However, Israel won the war before the test could be set up. Retired Israeli brigadier general Itzhak Yaakov referred to this operation as the Israeli Samson Option. Pioneering American nuclear weapons designer Theodore Taylor commented on the uncertainties involved in the process of boosting small fission weapons and the thermonuclear designs seen in the Vanunu leaked photographs. He stated that these designs required more than theoretical analysis for full confidence in the weapons' performance. Taylor therefore concluded that Israel had "unequivocally" tested an advanced series miniaturized nuclear device. ==Revelations==

Negev Nuclear Research Center (Dimona) The Israeli nuclear program was first revealed on December 13, 1960, in a Time magazine article, which said that a non-Communist, non-NATO country had made an "atomic development". On December 16, the Daily Express in London revealed this country to be Israel, and on December 18, US Atomic Energy Commission chairman John McCone appeared on Meet the Press to officially confirm the Israeli construction of a nuclear reactor and announce his resignation. The following day The New York Times, with the help of McCone, revealed that France was assisting Israel. The news led Ben-Gurion to make the only statement by an Israeli prime minister about Dimona. On December 21 he announced to the Knesset that the government was building a 24 megawatt reactor "which will serve the needs of industry, agriculture, health, and science", and that it "is designed exclusively for peaceful purposes". Bergmann, who was chairman of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission from 1954 to 1966, however said that "There is no distinction between nuclear energy for peaceful purposes or warlike ones" and that "We shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter". Weapons production The first public revelation of Israel's nuclear capability (as opposed to development program) came from NBC News, which reported in January 1969 that Israel decided "to embark on a crash course program to produce a nuclear weapon" two years previously, and that they possessed or would soon be in possession of such a device. This was initially dismissed by Israeli and U.S. officials, as well as in an article in The New York Times. Just one year later on July 18, The New York Times made public for the first time that the U.S. government believed Israel to possess nuclear weapons or to have the "capacity to assemble atomic bombs on short notice". Israel reportedly assembled 13 bombs during the Yom Kippur War as a last defense against total defeat, and kept them usable after the war. In 2014, former US president Jimmy Carter stated that "Israel has, what, 300 or more, nobody knows exactly how many" nuclear weapons. In 2013, in an Israeli Channel 2 documentary, Israeli film producer Arnon Milchan revealed his role in Israeli nuclear development, including an illicit shipment of "nuclear triggers" from the US to Israel, resulting in a 1985 US indictment of one of his company executives. Charges against Milchan were dropped by the Reagan administration. American actor Robert De Niro also gave an interview in the documentary, recalling he was aware of the shipment. South African documents In 2010, The Guardian released South African government documents that it alleged confirmed the existence of Israel's nuclear arsenal. According to the newspaper, the documents are minutes taken by the South African side of alleged meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975. The Guardian alleged that these documents reveal that Israel had offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons that year. The documents appeared to confirm information disclosed by a former South African naval commander Dieter Gerhardt – jailed in 1983 for spying for the Soviet Union, who said there was an agreement between Israel and South Africa involving an offer by Israel to arm eight Jericho missiles with atomic bombs. However, Waldo Stumpf—who led a project to dismantle South Africa's nuclear weapons program—doubted Israel or South Africa would have contemplated a deal seriously, saying that Israel could not have offered to sell nuclear warheads to his country due to the serious international complications that such a deal could entail. Shimon Peres, then Defense Minister (later Israeli President), rejected the newspaper's claim that the negotiations took place. He also asserted that The Guardian's conclusions were "based on the selective interpretation of South African documents and not on concrete facts". Avner Cohen, author of Israel and the Bomb and ''The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb'', said "Nothing in the documents suggests there was an actual offer by Israel to sell nuclear weapons to the regime in Pretoria." ==Stockpile==

