Obama se venge du discours au Congrès de Netanyahou ? En 1987
paraît un rapport sur le programme nucléaire israélien gardé secret
pendant des années et publié ces jours-ci en réponse aux protestations
légitimes du gouvernement de l’Etat juif et de son Premier ministre,
Binyamin Netanyahou, d’un possible accord entre les puissances mondiales
et l’Iran.
Au début du mois de février dernier, le Pentagone, a déclassifié un
document top-secret du ministère de la Défense détaillant le programme
nucléaire israélien, un programme qu’Israël n’a jamais annoncé
officiellement pour éviter une course régionale aux armements
nucléaires. Jusqu’à maintenant, les États-Unis avaient scrupuleusement
respecté le secret en taisant la teneur du programme.
Le réacteur nucléaire de Dimona
Mais en publiant le document déclassifié
de 1987, les États-Unis violent l’accord tacite entre les deux alliés :
garder le silence sur la puissance nucléaire d’Israël. Pour la première
fois, ils détaillent le programme nucléaire en grande profondeur. Le
moment de la révélation est très suspect, étant donné qu’elle vient
comme une réponse aux tensions entre le Premier ministre Binyamin
Netanyahou et le président américain Barack Obama.
Le discours de Netanyahou au Congrès
Le discours de Netanyahou au Congrès la 3 mars mettait en garde le
monde contre les dangers du programme nucléaire de l’Iran. Il expliquait
comment l’accord prenait forme et précisait avec maints arguments que
le projet d’entente laissait la capacité au régime islamique de préparer
des armements nucléaires.
Un autre aspect très suspect du document est que, tandis que le
Pentagone a jugé bon de déclassifier des sections importantes du
programme nucléaire sensible d’Israël, il a gardé secrètes des sections
sur l’Italie, la France, l’Allemagne de l’Ouest et d’autres pays de
l’OTAN, alors que les informations étaient bloquées sur le même
document.
Le rapport de 386 pages intitulé “Critique de l’évaluation
technologique en Israël, de l’OTAN et des Nations” donne une description
détaillée de la façon dont Israël a avancé sa technologie militaire et a
développé son infrastructure nucléaire de recherche dans les années
1970 et 1980. Israël “développe des codes qui leur permettent de faire
des bombes à hydrogène. Ces codes détaillent la fission et les processus
de fusion à un niveau microscopique et macroscopique,” révèle le
rapport, indiquant que dans les années 1980, les Israéliens ont atteint
la capacité de créer des bombes considérées mille fois plus puissantes
que les bombes atomiques.
La révélation est une première dans l’histoire des alliances : les
Etats-Unis publient un document décrivant la façon dont Israël a atteint
la technologie indispensable pour fabriquer des bombes à hydrogène. Le
rapport note également que les laboratoires de recherche en Israël “sont
équivalents à Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore et Oak Ridge National
Laboratories,” les laboratoires clés dans le développement de l’arsenal
nucléaire de l’Amérique.
L’infrastructure nucléaire d’Israël est “un parallèle presque exacte de
la capacité qui existe actuellement dans nos laboratoires nationaux.
Pour autant que la technologie nucléaire a préoccupé les Israéliens, ils
sont à peu près là où les États-Unis se trouvaient dans le domaine de
l’arme de fission dans les années 1955 à 1960,” révèle le rapport. C”est
“l’Institute for Defense Analysis”, un organisme financé par le
gouvernement fédéral opérant sous le Pentagone, qui a écrit le rapport
en 1987.
Mis à part les capacités nucléaires, le rapport révèle qu’Israël à
l’époque avait fait “un effort énorme dans le développement des systèmes
dans tout le pays,” comprenant le combat électronique, tout en un “seul
système intégré, qui n’est pas séparé de l’Armée, de la Marine et de la
Force aérienne.” Le rapport a même reconnu que, dans certains cas, la
technologie militaire israélienne “est plus avancé que celle des
Etats-Unis.”
La déclassification du rapport arrive à
un moment délicat comme indiqué ci-dessus, et étant donné que le
processus de sa publication a été lancé il y a trois ans, le moment de
sa publication est considéré comme ayant été le choix du gouvernement
américain. Car là est la vraie question. La Constitution américaine
accorde au président des États-Unis le statut de Commandant en chef des
armées. Malgré les demandes répétées de la Cour suprême qui n’ont été
suivies que partiellement, seul Obama pouvait permettre la
déclassification d’un tel document dont des parties entières, qui
concernent les puissances nucléaires européennes, sont restées secrètes.
Un journaliste américain, Grant Smith, a
déposé des requêtes pour que le rapport soit publié sur la base du
“Freedom of Information Act.” Le Pentagone a pris son temps pour
répondre, mais Smith a poursuivi, et un juge de la Cour du district de
Washington a commandé au Pentagone de répondre à sa demande. Smith, qui
dirige un Institut de recherche sur la politique au Moyen-Orient, aurait
dit qu’il pense que c’est la première fois que le gouvernement
américain a officiellement confirmé qu’Israël est une puissance
nucléaire, un statut qui a été caché pendant des années mais est depuis
longtemps largement connu.
Le vrai problème qui est posé
aujourd’hui n’est pas celui de son statut, officiel ou non, mais celui
de la publication des détails de sa puissance de dissuasion. Le combat
pour le dévoilement de précisions, qui étaient depuis des décennies
dissimulées aux ennemies d’Israël, est un combat récent, trois ans tout
au plus. Et qui était président des États-Unis il y a trois ans ?
Le Pentagone vient de révéler une quantité étonnante d'informations sur certains secrets d'Israël, les plus jalousement gardés , y compris les détails de son programme nucléaire.
Réacteur nucléaire de Dimona, photographié en 1968 par le satellite de reconnaissance américain KH-4 CORONA.(Crédit photo : KH-4 CORONA / GlobalSecurity.org (domaine public)
Les États-Unis viennent de révéler une quantité étonnante d'information sur certains secrets d'Israël que ce dernier gardait le plus jalousement: informations sur sa coopération militaire avec l'Amérique et la valeur de 20 ans de détails sur le développement de technologie nucléaire d'Israël, jusqu'aux années 1980.
Le rapport de 386 pages, composé en 1987 par l'Institut fédéral pour l'analyse de la défense, (une ONG qui opère sous administration du le Pentagone), est intitulé « Évaluation technologique critique en Israël et les pays de l'OTAN. »
Il a été déclassifié par le Pentagone au début de février – mais bizarrement, le rapport a été expurgé afin de black out ou de retenir tout ce que l'Institut a écrit sur les alliés de l'OTAN de l'Amérique – mais uniquement pour révéler tout ce que les experts Americains ont rassemblé sur Israël.
Les nouvelles de la trahison commencent à peine à filtrer dans les médias israéliens et en fait n'ont pas défrayé du tout les marchés des nouvelles aux États-Unis, où les réseaux semblent en grande partie inconscients du tsunami qui peut suivre lorsque les nouvelles coulent à la maison.
