Coffee Talk Shop…

If this is a concern of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad then it is justified.

“Israel is widely suspected to have nuclear weapons, but has refused to either confirm or deny their existence.”

From what I have picked up here and there in web articles from 2006 to present day and there may even be a reference in the web article, Life After the Oil Crash, http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ Israel has one of the largest nuclear arsenals in the world.

These nuclear weapons have been created in a secret but approved Israeli nuclear weapons program. They exist in Israel as a deterrent against nations attacking the oil fields in the region of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, UAE, and so on and as a deterrent to attacking Israel itself.

I thought it odd that this statement from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would come up in an article because I thought it was widely known around the world that Israel has the third largest nuclear strike capability in the world.

1. United States
2. Russia
3. Israel

When I first came across this information I was pretty surprised. I could have been doing some research to understand the political relationship between the United States and Israel and why the two countries were so close politically. It just did not make any sense to me why Israel and the United States were so close politically.

Once again there are political ties between both countries that go back to World War II if not before.

I believe these ties became more formal after the Holocaust in Europe, when many Jews fled to the United States for freedom and safety.

After discovering that Israel was thought to have the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world I simply attributed it to both protection of oil assets of the United States in the Middle East and protection for the Jewish population living in Israel so that they would not have to go through another Holocaust scenario. Both reasons justified a strong nuclear deterrent.

A quick search on the internet reveals these articles on the subject

1. Israeli Nuclear Weapons
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/

“Israel has not confirmed that it has nuclear weapons and officially maintains that it will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. Yet the existence of Israeli nuclear weapons is a “public secret” by now due to the declassification of large numbers of formerly highly classified US government documents which show that the United States by 1975 was convinced that Israel had nuclear weapons.

History
Israel began actively investigating the nuclear option from its earliest days. In 1949, HEMED GIMMEL a special unit of the IDF’s Science Corps, began a two-year geological survey of the Negev desert with an eye toward the discovery of uranium reserves. Although no significant sources of uranium were found, recoverable amounts were located in phosphate deposits.
The program took another step forward with the creation of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) in 1952. Its chairman, Ernst David Bergmann, had long advocated an Israeli bomb as the best way to ensure “that we shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter.” Bergmann was also head of the Ministry of Defense’s Research and Infrastructure Division (known by its Hebrew acronym, EMET), which had taken over the HEMED research centers (HEMED GIMMEL among them, now renamed Machon 4) as part of a reorganization. Under Bergmann, the line between the IAEC and EMET blurred to the point that Machon 4 functioned essentially as the chief laboratory for the IAEC. By 1953, Machon 4 had not only perfected a process for extracting the uranium found in the Negev, but had also developed a new method of producing heavy water, providing Israel with an indigenous capability to produce some of the most important nuclear materials…”

2. Israel and weapons of mass destruction
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

“Israel is widely believed to possess weapons of mass destruction, and to be one of four nuclear-armed countries not recognized as a Nuclear Weapons State by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).[1] The US Congress Office of Technology Assessment has recorded Israel as a country generally reported as having undeclared chemical warfare capabilities, and an offensive biological warfare program.[2] Officially Israel neither confirms nor denies possessing nuclear weapons.

Although no official statistics exist, it has been estimated that Israel possesses up to 400 thermonuclear weapons, believed to be of Teller-Ulam design, including strategic warheads in the megaton-range.[3][4][5] Delivery mechanisms include Jericho intercontinental ballistic missiles, with a range of 11,500 km.[6] Additionally, Israel is believed to have an offshore nuclear second-strike capability, using submarine launched nuclear-capable cruise missiles.[7] The Israeli government maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity on whether it has nuclear weapons, saying only that it would not be the first to “introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East.”[8] Former International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei regarded Israel as a state possessing nuclear weapons.[9]

Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. However, on July 13, 2008, Israel took part in a regional conference of the Union for the Mediterranean which pledged to pursue a Middle East Zone free of weapons of mass destruction.[10]”

3. Nuclear weapons and Israel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel

Israel is widely believed to be the sixth country in the world to have developed nuclear weapons[5] and to be one of four nuclear-armed countries not recognized as a Nuclear Weapons State by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the others being India, Pakistan and North Korea.[6] Former International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei regarded Israel as a state possessing nuclear weapons,[7] but Israel maintains a policy known as “nuclear ambiguity” (also known as “nuclear opacity”). Israel has never officially admitted to having nuclear weapons, instead repeating over the years that it would not be the first country to “introduce” nuclear weapons to the Middle East, leaving ambiguous whether it means it will not create, will not disclose, or will not make first use of the weapons. Israel has refused to sign the NPT despite international pressure to do so, and has stated that signing the NPT would be contrary to its national security interests.[8]

Israel started investigating the nuclear field soon after its founding in 1948 and with French support secretly began building a nuclear reactor and reprocessing plant in the late 1950s. Although Israel first built a nuclear weapon in the late 1960s, it was not publicly confirmed from the inside until Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli nuclear technician, revealed details of the program to the British press in 1986. Israel is currently believed to possess between 75 and 400 nuclear warheads with the ability to deliver them by intercontinental ballistic missile, aircraft, and submarine.[2]

4. Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Program
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Israel/index.html

Israel is believed to possess the largest and most sophisticated arsenal outside of the five declared nuclear powers. Israel has never admitted possessing nuclear weapons, but abundant information is available showing that the capability exists.
A short essay on the history of Israel’s nuclear weapons program
April 1997 revelations about Israeli-South African nuclear collaboration
The center of Israel’s weapons program is the Negev Nuclear Research Center near the desert town of Dimona (the center is usually identified simply as “Dimona”). A nuclear reactor and plutonium production facility was built by France at this facility in the late 1950s and early 60s. All of the production and fabrication of special nuclear materials (plutonium, lithium-6 deuteride, and enriched and unenriched uranium) occurs at Dimona although the design and assembly of nuclear weapons occurs elsewhere.

So based on these four articles, it can be safely assumed that Israel is a non-recognized nuclear power.

The reason why Israel has political ambiguity in not confirming their nuclear weapons is that it would lead to an escalation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

If there was a nuclear war between Israel and another Middle East country it would lead to the destruction of the entire Middle East area and its oil producing capabilities.

Therefore in recognition of the past Holocaust atrocities against the Jewish people during World War II Israel has been allowed to develop its nuclear program and develop nuclear weapons in order to protect itself from future transgressions.

The nuclear weapons program was allowed as long as Israel kept silent about its nuclear strike capabilities. This it has done to date and will do so in the foreseeable future.

Iran will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons or a nuclear arsenal based on the above information. In this particular case, a balance of power will not be allowed in the Middle East due to the extreme danger of a nuclear war destroying the oil facilities in the Middle East.