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Israel has modified
American-supplied cruise missiles to carry nuclear warheads on three of
its submarines, giving the Middle East's only nuclear power the ability to launch atomic weapons from land,
air and beneath the sea, according to senior Bush administration and
Israeli officials.
The previously
undisclosed capability of the submarines bolsters
Israel's
deterrence in the event that Iran - an avowed enemy developsnuclear
weapons in the coming years. At the same time, it complicates efforts by
the United States
and the United Nations to persuade
Iran
to abandon its suspected nuclear weapons program.
Two Bush administration officials described the missile modification and
an Israeli official confirmed it. All three spoke on condition their
names not be used. The Americans said they were disclosing the
information to caution
Israel's enemies at a
time of heightened tensions in the region and concern over whether
Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program can be stopped through
negotiations.
After intense pressure led by the
U.S., the United
Nations'
International Atomic Energy Agency last month gave
Tehran
an Oct. 31 deadline to accept full inspections and prove it has no
nuclear weapons program.
Iran denies
developing nuclear weapons and says its nuclear program is solely for
generating electricity. Iran's leaders are resisting more intrusive
inspections, setting the stage for a showdown in the coming weeks.
Beyond Iran, Arab
diplomats and U.N. officials said in interviews that
Israel's
steady enhancement of its secret nuclear arsenal, and U.S.
silence about it, inflames Arab desires for similar weapons.
"The presence of a nuclear program in the region that is not under
international safeguards gives other countries the spur to develop
weapons of mass destruction,"
Nabil Fahmy, Egypt's
ambassador to
Washington,
said in an interview. "Any future conflict becomes more
dangerous."
Late last month,
Egypt joined Saudi
Arabia and Syria at the U.N. general assembly in criticizing the U.S.
and the U.N. for ignoring Israel's weapons of mass destruction while
pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear program. Syrian Foreign Minister
Farouk Al-Shara, whose country has been accused by Washington of
pursuing chemical and biological weapons, said, "Some quarters
selectively choose to level their false accusations at some Arab and
Islamic states. . . while simultaneously ignoring the Israeli arsenal of
weapons of mass destruction."
Israel
refuses to confirm or deny that it possesses nuclear weapons.
Intelligence analysts and independent experts have long known that
Israel
has 100 to 200 sophisticated nuclear weapons. Israel, India and Pakistan
are the only countries with nuclear facilities that have not signed the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which was initiated in 1968 to stop
the spread of nuclear weapons through inspections and sanctions.
Israel forbids
outside inspections of its nuclear facilities except for
a
small research reactor.
India and Pakistan,
which also have nuclear
bombs, prohibit inspections of weapons installations; both countries,
however, allow U.N. monitoring of civilian plants.
Iran and Arab states
with civilian nuclear programs have signed the nonproliferation treaty.
The Arab countries, however, also have refused to agree to tougher
inspections because Israel will not sign the overall treaty, U.N.
officials said. "A big source of contention is Israel," a senior
official trying to win acceptance of the additional inspections said in
an interview. "This is a magnet for other countries to develop nuclear
weapons." Israel and its U.S. backers regard its nuclear weapons as an
essential deterrent and centerpiece of the country?s security.
While not
acknowledging their nuclear weapons, Israeli officials have
promised that they will not be first to 'introduce' such weapons to the
Middle East. Israeli and
U.S. officials said
that means Israel would not launch a first-strike attack using nuclear
weapons. They argue that other countries have nothing to fear from
Israel's nuclear weapons, while Israel has everything to fear from its
neighbors.
Since 1969,
Washington has
accepted Israel's status as a nuclear power and not tried to persuade
the Israelis to curtail the program or sign the nonproliferation treaty.
"We tolerate nuclear weapons in Israel for the same reason we tolerate
them in Britain
and France," a senior Bush administration official said in an interview.
"We don't regard Israel as a threat."
In turning a blind
eye to Israel's program, U.S. intelligence agencies
routinely omit
Israel from
semi-annual reports required by Congress to identify countries
developing weapons of mass destruction and similar listings.