Étant donné le calendrier de la déclassification et la rédaction sélective du rapport, il faut s'interroger sur les choix qui ont été faits par le haut commandement. Mais une demande de publier le rapport a été déposée en vertu de la Loi - liberté de l'Information - il y a trois ans par le journaliste américain Grant Smith.
Une des parties la plus révélatrice du rapport stipule que les Israéliens ont "développé un genre de codes* qui leur permettront de faire des bombes à hydrogène .(* codes c'est-à-dire des processus de fission et de fusion de détail à un niveau microscopique et macroscopique.) »
Le rapport a également comparé les laboratoires d'Israël à ceux de Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore et Oak Ridge des Laboratoires Nationaux .Les Installations israéliennes, que le rapport, a révélé « font un parallèle presque exact de la capacité existante actuellement dans nos laboratoires nationaux ».
Enfin, dans certains domaines, les scientifiques israéliens étaient apparemment en avance sur les américains; le rapport note avec admiration que les physiciens israéliens de chez "Rafael" (laboratoire de recherche et de développement en Israël) avaient trouvé « habilement et intelligement » des solutions aux problèmes difficiles. Néanmoins, le rapport a maintenu que les scientifiques israéliens n'avaient pas encore pas atteint le niveau de « partenaires », dans la mesure où ils avaient obtenu des technologies nucléaires « basées sur des extrapolations de nos équipements et idées » produites aux États-Unis.
Toutefois, il a été constaté après une enquête plus approfondie sur le site que l'Etat juif avait créé « un effort entièrement intégré dans le développement de systèmes dans l'ensemble de la nation ». Toutes les formes de combat électronique exploité au sein d'un « système intégré, pas séparés des systèmes pour l'armée, de la marine et de l'armée de l'Air. » La technologie dans certains cas « est plus avancée qu'aux Etats-Unis, » a déclaré l'expert.
The
Pentagon has just revealed a stunning amount of information on some of
Israel's the most closely guarded secrets, including details of its
nuclear program.
Dimona nuclear reactor, photographed in 1968 by the American KH-4 CORONA reconnaissance satellite.Photo Credit: KH-4 CORONA / GlobalSecurity.org (public domain)
The United States has just revealed a stunning amount of information
on some of Israel’s the most closely guarded secrets: information about
its military cooperation with America and 20 years’ worth of details on
Israel’s nuclear technology development, up to the 1980s.
The 386-page report, composed in 1987 by the federally funded
Institute for Defense Analysis, (an NGO that operates under the
Pentagon), is titled “Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and
NATO Nations.”
It was declassified by the Pentagon in early February – but oddly,
the report has been redacted so as to black out or withhold everything
the Institute wrote on America’s NATO allies – but to reveal all that
American experts assembled in Israel.
The news of the betrayal is only just now beginning to filter in to
Israeli media and in fact has made no headlines at all in the U.S. news
markets, where networks seem largely unaware of the tsunami that may
follow when the news sinks in at home.
Given the timing of the declassification and the selective redaction
of the report, one has to wonder about the choices that were made from
the top. But a request to publish the report was filed under the Freedom
of Information Act three years ago by American journalist Grant Smith.
One of the most revealing parts of the report states the Israelis are
“developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen
bombs.* That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a
microscopic and macroscopic level.”
The report also compared Israel’s laboratories to those at Los
Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. Israeli
facilities, the report stated, are “an almost exact parallel of the
capability currently existing at our National Laboratories.”
Finally, in some areas, Israeli scientists were apparently ahead of
the Americans; the report noted with admiration that Israeli physicists
at Rafael (research and development laboratory in Israel) had found
“ingeniously clever” solutions to difficult issues. Nevertheless, the
report maintained that Israeli scientists had not yet reached the level
of “partners”, inasmuch as they had obtained nuclear technologies “based
on extrapolations of US equipment and ideas” and that were being
produced in the United States.
However, it was found upon further investigation on site that the
Jewish State had created “a totally integrated effort in systems
development throughout the nation.” All forms of electronic combat
operated within an “integrated system, not separated systems for the
Army, Navy and Air Force.” The technology in some instances “is more
advanced than in the U.S.,” the expert reported.
*A hydrogen bomb is much more powerful than the atomic bomb that wiped out Hiroshima in the 1940s.
About the Author:Hana Levi Julian is a
Middle East news analyst with a degree in Mass Communication and
Journalism from Southern Connecticut State University. A past columnist
with The Jewish Press and senior editor at Arutz 7, Ms. Julian has
written for Babble.com, Chabad.org and other media outlets, in addition
to her years working in broadcast journalism.
http://www.mondialisation.ca/et-si-lon-parlait-de-larsenal-nucleaire-israelien/5441016?print=1 Et si l’on parlait de l’arsenal nucléaire israélien?
Les médias israéliens ont repris un document déclassé et rendu
public par le Pentagone, détaillant le programme nucléaire secret
d’Israël.
Le rapport en date de 1987 et intitulé « Évaluation technologique
critique en Israël et dans les nations de l’OTAN », décrit le
développement de l’infrastructure et de la recherche dans le nucléaire
en Israël tout au long des années 1970 et 80.
Selon les Israel National News, l’état [sioniste] s’était
abstenu de rendre public son programme nucléaire « pour éviter une
course régionale aux armements nucléaires », et il considère que les
États-Unis « ont ouvert une brèche dans l’accord tacite de ne pas parler
de la puissance nucléaire d’Israël ».
Cependant, ce n’est pas la première fois que les États-Unis font une révélation de ce genre. Le 27 octobre 1989, le New York Times avait
publié un article concernant la coopération d’Israël avec le régime
d’apartheid de l’Afrique du Sud pour développer un missile [équipé d’une
tête nucléaire] à moyenne portée.
L’article inclut également des références au rapport de 1987, discuté
aujourd’hui comme si c’était une nouvelle révélation – ce qu’il n’est
en rien. Malgré tout, le document [de 1987] est le seul connu jusqu’ici
pour avoir établi le statut d’Israël comme puissance nucléaire, et il a
été la source de beaucoup de discussions. Il affirme que les
laboratoires de recherche nucléaire en Israël pendant les années 1970 et
80 étaient « équivalents à [nos] laboratoires nationaux de Los Alamos,
Lawrence Livermore et Oak Ridge. »
La discussion actuelle porte principalement sur le moment choisi pour
la publication du rapport, les médias israéliens critiquant cette
initiative comme étant une réplique au discours du Premier Ministre
Benjamin Netanyahu devant le Congrès des États-Unis où il a critiqué
l’accord sur le nucléaire en cours de négociation avec l’Iran. De plus,
les médias sont exaspérés du fait que des sections [du rapport]
concernant l’Italie, la Rép. Féd. d’Allemagne, la France et d’autres
pays de l’OTAN ont été laissés de côté, mettant en avant uniquement
Israël.
