Israel's nuclear weapons receive support from Joe Biden

Gennady Charodeyev

All these "peace initiatives" of the American president were kept in strict secrecy. "Well, you never know what a conversation could be going on between the two politicians", - White House press secretary Jennifer Psaki justified. Nonetheless, as reporters from the Israeli television channel 7 Canal found out, Bennett agreed to maintain his "nuclear ambiguity" and refrain from any nuclear test or threat of a nuclear strike.

This discussion and commitment to strategic agreements between the United States and Israel has become a ritual for every American president since Richard Nixon's first meeting with then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1969.

“Presidents Ford, Carter, Reagan, George W. Bush, and Clinton confirmed these verbal agreements at their first meetings with their Israeli counterparts”, recalled Barak Ravid, author of the Axios online publication.

The reporter also wrote in his column that in 1998, during a peace conference in Washington, where the Wye River memorandum was signed, then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked US President Bill Clinton to turn oral understanding into a written document. Clinton agreed and signed a pledge that the United States will allow Israel to maintain its "strategic deterrent" potential regardless of any nonproliferation initiative.

Arab countries have struggled for years to combat Israel's "nuclear ambiguity" policy, pointing to the Dimona nuclear rector, which they claim has been ignored for decades by IAEA inspectors.

The Arab campaign found some support at the UN. A resolution it adopted in 2010 called for a nuclear-free Middle East and pointed to Israel as a country that "apparently has nuclear weapons".

Nevertheless, it is known that the first detailed technical information regarding fissile materials and the technology of creating an atomic bomb was obtained from the physicist Moshe Surdin who came from France. Already in 1952, the official creation of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission took place, which was entrusted with the responsibility for the formation of the scientific and technical potential necessary for the creation of atomic weapons.

The commission was headed by the outstanding physicist Ernst David Bergman, who moved to Palestine after Hitler came to power. When Israel's independence was proclaimed, he founded and headed the IDF research service. Becoming the head of nuclear research, Bergman took decisive measures to deploy not only scientific, but also design work.

It is known that for many years Israel secretly collaborated with South Africa in the nuclear field. In the 1960s and 1970s, Pretoria actively developed its own nuclear bomb. Unlike Israel, South Africa had plenty of natural raw materials. There was a mutually beneficial exchange between the countries: uranium for technology, equipment and specialists. The result of this mutually beneficial cooperation was a series of powerful light bursts recorded by the US satellite Vela on September 22, 1979 in the South Atlantic, near the Prince Edward Islands. Experts believe that this was the first test of an Israeli nuclear charge with a capacity of up to 5 kt, possibly carried out in conjunction with South Africa. Doubts about the presence of a nuclear potential in Israel were finally dispelled after in 1985 the fugitive technician of the Israeli nuclear center "Moson-2" Mordechai Vanunu handed over 60 photographs to the English newspaper The Sunday Times and made a number of oral statements. According to information voiced by Vanunu, the Israelis have brought the power of the French reactor at Dimona to 150 MW. This made it possible to ensure the production of weapons-grade plutonium in an amount sufficient for the production of at least 10 nuclear weapons annually.

An irradiated fuel reprocessing facility was built at the Dimona nuclear center with the assistance of French firms in the early 1960s. It can produce from 15 to 40 kg of plutonium per year. According to expert estimates, the total volume of fissile materials produced in Israel before 2003, suitable for creating nuclear charges, exceeds 500 kg.

According to the press service of the SVR , Israel could potentially produce up to 20 nuclear warheads in the period 1970-1980, and by 1993 - from 100 to 200 warheads. According to various estimates, in 2006 Israel had about 200 nuclear warheads in its arsenal. So, according to former US President Jimmy Carter, expressed in May 2008, their number is "150 or more".

Military experts believe that Israeli Jericho missiles are equipped with nuclear warheads. According to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), the IDF is armed with about 60 missiles with a monoblock nuclear charge. F-15 and F-16 aircraft can also be used to deliver nuclear bombs and missiles with nuclear warheads.

- Golda Meir was once asked if Israel has nuclear weapons? She replied: "We do not have nuclear weapons, but if necessary, we will use them!" - Vladimir Sazhin ещдв Тщмну Шямуыешф, senior researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to the expert, despite the fact that Israel has not admitted to this day that it is a nuclear power, he personally has no doubts about it.

- Today Israel is possibly one of the countries with a full-fledged strategic nuclear triad. Like the United States , Russia and China, Israel is armed with nuclear delivery vehicles in all three natural environments. According to a number of estimates, Israel is the sixth nuclear power in the world in terms of the number of nuclear warheads, - said Vladimir Sazhin.

The expert believes that in modern conditions it is necessary to have nuclear weapons to guarantee security, to contain the most aggressive regimes in the Middle East.