The State of Israel has never made public any details of its nuclear capability or arsenal. The following is a history of estimates by many different sources on the size and strength of Israel's nuclear arsenal. Estimates may vary due to the amount of material Israel has on store versus assembled weapons, and estimates as to how much material the weapons actually use, as well as the overall time in which the reactor was operated: • 1948 – Israel begins recruiting Jewish nuclear scientists and forming scientific institutes during war of independence for a nuclear weapons program. • 1949 – Israeli scientists invited to participate in French nuclear program. • 1961 – Dimona nuclear facility operational. • 1963 – Alleged underground nuclear test in the Negev desert. • 1966 – Alleged underground nuclear test in the Negev desert, possibly zero yield or implosion type; first fully weaponized fission designed for aircraft delivery available for activation. • 1967 – (Six-Day War) – 2 bombs; 13 bombs. • 1969 – 5–6 bombs of 19 kilotons yield each. • 1973 – (Yom Kippur War) – 13 bombs; • 1984 – 12–31 atomic bombs; 31 plutonium bombs and 10 uranium bombs. • 1985 – At least 100 nuclear bombs. • 1986 – 100 to 200 fission bombs and a number of fusion bombs; Vanunu leaks Dimona facility secrets, at US's level in fission and boosted weapons as of 1955 to 1960, it would require supercomputers to improve their "less complex" hydrogen bombs without nuclear tests, they had "unequivocally" tested a miniaturized nuclear device. • 1992 – more than 200 bombs; estimated 40 top nuclear weapons scientists immigrated to Israel from ex-USSR. 50 nuclear-tipped Jericho missiles, 200 total; 300 nuclear weapons. • 1995 – 66–116 bombs (at 5 kg/warhead); • 2004 – 82. • 2006 – More than 185: the British parliament's Defence Select Committee reported that Israel possessed more warheads than the UK's 185. • 2006 – Federation of American Scientists believes that Israel "could have produced enough plutonium for at least 100 nuclear weapons, but probably not significantly more than 200 weapons". • 2008 – 80 intact warheads, of which 50 are re-entry vehicles for delivery by ballistic missiles, and the rest bombs for delivery by aircraft. Total military plutonium stockpile 340–560 kg. • 2009 – Estimates of weapon numbers differ sharply with plausible estimates varying from 60 to 400. • 2010 – "More than 100 weapons, mainly two-stage thermonuclear devices, capable of being delivered by missile, fighter-bomber, or submarine" • 2014 – "300 or more" nuclear weapons, according to former US president Jimmy Carter. • 2021 – Israel has 90 nuclear weapons, according to the Federation of American Scientists, assuming they are all plutonium-based tritium-boosted fission weapons and its warhead production is limited by its delivery systems and its number of targets. ==Delivery systems==

Israeli military forces possess land, air, and sea-based methods for deploying their nuclear weapons, thus forming a nuclear triad that is mainly medium to long ranged, the backbone of which is submarine-launched cruise missiles and medium and intercontinental ballistic missiles, with Israeli Air Force long range strike aircraft on call to perform nuclear interdiction and strategic strikes. During 2008 the Jericho III ICBM became operational, giving Israel extremely long range nuclear strike abilities. Israel's delivery systems are estimated to include one squadron each of F-15 and F-16 fighters, five Dolphin-class submarines, with a total of 20 launch tubes for the Popeye Turbo submarine-launched cruise missile, and around 50 of the Jericho series of medium to intercontinental range ballistic missiles. Missiles Israel is believed to have nuclear second strike abilities in the form of its submarine fleet and its nuclear-capable ballistic missiles that are understood to be buried deeply enough that they would survive a first strike. Ernst David Bergmann was the first to seriously begin thinking about ballistic missile capability and Israel test-fired its first Shavit II sounding rocket in July 1961. In 1963, Israel put a large-scale project into motion, to jointly develop and build 25 short-range missiles with the French aerospace company Dassault. The Israeli project, codenamed Project 700, also included the construction of a missile field at Hirbat Zacharia, a site west of Jerusalem. The missiles that were first developed with France became the Jericho I system, first operational in 1971. It is possible that the Jericho I was removed from operational service during the 1990s. In the mid-1980s the Jericho II medium-range missile, which is believed to have a range of 2,800–5,000 km, entered service. It is believed that Jericho II is capable of delivering nuclear weapons with a superior degree of accuracy. The Shavit three stages solid fuel space launch vehicle produced by Israel to launch many of its satellites into low earth orbit since 1988 is a civilian version of the Jericho II. The Jericho III ICBM, became operational in January 2008 and some reports speculate that the missile may be able to carry MIRVed warheads. The maximum range estimation of the Jericho III is 11,500 km with a payload of 1,000–1,300 kg (up to six small nuclear warheads of 100 kt each or one 1 megaton nuclear