Alors que l’ambiguïté voulue par Israël concernant ses capacités
nucléaires s’effondre grâce à la publicité donnée à ce rapport à présent
déclassé, le Traité de Non-prolifération Nucléaire devrait de nouveau
être l’objet d’un examen minutieux, comme devrait l’être l’exagération
constante répandue par les médias dominants à propos du programme
nucléaire iranien.
La prétendue crainte occidentale « d’une bombe iranienne » a placé
l’Iran sous un régime de sanctions et a mené à de multiples initiatives
diplomatiques pour limiter sa recherche et son développement dans le
domaine nucléaire, en dépit de l’insistance de Téhéran que son programme
n’a que des buts pacifiques.
Et pourtant, l’Occident n’a pas du tout montré la même paranoïa en ce
qui concerne Israël, en dépit des preuves évidentes et connues qui
prouvent que l’essence de cet état colonial est de semer la discorde
dans la région, d’aller vers le déclenchement d’une guerre avec l’Iran
et de continuer à élargir ses frontières – jamais identifiées – aux
dépends de la terre palestinienne.
Le rapport publié aux États-Unis a au minimum pour effet de mettre en
évidence cette paranoïa et les doubles standards qui sont ceux de
l’Occident sur de tels sujets.
Selon Netanyahu, cité dans le Times of Israel, « L’accord en
cours de formalisation [entre les États-Unis et l’Iran]… envoie un
message qu’il n’y a aucun prix [à payer] pour l’agression et, au
contraire, que l’agression de l’Iran doit être récompensée. » À la
différence d’Israël, l’Iran jusqu’ici n’a jamais manifesté aucune
ambition agressive. Mais le refus de Téhéran de reconnaître l’état
israélien – une position que d’autres pays devraient imiter – suffit
apparemment pour que Netanyahu parle d’hypothétiques menaces.
Dans son approche tordue de la situation au Moyen-Orient, le premier
ministre israélien parle d’Israël comme d’un « des pays modérés et
responsables » qui devront faire face aux répercussions d’un éventuel
accord avec l’Iran. Toutefois, même si les mentions précédentes des
capacités nucléaires israéliennes ont été effacées de la mémoire
collective grâce à la propagande officielle, aucune quantité de
mensonges et de harangues à propos de l’Iran ne pourra aujourd’hui
masquer les ambitions, intentions et capacités nucléaires d’Israël.
La justice américaine
a ordonné la déclassification d'un
rapport du Pentagone prouvant que les
Etats-Unis ont aidé «Israël» à fabriquer
la bombe H, en violation des
législations américaines et des
conventions internationales.
Le timing de la
publication de ce document compromettent
est significatif. Il intervient à trois
semaines du discours que doit prononcer
le Premier ministre israélien,
Benjamin Netanyahu, le 3 mars, devant le
Congrès américain, dans le cadre de sa
campagne de lobbying visant à empêcher
la conclusion d'un accord entre les
grandes puissances et l'Iran autour du
programme nucléaire pacifique de
Téhéran.
La divulgation de ce
document de 386 pages affaiblit la
position de Netanyahu, qui ressasse sans
relâche une propagande anti-iranienne,
alors que son pays a bénéficié de l'aide
américaine pour fabriquer l'arme de
destruction massive la plus puissante de
l'histoire.
La bombe H (appelée
aussi bombe à hydrogène, bombe à fusion
ou bombe thermonucléaire), fonctionne
selon le principe de fusion de noyaux
légers. Elle dégage théoriquement une
énergie mille fois supérieure à la bombe
A classique, qui fonctionne selon le
principe de la fission nucléaire.
Ce document datant de
1987, intitulé «Évaluation des
technologies critiques en Israël et
dans les pays de l'Otan», compare les
principales installations nucléaires
israéliennes à celles de Los Alamos et
Oak Ridge National Laboratories, qui
constituent la clé de voute du
développement de l'arsenal nucléaire
américain.
«Les Israéliens
développent les codes détaillent la
fission et les processus de fusion au
niveau microscopique et macroscopique,
qui leur permettront de fabriquer des
bombes à hydrogène», révèle le document.
Commentant le rapport
devant une cour fédérale, Roger Mattson,
ancien technicien de la Commission de
l'énergie atomique, a déclaré: «Je suis
frappé par le degré de coopération entre
Israël et les Etats-Unis dans la
fabrication de dispositifs pour la
guerre spécialisée».
La déclassification
de ce document intervient dans le cadre
de la loi sur la liberté d'information (Freedom
of Information Act), suite à une requête
déposée devant la justice fédérale, il y
a trois ans, par Grant Smith, directeur
de l'Institut de Washington pour la
recherche: politiques moyen-orientale.
En septembre 2014, M. Smith a déposé un
recours en justice pour contraindre le
Pentagone à répondre positivement à sa
demande. La décision de déclassification
a finalement été donnée la semaine
dernière.
86 milliards de dollars
Dans sa déposition,
fin 2014, devant la juge Tanya Chutkan
du District de Columbia, M. Smith a
affirmé que le Pentagone a couvert
pendant 25 ans le programme nucléaire
israélien, en violation des lois
Symington et Glenn. Selon lui, ces
agissement ont coûté aux contribuables
américains quelque 86 milliards de
dollars. La loi Symington interdit toute
aide extérieure américaine à des pays
qui useraient de la technologie
d'enrichissement nucléaire en violation
des lois et des conventions
internationales. La loi Glenn, datant de
1977, exige, de son côté, la fin de
l'aide des États-Unis aux pays qui
importent la technologie de retraitement
nucléaire.
Le rapport, rédigé
par l'Institut d'analyse du Pentagone,
précise que les installations nucléaires
israéliennes de Soreq et Dimona-Beer
Sheva ont des capacités pratiquement
similaires aux meilleurs laboratoires
américains, notamment ceux de Los Alamos,
Lawrence Livermore et Oak Ridge National
Laboratories. «Les sites israéliens
possèdent les technologies nécessaires
pour la conception et la fabrication
d'armes nucléaires.»
Les auteurs du
rapport, Edwin Townsley et Clarence
Robinson, ont constaté qu'Israël a des
capacités de catégorie 1 contre les
missiles balistiques tactiques et au
niveau de son programme de «Guerre des
étoiles» (Star Wars). «Il convient de
noter que les Israéliens développent les
types de codes qui leur permettront de
fabriquer des bombes à hydrogène»,
ajoutent les experts américains.
La divulgation de ce
rapport est embarrassante pour les
lobbys pro-israéliens qui réclament le
renforcement des sanctions contre
l'Iran, bien que le programme nucléaire
de la République islamique est
parfaitement légal et répond aux termes
du Traité de non-prolifération
nucléaire, signé par Téhéran. «Israël»,
lui, est l'un des rares membres des
Nations unies à ne pas avoir signé cette
convention. Et pourtant, il n'est soumis
à aucune sanction américaine ou
internationale. Au contraire, c'est la
France qui l'a aidé à fabriquer sa
première bombe A et les Etats-Unis sa
première bombe H.