The policy allows
U.S. administrations to avoid triggering economic and military sanctions
required by Congress against nations pursuing nuclear weapons. In an
effort to protect Israel's nuclear complex and other targets, the
Clinton administration even barred the sale of U.S. satellite images of
Israel that are better than two meters in resolution, though images with
resolutions of one meter are available for other countries. But the Bush
administration's determination to stop Iran from developing nuclear
weapons means
Israel?s
worst kept secret is likely to loom larger in negotiations with Tehran,
either as a bargaining chip or an obstacle. "You are never going to be
able to address the Iranian nuclear ambitions or the issues of Egypt?s
chemical weapons and possible biological weapons program without
bringing Israel?s nuclear program into the mix," Joseph Cirincione,
director of the nonproliferation program at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace in Washington, said in an interview.
Israel
is smaller than New Jersey and its population of six million is
within reach of missiles from
Iran and other
neighbors. Israel's
land-based nuclear weapons are increasingly vulnerable as
Iran improves the
accuracy of its long-range missiles.
The strategic
alternative was to develop nuclear-armed submarines, which would be
almost invulnerable, Robert S. Norris, a nuclear historian at the
Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, said in an interview.
The effort to develop nuclear-armed submarines dates back several years.
Israel ordered three specially designed submarines from Germany in the
mid-1990s and they were delivered in 1999 and 2000.
The attempt to arm
them with nuclear missiles was first disclosed in a book published in
June 2002 by the Carnegie Endowment. The Washington Post published an
article about the effort a week later.
Interviews in recent weeks with officials in Washington and Tel Aviv
provided the first confirmation that
Israel can now
deliver nuclear
weapons from beneath the sea. The
U.S. officials said
the warheads have been designed for American-supplied Harpoon missiles,
which have sea-skimming cruise guidance systems and a normal range of
about 80 miles. Harpoons usually have conventional warheads and are
common in the arsenals of the U.S. and other countries.
Norris said Israeli engineers would have had to reduce the size of a
nuclear weapon to fit the warhead of a Harpoon and alter the missile
guidance system to hit land-based targets, both relatively simple tasks
for a sophisticated weapons program.
"They have been at it
for more than 30 years, so this is something
within the realm of capability for
Israel?s scientists
and engineers,"
said Norris, who added that the range of the missiles might have been
extended, too. The submerged submarines send missiles to the surface in
capsules fired from torpedo tubes. When a capsule reaches the surface,
its top blows off and the missile is launched. An Israeli government
spokesman, Daniel Seaman, confirmed that the three new submarines carry
Harpoon missiles, but he declined to specify the type of warhead.
Israel has 170 miles
of coast on the Mediterranean Sea and its
submarines are scheduled so at least one is in the water at all times to
make sure that Israel has what a former Israeli officer described in an
interview as a 'second strike' capability if it is attacked.
The Israeli government rejected requests for interviews with officials
from its atomic energy agency and refused to answer questions on
nuclear-related matters.
"We don't comment on
this issue," Seaman, head of the government press office, said. "We are
not going to cooperate on this matter."
The consensus in the
U.S. intelligence
community and among outside
experts is that
Israel has the fifth
or sixth largest nuclear arsenal in
the world.
Under the
nonproliferation treaty, five countries are permitted nuclear weapons.
Britain has 185, the smallest number among the five, according to the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The group estimated
Russia has 8,232 weapons, the United States has 7,068, China has 402 and
France has 348.
Israel
has about double the number of India and Pakistan. North Korea claims to
have nuclear weapons, but
U.S.
intelligence officials are uncertain about whether the claim is true.
Estimates of the number have ranged from one or two to six.
In addition to its
nuclear arsenal, numerous experts said that Israel
has an active chemical weapons program and conducts research on
biological weapons.
Israel began building
a nuclear bomb in the
mid-1950s when hostile neighbors surrounded the young country and the
Holocaust was fresh in the minds of its leaders.
A
secret agreement was signed with the French government in 1956 to help
Israel build a
plutonium nuclear reactor.
France
and Israel were natural partners then; they had been allies with Britain
in a brief attempt to seize the Suez Canal after Egypt had nationalized
it, and had shared concerns about the Soviets and unrest in North
Africa.
The reactor site chosen was a rugged and remote corner of the
Negev
desert, outside the village of Dimona.