warhead), and its accuracy is considered high. Israeli radio identified the missile as a Jericho III and the Hebrew YNet news Web site quoted unnamed defence officials as saying the test had been "dramatic" and that the new missile can reach "extremely long distances", without elaborating. Soon after the successful test launch, Isaac Ben-Israel, a retired army general and Tel Aviv University professor, told Israeli Channel 2 TV: The test came two days after Ehud Olmert, then Israel's Prime Minister, warned that "all options were on the table to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons" and a few months later Israel bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear facility built with extensive help from North Korea. At the same time, regional defense experts said that by the beginning of 2008, Israel had already launched a programme to extend the range of its existing Jericho II ground attack missiles. It is estimated that Israel has between 50 and 100 Jericho II B missiles based at facilities built in the 1980s. The number of Jericho III missiles that Israel possesses is unknown. Aircraft F-15 and F-16 Israel's fighter aircraft have been cited as possible nuclear delivery systems. The Israeli Aerial refueling fleet of modified Boeing 707s and the use of external and conformal fuel tanks gives Israeli F-15, F-15I and F-16 fighter bombers strategic reach, as demonstrated in Operation Wooden Leg. F-35I It is widely speculated that the F-35I Adir may be able to carry nuclear weapons, as it is a derivative of the US nuclear-capable F-35A Lightning II. In 2018, Israeli Channel 2 reported in 2014 that, following Lockheed Martin's nuclear-capable upgrades, allowing some F-35As' weapons systems and software to interface with US permissive action links, a senior US official had declined to comment on whether Israel had requested the same upgrade to its F-35Is. In 2021, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) assessed the most likely Israeli airbases actively assigned nuclear missions were Tel Nof Airbase and Hatzerim Airbase, which at the time did not operate F-35I squadrons. and various reports indicate that these submarines are equipped with Popeye Turbo cruise missiles that can deliver nuclear and conventional warheads with extremely high accuracy. The proven effectiveness of cruise missiles of its own production may have been behind Israel's recent acquisition of these submarines which are equipped with torpedo tubes suitable for launching long-range (1,500–2,400 km) nuclear-capable cruise missiles that would offer Israel a second strike capability. Israel is reported to possess a 200 kg nuclear warhead, containing 6 kg of plutonium, that could be mounted on cruise missiles. During the second half of the 1990s, Israel asked the United States to sell it 50 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles to enhance its deep-strike capabilities. Washington rejected Israel's request in March 1998, since such a sale would have violated the Missile Technology Control Regime guidelines, which prohibit the transfer of missiles with a range exceeding 300 km. Shortly after the rejection, an Israeli official told Defense News: "History has taught us that we cannot wait indefinitely for Washington to satisfy our military requirements. If this weapon system is denied to us, we will have little choice but to activate our own defense industry in pursuit of this needed capability." In July 1998, the Air Intelligence Center warned the US Congress that Israel was developing a new type of cruise missile. According to Israeli defense sources, in June 2009 Israeli Dolphin-class submarine sailed from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea via the Suez Canal during a drill that showed that Israel can access the Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf, far more easily than before. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) sources said the decision to allow navy vessels to sail through the canal was made recently and was a definite "change of policy" within the service. Israeli officials said the submarine was surfaced when it passed through the canal. In the event of a conflict with Iran, and if Israel decided to involve its Dolphin-class submarines, the quickest route would be to send them through the Suez Canal. The Israeli fleet was expanded after Israel signed a €1.3 billion contract to purchase two additional submarines from ThyssenKrupp's subsidiary Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft in 2006. These two U212s are to be delivered to the Israeli navy in 2011 and are "Dolphin II" class submarines. The submarines are believed to be capable of launching cruise missiles carrying nuclear warheads, despite statements by the German government in 2006, in confirming the sale of the two vessels, that they were not equipped to carry nuclear weapons. The two new boats are an upgraded version of the old Dolphins, and equipped with an air-independent propulsion system, that allow them to remain submerged for longer periods