According to hundreds of documents from the FBI, CIA and other agencies
recently declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, the United
States contracted oversight of its nuclear materials stockpile to Zalman
Shapiro, president of Numec Inc., an Apollo, Pa.-based company that
U.S. intelligence suspected had ties to the newly formed Zionist
government in Palestine. Over the next 11 years, 269 kilograms of
enriched uranium were stolen from the plant in an operation guided by
four known Mossad Israeli intelligence agents: Rafael Eitan, Avraham
Ben-Dor, Ephraim Biegun and Avraham Hermoni.
Eitan went on to become the Mossad director who commandeered
intelligence operations that kidnapped Adolf Eichmann from his home in
Argentina in the 1960s. Eitan also headed the Lekem, which is a Jewish
intelligence bureau in charge of stealing nuclear secrets from the
United States and other nations. Ben-Dor was long considered Eitan’s
right-hand man, but was forced out of his position in Shin Bet in 1986
for the torture and murder of two Palestinian men in his custody.
Hermoni went on to direct “Rafael,” which was the program that developed
the Zionist nuclear bomb.
Despite warnings of potential sabotage and evidence of nuclear plants
being infiltrated, Congress and members of the Energy Department
refused to revoke Numec’s contract or view the firm as a security risk.
When CIA agents picked up radioactive material from the Numec facility
outside the Zionist nuclear plant in Dimona, Israel, further warnings
were sent that Israelis, with the help of sympathetic Zionist-Americans
in the United States, were stealing nuclear material and using it to
manufacture weapons.
The U.S. government consistently suppressed or ignored this information.
In 2001, the U.S. Department of Energy confirmed that 269 kilograms of nuclear material were stolen from the Numec facility.
In early February, the Pentagon declassified a 386-page report from 1987, exposing for the first time ever the actual depth of top-secret military cooperation between the United States and Israel — including, amazingly, information about Israel’s unacknowledged nuclear program.
In view of the caustic tension that has increased lately between Washington and Jerusalem, the timing of the publication’s declassification, after a long legal process, might raise a few eyebrows. I have some knowledge about the build-up process of Israel’s nuclear capacity and after reading the report in question I must express my astonishment: I have never seen an official American document disclosing such extensive revelation on subjects that until now were regarded by both administrations as unspeakable secrets.
The report — titled “Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations” — describes in detail the march of Israeli military and technological advancement in the 1970s and 80s. The authors drew particular attention to the development and progression of Israel’s nuclear infrastructure and research labs.
The most surprising segment in the report states that the Israelis are “developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level.” In practice, this short expression confirms that in the eighties, Israeli scientists were reaching the capabilities to employ hydrogen fusion, possible creating the sort of bombs that are thought to be a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs.
It should be emphasized that in the history of the relations between the two countries, there is no other published official American document that mentions in any way the Israelis development of hydrogen bombs. Moreover, the report proclaims that the labs in Israel “are equivalent to our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.”
Needless to say, all three of these laboratories were the principal creators of American nuclear capability. Israel’s facilities, the report reveals, are “an almost exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories”.
With all these revelations, the report is not directly stating that Israel has developed either an A-bomb or an H-Bomb, but the hints are not hidden. “As far as nuclear technology is concerned,” the report proclaims,” the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapon field in about 1955 to 1960.” The first American thermonuclear bomb (H-Bomb) was tested in 1952. Hence, a conclusion that previous to the second half of the eighties, Israel had obtained nuclear technologies that make building an H-Bomb possible is within the realm of the possible.
The report was composed by the Institute for Defense Analysis, a not-for-profit agency, which is federally funded and functions under the supervision of the Pentagon. Simultaneously, IDA’s physicists and engineers visited military labs, factories and private companies both in Israel and NATO countries. Strangely, quite a significant amount of the material that the American experts had assembled in Israel was released with this declassification, while everything that they wrote on their NATO allies has been blacked out or withheld by the Pentagon. It’s another strange aspect of this story and, along with the timing, demands further scrutiny of the defense department’s motives.
In some scientific spheres, the IDA report claims, Israeli physicists were at that time some steps ahead of the Americans. Several times in the text the report mentions the “ingeniously clever” solutions that Israeli physicists had found for complicated problems. Some of these “ingenious Israeli inventions” are ascribed in the report to the scientists of Rafael (Hebrew’s acronym of
“Authority for the Development of Armaments’), which is “a key research and development laboratory in Israel.” Still, the report asserts that the Israeli scientists were “junior partners,” who preset “technology based on extrapolations of US equipment and ideas.” How Israeli scientists could be “partners,” who obtain nuclear technologies that were produced in the States?
On this subject the report remains silent.
The American expert who made the check-up in Israel discovered “a totally integrated effort in systems development throughout the nation.” All forms of electronic combat were “integrated system, not separated systems for the Army, Navy and Air Force.” The technology in some instances “is more advanced than in the U.S.,” the expert wrote.
The request to publish the report was initiated three years ago by the American journalist Grant Smith. His plea was based on the Freedom of Information Act and while the Pentagon had lingered Smith filed a lawsuit. A District Court judge for the District of Columbia compelled the Pentagon to address his request.
Although the report reveals quite a wide compilation of new facts about Israel’s most covert defense industry, to my astonishment its declassification produced no media reverberation whatsoever, not in Israel (except on the Ynet news website), nor in the States. The mainstream Israeli media was probably busy with the dramatic election campaign and in the United States only the progressive weekly magazine, The Nation, and quite a few professional websites and blogs — some of them explicitly anti-Israel — showed any interest.
In the light of Iran’s nuclear talks, the declassification’s timing could prove troublesome for Israel. It makes it much harder to maintain the policy of ambiguity about Israel’s nuclear program and, subsequently, helps Iran’s argument that it shouldn’t be denied its own ambitions
PHOTO: Secret Place: Israel’s nuclear reaction in Dimona, photographed in 2014.Revealing Israel's Nuclear Secrets - The Pentagon Declassifies a Surprising 1987 Report
A declassified report by the US Defense Department reveals that Washington helped Israel develop a hydrogen bomb, in violation of international law. The 1987 report said Israel’s nuclear sites had the technology base required to design and produce nuclear weapons. It said top Israeli nuclear facilities were equivalent to laboratories that played a key role in the development of US nuclear arsenal. Washington has been criticized for covering up the report for over two and a half decades. US federal laws prohibit foreign aid to those who import nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside international safeguards. Israel has long defied calls to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and is believed to have hundreds of nuclear warheads.
