Does Israel Possess Nuclear Weapons?

Israel is generally understood to possess nuclear weapons, yet the country has never officially denied or admitted it has a nuclear arsenal.

Instead, Israel has maintained a policy of deliberate ambiguity on the issue throughout decades. Nevertheless, experts estimate that the country’s stockpile ranges between 90 and 400 warheads.

The response to inquiries about the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal has always been that, ” “Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East.”

Furthermore, the middle-eastern country is able to deliver nuclear missiles by aircraft, as submarine-launched cruise missiles, and via the Jericho series of intermediate to intercontinental range ballistic missiles.

According to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Israel has 90 plutonium-based nuclear warheads and has produced enough plutonium for 100-200 weapons.

The particular estimates have been fairly consistent for decades, indicating that the country’s stockpile is defined by its deterrence needs.

The History of Israel’s Nuclear Weapons

Israel’s interest in nuclear weapons has started in the end of the 1940s. The country’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion spoke of the urgent need for obtaining nuclear weapons to prevent the Holocaust from reoccurring.

In 1948, even before the Israeli-Arab War, Israel began recruiting Jewish nuclear scientists and forming scientific institutes in order to create a nuclear arsenal.

Ben-Gurion had 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”.

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 to find sources of uranium.

The same year Hemed Gimmel funded six Israeli physics graduate students to study overseas to learn about nuclear chain reaction. In June 1952 Ben-Gurion appointed defense ministry scientist Ernst David Bergmann Bergmann to be the first chairman of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC).

In 1957 Israel started construction of the first nuclear facility with French assistance. The facility was named Dimona. Three years later the first French nuclear tests began and by 1961 Dimona was operational.

Nuclear Weapons Production

It is believed that Israel began full-scale production of nuclear weapons following the 1967 Six-Day War, although it had built its first operational nuclear weapon by December 1966.

In 1969, 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.

In 1973, before the Yom Kippur War, information minister Simon Peres wanted Israel to publicly demonstrate its nuclear capability to discourage an Arab attack, and fear of Israeli nuclear weapons may have discouraged an aggressive Arab military strategy.

In the 1980s the CIA estimated that Israel had 100-200 nuclear weapons. In 1991, after the Soviet Union dissolved, nearly 20 top Jewish Soviet scientists reportedly emigrated to Israel.

By the mid 2000s estimates of Israel’s arsenal ranged from 75 to 400 nuclear warheads.

Sources: Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Wikipedia, Britannica.com