2013
JF-Expert Member
- Aug 2, 2011
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Israel's Nuclear Weapons:
The world is full of widely accepted conventional wisdom, some of which turns out not to be true. After all, we do not know whether Israel has nuclear weapons.
"Israel's widely suspected nuclear weapons" or, in its more complete form, "Israel's widely suspected nuclear weapons-so widely and strongly suspected that just about everyone who says anything about related topics takes them as a given, even though we cannot say for certain that they exist." Israel listed alongside the eight declared nuclear weapons states.
Four years ago that the policy of non-acknowledgment of NW has outlived whatever usefulness it had for Israel, and that Israel should change that policy. The Arms Control Association's inventory estimates the number of NW at between 75 and 200.
According to authors, the policy was grounded in an understanding that Golda Meir and Richard Nixon reached in 1969, by which the United States would not make a public issue out of nuclear weapons as long as Israel did not acknowledge their existence.
The issue of Iran's nuclear program, negotiations on which will be coming to a climax this fall, is highly germane to this problem. We have the spectacle of the government of Israel being by far the most energetic rabble-rouser on the subject of a possible Iranian nuclear weapon, to the extent of repeatedly threatening to attack Iran militarily.
Anyone would be entitled to say that any state that not only refuses to become a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) or to subject any of its nuclear activities to any kind of international inspection or control but also already possesses NW (Nuclear Weapons) or their equivalents has no standing to conduct such agitation about Iran, which is a party to the NPT, has already subjected its nuclear activities to an unprecedented degree of intrusive inspection, and is in the process of negotiating an agreement to place even further limits on its nuclear program to ensure it stays peaceful.
The need for full and well-informed discussion of Israel's security will play into any debate in the United States about a completed nuclear agreement with Iran.
Link:
Israel's Nuclear Weapons:
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/israels-widely-suspected-unmentionables-11191?page=1