Commentary –Back
in February the Defense Department finally granted a three-year-old
request under the Freedom of Information Act to release a 1987 report
discussing Israel’s nuclear technology. Grant Smith of the Institute for
Research: Middle Eastern Policy filed the request in 2012. As can be
seen from the two articles below, the release of the report was covered
in a variety of outlets, yet the story never gained any traction.
Meanwhile, the Zio media has reported 24/7 on Iran’s nuclear
program, which has never produced a single explosive and is monitored
above and beyond the requirements of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. Even with Netanyahu crashing Washington with the help of
Congressional Republicans and the possibility of a new nuclear deal with
Iran the talk of the town, this most fundamental bit of relevant
information — Israel’s decades old acquisition of nuclear and hydrogen weapons, is conveniently left out of the discussion.
The US government blows the lid off Israel’s nuclear weapons program by declassifying a top secret document, a report says.
Last month the United States released documentation from its 1987
assessment of Israel’s nuclear weapons capabilities, following a Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) request, the Jerusalem Post reported on
Saturday.
The 386-page document, formally titled Critical Technological
Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations, was commissioned by the
Department of Defense and complied by Leading Technologies Incorporated.
According to the report, the document gives a detailed breakdown of Israel’s nuclear weapons development in the 1970s and 1980s.
Israel is “developing the kind of codes which will enable
them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and
fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level,” reads the
declassified document.
It goes on to say that in the 1980s Israel was “reaching
the ability to create bombs considered a thousand times more powerful
than atom bombs.”
It also parallels Israel’s nuclear research laboratories to US nuclear facilities known to carry out weapons research.
Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant, pictured in 2004 (Getty Images)
The Soreq and Dimona nuclear facilities “are the equivalent of our
Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories,” it
reads.
“The Soreq center runs the full nuclear gamut of activities from engineering, administration, and non-destructive testing to electro-optics, pulsed power, process engineering and chemistry and nuclear research and safety,” the paper goes on to say. “This is the technology base required for nuclear weapons design and fabrication.”
The Dimona Nuclear Research Center as viewed from satellite (Photographed by American reconnaissance satellite KH-4 CORONA, from Wikipedia)
In accordance to FOIA regulations, the United States informs the relevant partner giving them the option of formal objection.
The Jerusalem Post quoted US Army Col. Steven Warren, the director of
Pentagon press operations, as saying that Israel was informed of “our
planned release of the documents and they did not object.”
The release of the document is thought to be the first time the
United States has publicly acknowledged Israel’s possession of nuclear
weapons.
The Israeli regime, widely believed to possess between 200 to 400
nuclear warheads in its arsenals, refuses to either allow inspections of
its nuclear facilities or join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Document summarizes in detail Washington’s
understanding of the nature and purpose of Israel’s nuclear program as
it stood in the 1980s.
LAUSANNE, Switzerland – Last month, the US released documentation from
1987 of its assessment of Israel’s nuclear weapons capabilities,
required to do so by law after receiving a request filed under the
Freedom of Information Act.The document, “Critical Technological
Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations,” was written by Leading
Technologies Inc. for the Institute for Defense Analyses, and
commissioned by the US Department of Defense. Its contents are based on
visits by US experts, in coordination with the embassy in Tel Aviv and
with the guidance of the Pentagon, to facilities and laboratories across
Israel.While Israel has never publicly acknowledged having nuclear
weapons, foreign sources say it does. Israel is not a signatory of the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.This document summarizes in detail
Washington’s understanding of the nature and purpose of that program as
it stood in the 1980s.
Two of Israel’s nuclear facilities at the time, the Soreq Nuclear
Research Center near Yavne and the Negev Nuclear Research Center in
Dimona, “are the equivalent of our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and
Oak Ridge National Laboratories,” the US document reads.
“The Soreq center runs the full nuclear gamut of activities from
engineering, administration, and nondestructive testing to
electro-optics, pulsed power, process engineering and chemistry and
nuclear research and safety,” the paper continues.
“This is the technology base required for nuclear weapons design and fabrication.”
The report goes on to detail Israel’s experimentation with various
nuclear fuels, laserbased nuclear weapons detonation devices and the
effects of radiation propagation.
While the assessment concluded that, at the time, Israel’s weapons
design was “extremely conservative,” it said the Jewish state was
experimenting with coding “which will enable them to make hydrogen
bombs.”
The document appears to have been categorized as “declassified” upon
its submission, suggesting an assessment within the US government that
its findings would be low-impact if made public.
That, too, must have been the assessment of the Israeli government in
2014, as it had the opportunity to keep the document secret but
declined.
“We did inform the Israeli government of our planned release of the
documents and they did not object,” US Army Col. Steven Warren, director
of Pentagon press operations, confirmed to The Jerusalem Post.
Upon receiving a Freedom of Information Act request concerning
information sensitive to foreign governments, the US informs the
relevant partner, giving it the opportunity to formally object.
“The US government was by law required to release the report upon
such a FOIA request unless we had a written request from the relevant
foreign government – Israel – that the information continue to be
withheld,” one senior administration official told the Post on Friday.
“Israel did not object to the release of this information.”
Israeli officials declined to comment for this report, neither
confirming nor denying concerns over the document, the contents of its
assessment or the politics surrounding its release.
While the Freedom of Information Act request was made years ago, the
release of the document was first discussed in recent months – in the
shadow of debate over Iran’s nuclear weapons work.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has called at the United Nations for
a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, suggesting that his country’s
nuclear program may be in response to Israel’s own.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu adamantly opposes a working
proposal under discussion here in Switzerland that would aim to cap,
restrict, monitor and roll back much of Tehran’s nuclear program for a
limited period. The deadline for a framework agreement in those
negotiations falls on Tuesday.
Privately, those who acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons program
tout its effect as a deterrent. Israel’s program is understood to have
been developed in the late 1960s, after the young country had already
been at war with the forces of eight Arab nations.
The Israeli government fears that Iran’s program serves a different
purpose: Not deterrence, but embodiment of aggressive behavior and the
protection of a regime that calls for the destruction of the Jewish
state.
The Iranian government says its right to develop homegrown nuclear
technology – guaranteed by the United Nations – is a point of national
pride.
Conservative Israeli and American media, including Fox News, the
Drudge Report and The Washington Examiner, have suggested that the
timing of the document’s release was an intentional move by the Obama
administration to undermine Netanyahu.
The document was indeed released when Israel’s concerns over an Iran
deal were first raised at high pitch. The White House considers
Netanyahu’s behavior, including his March 3 speech to a joint meeting of
Congress attacking Obama’s Iran policy, as disrespectful of the
presidency and a politicization of the US-Israel relationship.
US President Barack Obama does not review Freedom of Information Act
requests, nor does any president, for unclassified documents.
While Israel has not discussed the document or its release, one
official did acknowledge that discussion over the matter began in 2014.
Prof Michel Chossudovsky for Global Research, April 15, 2015 The Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), an entity on contract
to the US Department of Defense has released a previously classified
military document which confirms Israel’s nuclear weapons program.