of time than the three nuclear arms-capable submarines that have been in Israel's fleet since 1999. In October 2009 it was reported that the Israeli navy sought to buy a sixth Dolphin class submarine. On June 4, 2012, Der Spiegel published an investigative article stating that Israel has armed its newest submarines with nuclear missiles. Numerous Israeli and German officials were quoted testifying to the nuclear capabilities of the submarines and the placement of nuclear missiles aboard the ships. In response to the article, officials from both Germany and Israel refused to comment. Several papers have stated the implications of Israel attaining these nuclear weapon carrying submarines are increased due to the threat of attacks upon Iran by Israel. Other It has been reported that Israel has several other nuclear weapons capabilities: • Suitcase bomb: Seymour Hersh reports that Israel developed the ability to miniaturize warheads small enough to fit in a suitcase by the year 1973. • Tactical nuclear weapon: Israel may also have 175 mm and 203 mm self-propelled artillery pieces, capable of firing nuclear shells. There are three battalions of the 175 mm artillery (36 tubes), reportedly with 108 nuclear shells and more for the 203mm tubes. If true, these low yield, tactical nuclear artillery rounds could reach at least , while by some sources it is possible that the range was extended to during the 1990s. • EMP strike capabilities: Israel allegedly possesses several 1 megaton bombs, which give it a very large EMP attack ability. For example, if a megaton-class weapon were to be detonated 400 kilometers above Omaha, Nebraska, US, nearly the entire continental United States would be affected with potentially damaging EMP experience from Boston to Los Angeles and from Chicago to New Orleans. A similar high-altitude airburst above Iran could cause serious damage to all of the electrical systems in the Middle East, and much of Europe. • Enhanced Radiation Weapon (ERW): Israel also is reported to have an unknown number of neutron bombs. • Nuclear land mine: Israel supposedly has deployed multiple defensive nuclear land mines in the Golan Heights. == Missile defense ==

, Israeli anti-ballistic missile, launching during the 2025 Twelve-Day War. For long-range missile defense, the US and Israel jointly developed the Arrow 3, operational since 2017, which is capable of exoatmospheric mid-course interceptions. A total of 24 interceptors are planned for the system. The Arrow 3 could potentially operate as an anti-satellite missile. For early warning, , Israel deploys at least three EL/M-2080 Green Pine radars, one of which is the more advanced Block-B/"Great Pine" variant. ==Policy==

Israel's deliberately ambiguous policy to confirm or deny its own possession of nuclear weapons, or to give any indication regarding their potential use, make it necessary to gather details from other sources, including diplomatic and intelligence sources and 'unauthorized' statements by its political and military leaders. In November 2023, government minister Amihai Eliyahu claimed that the use of nuclear weapons was "one of the possibilities" when discussing Israel's options in its ongoing Gaza war, for which he was suspended from the Israeli cabinet, but continued to participate in meetings via phone. His remarks were criticized by the Israeli opposition, a number of Arab countries, Iran, and China. Alternatively, with the Begin Doctrine, Israel is very clear and decisive regarding the country's policy on potential developments of nuclear capability by any other regional adversaries, which it will not allow. Possession Although Israel has officially acknowledged the existence of the reactor near Dimona since Ben-Gurion's speech to the Knesset in December 1960, Israel has never officially acknowledged its construction or possession of nuclear weapons. In addition to this policy, on May 18, 1966, prime minister Levi Eshkol told the Knesset that "Israel has no atomic weapons and will not be the first to introduce them into our region," a policy first articulated by Shimon Peres to U.S. President John F. Kennedy in April 1963. In November 1968, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yitzhak Rabin informed the U.S. State Department that its understanding of "introducing" nuclear weapons meant testing, deploying or making them public, while merely possessing the weapons did not constitute "introducing" them. Avner Cohen defines this initial posture as "nuclear ambiguity", but he defines the stage after it became clear by 1969 that Israel possessed nuclear weapons as a policy of amimut, The "nuclear option" may refer to a nuclear weapon or to the nuclear reactor near Dimona, which Israel claims is used for scientific research. Peres, in his capacity as the Director General of the Ministry of Defense in the early 1950s, was responsible for building Israel's nuclear capability. In a December 2006 interview, prime minister Ehud Olmert stated that Iran aspires "to have a nuclear weapon as America, France, Israel and