The top-secret
undertaking was a massive project, with as many as 1,500 Israeli and
French workers building the reactor and an extensive underground complex
on 14 square miles. French military aircraft secretly flew heavy water,
a key element of a plutonium reactor, from Norway to Israel, according
to the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.
American U-2 spy
planes spotted the construction soon after it began in 1958. Israel
initially said it was a textile plant and later a
metallurgical research facility. Two years later,
U.S. intelligence
identified the site as a nuclear reactor and the C.I.A. said it was part
of a weapons program, according to documents at the National Archives in
Washington.
On
Dec. 21, 1960, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion told the Israeli
parliament that a nuclear reactor was under construction, but he said
it was 'exclusively for peaceful purposes.'
It was the first and
last time that an Israeli prime minister made a
public statement about Dimona, according to 'Israel
and the Bomb,' an authoritative book by Avner Cohen, an
Israeli-American scholar.
Soon after taking office in 1961, President John F. Kennedy pressured
Israel to permit an
inspection of the Dimona site. Ben Gurion agreed and an American team
visited the installation that May.
A
post-visit
U.S. memo said the
scientists were 'satisfied that nothing was concealed from them and that
the reactor is of the scope and peaceful character previously described
to the United States.'
American teams visited Dimona seven times during the 1960s, and reported
that they could not find evidence of a weapons program. In June 1967, on
the eve of the Six-Day War, Israeli engineers managed to assemble two
improvised nuclear devices, an accomplishment that is still classified
as secret in
Israel, according to
an interview with an Israeli with knowledge of the episode.
By early 1968, Carl Duckett, head of the C.I.A. directorate of science
and technology, concluded
Israel had nuclear
weapons, according to
testimony he gave to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1974.
Duckett said his assessment was based on conversations with Edward
Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, who visited
Israel several times
and supported its nuclear program. Duckett said Richard Helms, director
of central intelligence, ordered him not to distribute his conclusions.
In 1969, President Richard M. Nixon struck a deal with Israeli Prime
Minister Golda Meir: As long as Israel did not go public with its
nuclear weapons program or test weapons openly, the United States would
stop its inspections and turn a blind eye to its program, according to
U.S. records. The proof finally surfaced 17 years later. On Oct. 5,
1986, the Sunday
Times of
London published an
article in which a former Dimona
technician, Mordechai Vanunu, provided a detailed look at
Israel's
nuclear weapons program. His cache included diagrams and photographs
from inside the Dimona complex, which he said had produced enough
plutonium for 100 bombs since it went online in 1964.
To conceal the weapons work from
U.S. inspectors, a
false wall had been built to hide elevators that descended six stories
beneath the desert floor to facilities where plutonium was refined and
bomb parts were manufactured, Vanunu said.
Shortly before the
article was published, a female agent from Israel's
intelligence service lured Vanunu from
London to Rome. He
was kidnapped and smuggled back to
Israel,
where he was convicted of treason in a secret trial and sentenced to 18
years in prison.
Vanunu is supposed to be released next year. He has been denied parole
because prosecutors say he still has secrets to tell, according to his
lawyer and supporters. Meanwhile,
Israel was enhancing
its ability tolaunch its nuclear weapons.
The U.S. sold Israel
F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, both of which can be
used to deliver nuclear bombs or missiles. In the 1960s, the French
helped
Israel develop its
first generation of Jericho missiles and the
Israelis built a longer-range Jericho II by the mid-1980s.
The Jericho I and II are equipped with nuclear warheads and satellite
photos indicate that many are hidden in limestone caves southeast of Tel
Aviv, near the town of Zachariah, which is Hebrew for 'God remembers
with vengeance.'
Israel has never
openly tested nuclear weapons. Experts said the Israelis have used
supercomputers, some supplied by the
U.S.,
to conduct simulations for designing weapons. Components also can be
tested using conventional explosives.
"Non-nuclear tests would not be picked up by satellites and other
monitoring systems," Gary Milhollin, director of the
Wisconsin
Project
on Nuclear Arms Control in
Washington, said in
an interview. "You can do a lot in secret and without a nuclear
explosion."
Its nuclear program remains shrouded by a policy the Israelis call
'nuclear ambiguity.' The phrase means
Israel does not
acknowledge its nuclear capability and suffer the accompanying political
and economic fallout, yet it gains the benefit of deterrence because
other nations know the weapons exist.