This is considered to be a landmark decision, widely interpreted
as constituting a semi-official recognition by the US Department of
Defense that Israel is a bona fide nuclear power. While the document
confirms what is already known regarding Israel’s nuclear arsenal, the
political implications are potentially far-reaching, particularly in
relation to the ongoing negotiations pertaining to Iran’s alleged
nuclear program.”
Who Threatens Whom in the Middle East:
A de facto acknowledgement by the US that Israel is a nuclear
power threatening the Middle East in contrast to Iran’s non-existant
nuclear weapons program
Moreover, as detailed below, the IDA report tacitly portrays
Israel’s nuclear weapons program as an extension of that of the United
States.
This 386-page 1987 report entitled “Critical Technological
Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations” provides details regarding
Israel’s weapons systems including the development of the hydrogen bomb.
While the report was written 28 years ago, it confirms Israel’s
capabilities to develop nuclear weapons, with an explosive capacity
equivalent to 1000 times a (Hiroshima) atomic bomb:
that in the 1980s Israelis were reaching the ability to create bombs considered a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs.
The report also states that:
“[Israel is] developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. [1980s] That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level,”.
The report also notes that research laboratories in Israel “are
equivalent to our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge
National Laboratories,” the key labs in developing America’s nuclear
arsenal. (quoted in Israel National News, March 25, 2015)
Israel’s nuclear infrastructure is ”an almost exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories,”
The report intimates that Israel’s weapons industry including its
nuclear program is essentially an extension of that of the US, developed
with the active support and collaboration of US military research labs
and US “defense contractors”.
In this regard it also dispels the notion that the US was not made
privy to Israeli classified information concerning its nuclear program,
which in the earlier period was developed with the support of France.
The report also reveals that the Pentagon was fully informed
regarding the intimate details of the Israeli program, which also
suggests that it was developed in active collaboration with the US.
In early February, the Pentagon declassified reports
on Israel’s nuclear weapons program which was carried out until 1987.
According to these documents, Israeli scientists were capable of
producing a hydrogen bomb by that time. Although these facts were
largely ignored by the Western media, some analysts have noticed that
the declassification of these secret reports suspiciously coincided with
the recent, rapidly deteriorating relationship between the US and
Israel. As Tel Aviv started a massive campaign of criticism aimed at the
Obama administration, both in the US media and worldwide, the
Pentagon’s revelations were quick to follow. It is also noteworthy that
only the facts on the Israeli nuclear weapons program were declassified,
while information regarding similar activities of NATO allies (in
particular Italy, France, and West Germany) remained locked up.
The 386 pages report “Сritical technology assessment in Israel and Nato nations,” was
prepared in 1987 by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) and
examined the capabilities Israel had already had at that time to produce
nuclear weapons. In particular, the study underlines the fact that
Israel’s secret laboratories, engaged in the development of an atomic
bomb, were on par with the key research nuclear arsenals of the US: Los
Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
According to this report, by the mid-80s Israeli experts
were at the same stage of research and development of various nuclear
weapons the hydrogen bomb in particular, reached by American scientists
between 1955-1960. IDA experts were courageous enough to recognize that
in certain areas the Israelis have even surpassed their American
colleagues of the time, in particular those working in the “Raphael”
Israeli secret lab, who had managed to propose unconventional ways of
achieving nuclear fission that would have allowed them to create their
own version of the hydrogen bomb.
Under these conditions, one should revisit The Sunday
Times article “Revealed: The Secrets of Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal” that
was published on October 5, 1986. This article was based on the
revelations of an Israeli nuclear scientist – Mordechai Vanunu – who
disclosed the secrets of the Israeli nuclear program.
This 31 year-old Israeli expert on nuclear weapons had, by 1986,
already been working for 10 years in a secret atomic center, Machon 2,
that was built under the Negev desert and from the mid-60s had already
been producing nuclear weapons. Then, facts and pictures that were
presented by Mordechai to international experts caught them by surprise.
They had to admit that by the mid-80s Israel became the sixth nuclear
power after the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, France and China,
although it did its best to conceal this information. Even by that time
the Israeli nuclear potential was much higher than that of India,
Pakistan and South Africa, which were also suspected of developing
nuclear weapons.
According to this
whistle-blowing Israeli scientist, by the mid-80s the Jewish state had
secret capabilities of plutonium production for more than 20 years,
which would eventually reach over the years to the level of 40 kilograms
annually, which is enough to produce 10 nuclear bombs. During the 80s,
Israel also came into possession of equipment necessary for the
production of thermonuclear devices. In particular, a French built
reactor with a capacity of 26 megawatts was upgraded by Israeli
scientists to reach a capacity of 150 megawatts, which allowed Israel to
engage in the production of plutonium.
Nuclear
specialists, which were commenting on this article in the The Sunday
Times, confirmed that by 1986 Israel could have had 100-200 nuclear
bombs.
This information provides a
reasonable understanding of Israel’s commitment to maintaining a nuclear
monopoly in the Middle East at whatever cost by blocking their
potential adversaries from acquiring nuclear weapons. In particular, Tel
Aviv recklessly launched air strikes on the Osirak nuclear reactor in
Iraq on June 7, 1981, and is now followed by a likewise negative
approach toward the Iranian nuclear program.
In light of these
publications and official US recognition of Israel as a nuclear power
that has been in possession of nuclear devices for more than half a
century, it is imperative for international players to begin a
discussion of this issue in the UN, forcing Israel to sign the Treaty on
the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and taking the shipment of
such weapons in and out Tel Aviv under rigid international control.
Vladimir Platov, an expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
L’Iran a officiellement demandé à Israël d’abandonner ses « armes nucléaires »,
dans un discours au nom des 120 pays non alignés. Le ministre iranien
des Affaires étrangères, Mohammad Javad Zarif, a également déclaré que
le bloc des pays non alignés veut un Moyen-Orient sans armes nucléaires.
Mohammad
Javad Zarif s’est adressé aux Nations-Unies au nom des 120 pays non
alignés. Israël n’a jamais admis ou nié le fait de posséder des armes
nucléaires, bien qu’il soit communément admis qu’il en possède.
Cependant, Zarif a déclaré que l’arsenal nucléaire que possède très
certainement Israël est une menace pour la sécurité régionale.
Le
ministre iranien des Affaires étrangères a déclaré que les pays non
alignés considèrent le programme nucléaire israélien comme « une grave menace qui pèse sur la sécurité des États voisins », et a condamné Israël pour « sa production et son accumulation d’armes nucléaires », selon Reuters.
L’Iran critique Israël et les puissances nucléaires lors de la conférence sur le traité atomique aux Nations-Unies
Dorian Barel @DorianBarel sur Twitter
Israël
n’a pas signé le traité de non-prolifération des armes nucléaires, ce
qui ne l’a pas empêché d’envoyer un observateur à cette conférence, qui
dure un mois, pour la première fois en 20 ans.