Russia". Olmert's office later said that the quote was taken out of context; in other parts of the interview, Olmert refused to confirm or deny Israel's nuclear weapon status. In January 2020, while giving a cabinet speech on the EastMed pipeline, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "The significance of this project is that we are turning Israel into a nuclear power," and then corrected himself, saying "energy power". Command and control , it is believed that fundamental decisions about nuclear command and control, e.g. nuclear launch authority, must be made by two people, the Prime Minister of Israel and the Minister of Defense. In the event one person holds both roles, a second minister must be named who is familiar with Israel's "strategic procedures" (a euphemism for nuclear weapons). It is presumed that since 2003, Israel has integrated cyberwarfare into its NC3 system (nuclear command, control, and communications), dubbed an NC4 system. It is believed that in the Israel developed and installed permissive action links on its warheads in the 1980s and 1990s. Traditionally, Israel used a "two-tier" system, in which nuclear weapons were kept disassembled, physically separated from launch vehicles, and under the custodianship of a civilian organization, while the military operated the delivery systems. However, since the advent of Israel's nuclear-capable submarine fleet, it is unclear if the submarines carry nuclear weapons onboard, if those weapons are assembled, and if their custodianship is civilian. As a result, its strategy is based on the premise that it cannot afford to lose a single war, and thus must prevent them by maintaining deterrence, including the option of preemption. If these steps are insufficient, it seeks to prevent escalation and determine a quick and decisive war outside of its borders. Israeli military and nuclear doctrine increasingly focused on preemptive war against any possible attack with conventional, chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, or even a potential conventional attack on Israel's weapons of mass destruction. Louis René Beres, who contributed to Project Daniel, urges that Israel continue and improve these policies, in concert with the increasingly preemptive nuclear policies of the United States, as revealed in the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations. Maintaining nuclear superiority Alone or with other nations, Israel has used diplomatic and military efforts as well as covert action to prevent other Middle Eastern countries from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iraq Mossad agents triggered explosions in April 1979 at a French production plant near Toulon, damaging two reactor cores destined for Iraqi reactors. Mossad agents may also have been behind the assassinations of an Egyptian nuclear engineer in Paris as well as two Iraqi engineers, all working for the Iraqi nuclear program. On June 7, 1981, Israel launched an air strike destroying the breeder reactor at Osirak, Iraq, in Operation Opera. Mossad may have also assassinated professor Gerald Bull, an artillery expert, who was leading the Project Babylon supergun for Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, which was capable of delivering a tactical nuclear payload. Pakistan During the 1980s, Israel made plans in cooperation with India to strike the Khan Research Laboratories in Kahuta, Pakistan, using Israeli Air Force planes operating from an airfield in Jamnagar, India. The attack never occurred as Indian officials feared full and possibly nuclear retaliation from Pakistan, while Israel would be unaffected, leading them to not grant use of the airfield. Syria On September 6, 2007, Israel launched an air strike dubbed Operation Orchard against a target in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria. While Israel refused to comment, unnamed US officials said Israel had shared intelligence with them that North Korea was cooperating with Syria on some sort of nuclear facility. Both Syria and North Korea denied the allegation and Syria filed a formal complaint with the United Nations. The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded in May 2011 that the destroyed facility was "very likely" an undeclared nuclear reactor. Journalist Seymour Hersh speculated that the Syrian air strike might have been intended as a trial run for striking alleged Iranian nuclear weapons facilities. Iran On January 7, 2007, The Sunday Times reported that Israel had drawn up plans to destroy three Iranian nuclear facilities. Israel swiftly denied the specific allegation and analysts expressed doubts about its reliability. Also in 2007 Israel pressed for United Nations economic sanctions against Iran, and repeatedly threatened to launch a military strike on Iran if the United States did not do so first. Israel is widely believed to be behind the assassination of a number of Iranian nuclear scientists. The death of the Iranian physicist Ardeshir Hassanpour, who may have been involved in the nuclear program, has been claimed by the intelligence group Stratfor to have also been a Mossad assassination. The 2010 Stuxnet malware is widely believed to have been developed by Israel and the United States. It spread worldwide but appears to have been designed to target the Natanz Enrichment Plant, where it reportedly destroyed up to 1,000 centrifuges. On June 13, 2025, Israel attacked Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz as part of the June 2025 Israeli strikes on Iran. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and United Nations' Resolutions Israel was originally expected to sign the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and on June 12, 1968, Israel voted in favor of the treaty in the UN General Assembly. However, when the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August by the Soviet Union delayed ratification around the world, Israel's internal division and hesitation over the treaty became public. The Johnson administration attempted to use the sale of 50 F-4 Phantoms to pressure Israel to sign the treaty that fall, culminating in a personal letter from Lyndon Johnson to Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol. But by November Johnson had backed away from tying the F-4 sale with the NPT after a stalemate in negotiations, and Israel would neither sign nor ratify the treaty. After the series of negotiations, U.S. assistant secretary of defense for international security Paul Warnke was convinced that Israel already possessed nuclear weapons. In 2007 Israel sought an exemption to non-proliferation rules in order to import atomic material legally. In 1996, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the region of the Middle East. Arab nations and annual conferences of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) repeatedly have called for application of IAEA safeguards and the creation of a nuclear-free Middle East. Arab nations have accused the United States of practicing a double standard in criticizing Iran's nuclear program while ignoring Israel's possession of nuclear weapons. According to a statement by the Arab League, Arab states will withdraw from the NPT if Israel acknowledges having nuclear weapons but refuses to open its facilities to international inspection and destroy its arsenal. In a statement to the May 2009 preparatory meeting for the 2010 NPT Review Conference, the US delegation reiterated the longstanding US support for "universal adherence to the NPT", but uncharacteristically named Israel among the four countries that have not done so. An unnamed Israeli official dismissed the suggestion that it would join the NPT and questioned the effectiveness of the treaty. The Washington Times reported that this statement threatened to derail the 40-year-old secret agreement between the US and Israel to shield Israel's nuclear weapons program from international scrutiny. According to Avner Cohen, by not stating that Israel has atomic weapons, the US avoids having to sanction the country for violating American non-proliferation law. Cohen, author of Israel and the Bomb, argued that acknowledging its nuclear program would allow Israel to take part constructively in efforts to control nuclear weapons. The Final Document of the 2010 NPT Review Conference called for a conference in 2012 to implement a resolution of the 1995 NPT Review Conference that called for the establishment of a Middle East Zone free of weapons of mass destruction. The United States joined the international consensus for Final Document, but criticized the section on the Middle East resolution for singling out Israel as the only state in the region that is not party to the NPT, while at the same time ignoring Iran's "longstanding violation of the NPT and UN Security Council Resolutions." == Threats during the Gaza war ==

During the Gaza war, Israeli and US officials have made statements about nuclear weapons and Gaza characterized as genocidal intent. Israeli security analysts have also argued these statements undermine Israeli nuclear ambiguity. On 9 October 2023, Likud member of the Knesset Tally Gotliv made a Twitter post calling for a nuclear-armed Jericho missile "strategic alert" and the use of a "doomsday weapon". She continued that "Only an explosion that shakes the Middle East will restore this country’s dignity, strength and security!". Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu responded "That's one way." to an interviewer asking if Israel should drop "some kind of atomic bomb" on Gaza "to kill everyone”. His remarks were criticized by the Israeli opposition, a number of Arab countries, Iran, and China. Eliyahu was ostensibly suspended from the Israeli cabinet by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but continued to participate in meetings by phone. Nuclear weapons scholar Vincent Intondi argued that US and Israeli officials' statements are liable to prosecution under the Genocide Convention's incitement clause, but the convention obligates countries to prosecute incitement within their own borders. == See also ==