Though Israel is the
freest country in the Middle East, debating the
nuclear program is taboo. The Israeli Atomic Energy Commission is one of
the country's most secretive organizations. Its budget is secret and its
facilities are off limits and employees face harsh sanctions if they
talk about its operations. Even the name of the chief of nuclear
security was a secret until two years ago.
A
military censor also guards
Israel's nuclear
secrets. Journalists
writing about any security or defense matters must submit articles or
broadcast scripts for pre-publication review. The censor, an army
general, can block publication or broadcast. Decisions can be appealed
to the Supreme Court, but journalists said the government usually
prevails.
The restrictions have
been relaxed for most topics, but not the nuclear program, several
Israeli journalists said. As a result, journalists do not say outright
that Israel has nuclear weapons, relying instead on code words and
repeating foreign news reports.
Foreign journalists in
Israel are subject to
the censorship law, though
foreigners rarely submit material to the censor and enforcement is less
strict. However, some foreigners have run afoul of the authorities.
In late June, the British Broadcasting Corporation aired a documentary
examining the Israeli nuclear establishment's history, Vanunu's
imprisonment and illnesses among former workers at the Dimona reactor.
The Israeli
government retaliated within days. It stopped providing
spokesmen for BBC stories and prohibited its reporters from attending
government press conferences. "They are trying to demonize the state of
Israel," Seaman, the
head of the press office, said of BBC in an interview in August. "We are
not cooperating with them."
Tim English, a BBC spokesman, said the broadcaster stands by the
accuracy and fairness of its program. Censorship extends to academics,
too. Cohen, the Israeli-American scholar, has written a second book that
criticizes
Israel's nuclear
secrecy as 'anacronistic.' In July, his Israeli publisher submitted the
manuscript to the censor in hopes of publishing it in Hebrew. Cohen said
a decision is expected soon, but that early signs have been that the
censor is taking a tough line.
"This will show how
far the Israeli government is willing to go to allow serious discussion
of the issue," Cohen said in an interview. Israel's parliament was
dragged into the nuclear debate briefly on Feb. 2, 2000.
Issam Makhoul, one of
10 Arab-Israelis in parliament, got the item on the agenda by
petitioning the Supreme Court after being rebuffed seven times. "The
entire world knows that
Israel
is a huge warehouse of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons that
serves as a cornerstone of the nuclear arms race in the Middle East," said Makhoul, whose speech was protected by parliamentary immunity.
Several members of parliament walked out on the 10-minute speech. Others
responded with angry shouts. "This is putting lives in danger," said one
member, Moshe Gafni. Chaim Ramon, a cabinet minister who spoke on behalf
of the government, said no democratic country invites its enemies to
listen in on discussions of nuclear arms policy. "Do you want us to
announce to
Iran and Iraq exactly
what we have?" he asked. Sitting in his cluttered office in Haifa
recently, Makhoul defended his attempt to spark a debate and argued that
the issue is more pressing now.
"The American
administration decided to destroy weapons of mass
destruction in
Iraq and they are
threatening Iran," he said. "They
cannot continue giving a blind eye to what is going on in
Israel."
Some experts contend
Israel no longer
needs nuclear weapons because
Iraq
is no longer a threat and Israel's conventional forces are superior to
any combination of Arab armies. Israel's problems with Palestinian
extremists, they argue, cannot be remedied by nuclear strikes.
"Israel has a direct
interest in making sure no Muslim state acquires
the one weapon that could offset its conventional superiority, a
nuclear bomb," said Cirincione, the nonproliferation director at
Carnegie in
Washington. "One way
to do that is by putting its own nuclear weapons on the table."
Some Arab leaders
advocate declaring the
Middle East
a zone free of
weapons of mass destruction. The process would be long, starting with
mutual pledges to give up weapons and creation of a regime to verify
compliance.
Few Israelis think
this is the right time to discuss it again because of
the level of violence with Palestinians. "Israel
could accept the idea after two years of comprehensive peace in the
Middle East," said Ephraim Kam, deputy director of the Jaffa Center for
Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv." Only then could we consider changing
our nuclear position."
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