Zarif a notamment ajouté que le bloc non aligné désire créer une zone sans armes nucléaires au Moyen-Orient, « un objectif urgent » qu’il n’est possible d’atteindre que si Israël abandonne son arsenal nucléaire.
Israël est le seul dans la région à n’avoir ni signé le NPT (traité sur la non-prolifération des armes nucléaires), ni manifesté le moindre désir de renoncer à la possession d’armes nucléaires.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, ministre iranien des Affaires étrangères
Le
projet de mettre en place une zone sans armes nucléaires au
Moyen-Orient avait été validé lors de la précédente conférence, en 2010,
mais rien n’a jamais été mis en œuvre pour concrétiser ce projet.
L’Iran
a été accusé à maintes reprises par l’Occident d’essayer de développer
l’arme nucléaire, une accusation que Téhéran a réfutée à chaque reprise.
Le pays affirme que l’objectif de son programme nucléaire est
intégralement pacifique. L’Iran s’est accordé avec les pays du P5+1, en
Suisse, à la suite de discussions qui ont amené à un accord cadre. Une
étape importante qui pourrait conduire à un accord définitif lors de
l’été prochain.
Cependant, Israël a fortement critiqué cet
accord-cadre. Le Premier ministre israélien, Benyamin Netanyahou, a
notamment déclaré que cet accord-cadre « n’entraverait en rien le chemin de l’Iran vers la bombe nucléaire ; il le paverait ».
Au
cours de la conférence, Téhéran a également demandé aux pays qui
possèdent des armes nucléaires de ne pas tenter de moderniser leurs
arsenaux actuels.
Nous en appelons aux États qui disposent d’armes nucléaires : cessez immédiatement vos projets d’investissement dans la modernisation et l’extension de la durée de vie de vos armes et installations nucléaires.
Mohammad Javad Zarif
Une vue d’ensemble de l’installation nucléaire de Bushehr, à 1 200 km au sud de Téhéran (photo : Reuters/IRNA/Mohammad)
Le
secrétaire général des Nations-Unies, Ban Ki-moon, a notamment épinglé
les États-Unis et la Russie en matière de désarmement nucléaire,
l’avancement dans ce domaine étant nul. Il a ainsi déploré « un retour à l’état d’esprit de la guerre froide ». Selon lui, « un
monde sans armes nucléaires est un impératif historique pour notre
époque. Je suis profondément inquiet de voir qu’au cours des cinq
dernières années, les deux nations n’ont pas réalisé la moindre avancée
dans ce domaine ».
Tentant d’esquiver ces critiques, John Kerry, secrétaire d’État des États-Unis, a déclaré que son pays « veut
que la course à l’armement nucléaire soit de l’histoire ancienne. Je
suis heureux d’annoncer aujourd’hui que le président Obama a décidé que
les États-Unis tenteront d’accélérer de 20 % le démantèlement de têtes
nucléaires périmées ».
De son côté, la Russie est « absolument
ouverte à un dialogue sérieux sur le désarmement nucléaire, mais
seulement en l’absence de deux poids, deux mesures », a déclaré le ministre russe du Contrôle de la non-prolifération des armes nucléaires, Mikhail Ulyanov.
La Russie est fermement engagée dans le désarmement nucléaire, comme le démontre la mise en application du traité New Start russo-américain. Mikhail Ulyanov, ministre russe du Contrôle de la non-prolifération des armes nucléaires
Le
traité de non-prolifération des armes nucléaires est d’application
depuis 1970 ; il a vu le nombre d’armes nucléaires de par le monde
réduit drastiquement. Cependant, les responsables des Nations-Unies
estiment qu’il est possible d’œuvrer davantage encore pour réduire les
arsenaux existants.
For US, Israel’s nuclear arsenal is the elephant in the room
(Note; TLDR notes can be found at the bottom of the article)
In order to hold a sound debate, it is said, opposing sides must first
have an agreed-upon set of facts, a common view of what constitutes
reality. It’s no surprise, then, that debates about nuclear arms in the
Middle East – including over Iran’s contentious nuclear programme – tend
to run amok.
In this case, the reality in the region is that only one country,
Israel, maintains a stockpile of the world’s most dangerous weapons.
Despite this being exposed in 1986 by an Israeli whistle-blower,
Mordechai Vanunu, Israel has never acknowledged its arsenal, estimated
to be between 80 and 200 bombs. In what has since become the official
line on its nukes, then-deputy defence minister Shimon Peres told US
president John Kennedy in 1963: “Israel will not be the first to
introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East” – leveraging an almost
comically narrow definition of the word “introduce”.
More curiously, Israel’s main backer, the United States, won’t
acknowledge reality either. Since a late-1960s agreement with Israel, US
officials, ranging from members of Congress to nuclear scientists, are
barred from publicly acknowledging Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Last year,
an analyst at a US government nuclear lab lost his job after mentioning
Israel’s nukes in an academic journal article.
That ridiculous dynamic, however, may be giving way to tacit
acknowledgement. A quiet shift occurred recently when the US defence
department released a previously classified 1987 report on Israel’s
nuclear research. It came to light as part of a Freedom of Information
lawsuit by Grant Smith of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern
Policy.
Issued by the Pentagon-funded Institute for Defence Analysis (IDA), the
report suggests US complicity in Israel’s development of its nuclear
capabilities. William Greider, writing for The Nation magazine, reported
that the IDA’s findings “seem to hint at a copy-cat process in which
the US government either actively helped or at least looked the other
way while Israel borrowed or purloined technologies to establish a
parallel nuclear system that looks a lot like America’s”.
The report doesn’t state outright that Israel has the bomb, but
describes in detail an Israeli nuclear infrastructure of immense
proportions.
The timing couldn’t be worse for Israel. Tensions with the US are high
and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is feverishly working every lever
of influence in America to block a potential nuclear deal with Iran.
Israel is the world’s most outspoken critic of Iran’s nuclear programme
and a vociferous opponent of the diplomacy between Iran and world
powers, including the US, to peacefully constrain that programme.
Israel persistently calls for heightened transparency with regard to
Iran’s programme – for example, by denouncing the reported deal on the
table now for not going far enough. But what one academic calls “nuclear
opacity” stands as a weak spot in Israel’s activism on Iran. Avner
Cohen has said the policy is “anachronistic, even counterproductive”;
indeed, the Iranians haven’t shied away from exploiting the hypocrisy as
a propaganda cudgel against their regional foes.
After Mr Netanyahu’s speech to US Congress earlier this month, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani lashed out at the contradiction.
“People of the world and America are too smart to take advice from
[Israel],” he said, “which has pursued, produced and stockpiled a large
number of atomic bombs in violation of international laws and away from
the eyes of international inspectors.” Iran, he noted, is – unlike
Israel – a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Because of its complicity in keeping Israel’s nuclear secret, the US
takes a propaganda hit, too. Not least of the US aims at stake is that
of a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East. While Africa, Latin
America, the South Pacific, South-east Asia and Central Asia have agree
to go nuke-free, one of the world’s most explosive regions can’t even
kick-start its conversation because of Israel’s posture.
