Israel is still vowing to respond to Iran’s ballistic missile strikes a few weeks ago. It’s part of a terrifying tit for tat between the two regional superpowers that could widen an already escalating war. Meanwhile, Israel is believed to be a nuclear power with 90 warheads, although it refuses to acknowledge its nuclear program, and analysts say Iran could rapidly develop a nuclear weapon if it chose to. It’s part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Israel is not. Victor Gilinsky was a commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. And he told our co-host Michel Martin how Israel first produced a nuclear explosive device in the late 1960s.
VICTOR GILINSKY: They had a reactor that they got from the French that produced plutonium sufficient for bombs, had, you know, very smart people that knew how to design them. And they also, I think, had help from others, including Americans who had been involved in the program here and then went to Israel.
MICHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: And do we have a sense of what Israel’s nuclear capabilities are at this point?
GILINSKY: I don’t think we know a lot. We do know they have what we call a triad. You know, they can deliver them by a rocket, by airplanes, and their ultimate deterrent is on submarines. They have submarines that they got from Germany, which they’ve outfitted with long-range missiles tipped with nuclear warheads.
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Related news story from a few days earlier
The US is investigating a leak of highly classified US intelligence about Israel’s plans for retaliation against Iran, according to three people familiar with the matter. One of the people familiar confirmed the documents’ authenticity.
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One of the documents also suggests something that Israel has always declined to confirm publicly: that the country has nuclear weapons. The document says the US has not seen any indications that Israel plans to use a nuclear weapon against Iran.
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Not really, because it involves condensing a lot of white papers on the topic of nuclear strategy.
The policy itself is referred to, at least colloquially, as Israeli Nuclear Ambiguity. While that covers a lot of aspects of Israeli nuclear strategy, you probably want to look for papers that deal with how Israeli Nuclear Ambiguity and the US Nuclear Umbrella work together to impact nonproliferation in the wider region.