A planned 2012 conference aimed at creating such a zone reportedly
collapsed because of Israel’s refusal to participate. Iran, again,
gained the upper hand in its propaganda war by agreeing to join the
effort (though only when it already appeared the talks wouldn’t
proceed).
But Iran’s point scoring isn’t the only cost: talks toward a nuke-free
zone that included Israel would’ve been a milestone not just for
non-proliferation in a dangerous region, but also Israel’s efforts to
gain diplomatic relations with its neighbours. A region-wide conference
including Israel would have been unprecedented, amounting to de facto
recognition.
In this regard and others, Israel has created a Catch-22 with “nuclear
opacity”. Last year, a spokesman at the Israeli embassy in Washington
noted: “Israel supports a Middle East free of all weapons of mass
destruction following the attainment of peace.” And yet Israel’s nuclear
weapons are among the reasons the larger international community views
it as a pariah state.
Would a more bold US acknowledgement of Israel’s nukes help Israel in
its goals of regional recognition and international acceptance? The
answer is not clear. It would, however, certainly remove America’s
complicity in Israel’s obfuscation of clear realities. US officials,
after all, not Israelis, have to sit across from the Iranians at the
negotiating table.
Indeed, the US has its own imperatives. Abiding by Israel’s policy of
“opacity” hurts America’s credibility in pursuing its own aims of
international non-proliferation. The US position, as the former CIA
analyst Paul Pillar put it, is “not just a double standard but living a
lie”.
One can’t help but regard the US’s own commitment to non-proliferation
as something of a joke when, for example, Barack Obama answered a 2009
question about Israel’s nuclear programme by saying: “With respect to
nuclear weapons, you know, I don’t want to speculate.”
The logic behind “nuclear opacity” – that acknowledging Israeli nuclear
weapons would lead to a rush among Middle Eastern countries for their
own bombs – has long since become irrelevant. If Israel’s enemies were
going to move towards acquiring nuclear arsenals, it would not be
because of Israel’s public recognition of something that they already
knew two decades ago.
There’s no upside of Israel maintaining its ambiguous posture, only
costs such as Israel’s isolation and damage to US credibility. The
recently released Pentagon report is only a chink in the armour, but the
candour is welcome. It’s time the US stopped participating in this
farce.
Important Note
The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 was amended by the Symington
Amendment (Section 669 of the FAA) in 1976. It banned U.S. economic, and
military assistance, and export credits to countries that deliver or
receive, acquire or transfer nuclear enrichment technology when they do
not comply with IAEA regulations and inspections. This provision, as
amended, is now contained in Section 101 of the Arms Export Control Act
(AECA).
The Glenn Amendment (Section 670) was later adopted in 1977, and
provided the same sanctions against countries that acquire or transfer
nuclear reprocessing technology or explode or transfer a nuclear device.
This provision, as amended, is now contained in Section 102 of the Arms
Export Control Act (AECA).
In short, it is illegal under US law for The Federal Government to be sending aid to Israel.
TLDR Notes
- Israel has pursued, produced and stockpiled a large
number of atomic bombs in violation of international laws and away from
the eyes of international inspectors.
- Iran is – unlike
Israel – a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- US aid to Israel is illegal under US Foreign Aid laws.
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FOX BUSINESS NEWS White House declassifies document on Israel’s secret nuclear program Mar. 26, 2015 - 5:46 - Former President George W. Bush Spokesperson Mercedes Schlapp and FNC contributor Joe Trippi on the Obama Administration’s decision to declassify a 1987 document on Israel’s secret nuclear program.
PRESSTV - US ‘hypocrisy revealed by secretly helping Israel develop nukes’ Washington’s "hypocrisy" has been revealed as the US is secretly helping Israel build nuclear weapons while it is threatening other nations not to develop nuclear power, says an analyst.
The UN General Assembly approved an Arab-backed resolution calling on Israel to renounce possession of nuclear weapons and put its nuclear facilities under international oversight. The resolution, adopted in a 161-5 vote on Tuesday, noted that Israel is the only Middle Eastern country that is not party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. It called on Israel to "accede to that treaty without further delay, not to develop, produce, test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, to renounce possession of nuclear weapons". The resolution also called on Israel to put its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency. The United States and Canada were among four countries that joined Israel in opposing the measure, while 18 countries abstained, the Associated Press reported. Israel is widely considered to possess nuclear arms but declines to confirm it. Non-binding resolution General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding but carry moral weight because it is the only body where all 193 UN member states are represented. The resolution was introduced by Egypt, and includes an Arab-backed effort that failed to gain approval in September at the Vienna-based IAEA. The UN resolution, titled "The risk of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East," pushed for the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East and lamented that US-backed efforts to convene talks were abandoned in 2012. At the time, Israel criticised Arab countries for undermining dialogue by repeatedly singling out the country in international arenas. Israel has long argued that a full Palestinian-Israeli peace plan must precede any creation of a Mideast zone free of weapons of mass destruction. The country also argues that Iran's alleged work on nuclear arms is the real regional threat. Iran denies pursuing such weapons. US representative Robert Wood, in voting against the resolution at the committee-level last month, said the measure "fails to meet the fundamental tests of fairness and balance. It confines itself to expressions of concern about the activities of a single country.
Iran’s claim that Israel has 400 nuclear weapons “It’s laughable that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has
become everybody’s nonproliferation guru. He is sitting on 400 nuclear
warheads, nuclear warheads that have been acquired in violation of the
NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty].”
Why Isn’t Anyone Talking About Israel’s Nukes? Netanyahu wants to talk about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but why isn’t anybody talking about Israel’s not-so-secret arsenal? | March 5, 2015
Netanyahu warns that nuclear deal ‘paves Iran’s path’ to a bomb | March 3 2015 Publicly, Israel neither confirms nor denies that it has nuclear weapons. But many experts in nuclear arms believe that Israel has extensive capabilities. In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a disgruntled Israeli technician at a suspected nuclear facility, leaked photos to a British newspaper that led foreign experts to conclude that Israel had a large nuclear arsenal. Israeli intelligence agents later arrested Vanunu in Rome.
The truth about Israel's secret nuclear arsenal Israel has been stealing nuclear secrets and covertly making bombs since the 1950s. And western governments, including Britain and the US, turn a blind eye. But how can we expect Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions if the Israelis won't come clean? 15 January 2015
What happened to Ben Gurion when he finally quit Israel's government? The decade between Ben-Gurion’s resignation and his death, in 1973, was a kind of senile decline; the amount of hate he spewed and his preoccupation with bizarre matters did not permit one to think otherwise. 2 November 2013