Israel Nuclear Program & its Impacts

Abstract:

This paper is based on the history on Israel nuclear program and its impact on the
regional security. There are multiple models that explain why a state pursues proliferation. The
three main models are: the “security model” (based on the realist theory of international
relations) which posits security/deterrence as the main motivation; the “domestic politics model”
which focuses on internal factors such as bureaucratic narrowness and enhancing domestic
prestige; and the “norms model” (based on the constructivist theory) which emphasizes identity,
ideology, and national prestige as the central driving factors. However, this does not disprove the
theory that proliferation begets proliferation.

A part from Arab they are feeling threat from Israel nuclear program especially Iran and
it’s also challenge for the regional hegemony. Today, Israel is the world's sixth most powerful
nuclear state, with a stockpile of more than 100 nuclear weapons and with the components and
ability to build atomic, neutron and hydrogen bombs. Israel's nuclear program began and still
operates under tight secrecy, but in the 1980s a series of revelations showed the crucial role
played by foreign suppliers.

Historical Background:

An independent nuclear deterrent has been widely seen as a matter of national survival.
The same thing showing Israel nuclear program due to its history. For the Jewish people the state
of Israel came to represent the rebuilding of their homeland after the 19-century-long Migration
that followed the collapse of the Herodias kingdom in the 1st century CE. 1 The land of Israel
then became a part of the Roman and Byzantine empires, and from the 7th century CE had been
governed by successive Islamic dynasties. By the 1800s, fewer than 25,000 Jews remained in the
area. However, in the 20th century, the Jewish presence in the region grew dramatically as a

1
“Israel.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
http://search.eb.com/eb/article-219425. (Accessed June. 1, 2014).
result of anti-Semitism in Europe and the subsequent Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany.
To address the problem, the movement of Zionism supported the establishment of an
independent Jewish state.

With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, the region was
placed under British mandate from the League of Nations. According to the Balfour Declaration
of 1917, Britain was to facilitate establishing a “national home for the Jewish people” in
Palestine, while preserving the “civil and religious” rights of the non-Jewish population. 2 The
British efforts to bring the Jews and the Arabs together failed, however, and on November 29,
1947, the General Assembly of the newly founded United Nations voted to divide Palestine into
two states. On May 14, 1948, the Jewish people proclaimed the State of Israel, which was
immediately recognized by the United States, the Soviet Union, and many other states.

On the very next day, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq invaded the newly founded
state. After a year of fighting, a ceasefire was concluded and a temporary border the Green Line
established, but the hostilities between Israel and its Arab neighbors never ceased. In its 60 years
of independent existence, Israel’s expanding settlements have been repeatedly attacked by the
Arab states as well as by non-state actors, most importantly the Palestinian Liberation
Organization (PLO). The disputes over territory and the status of refugees are ongoing. Many
other conflict between Arab and Israel like Suez Crisis (1956-57), the Six Day War (1967), the
War of Attrition against Egypt (1967-70), the Yom Kippur War (1973), as well as the numerous
attacks by Palestinian groups against Israelis around the world, convinced the Israeli leadership
that only nuclear weapons would protect the country. Allies of Israel closed their eyes on nuclear
exploits, and France even provided the necessary technology.3

In 1949, a special unit of the Israeli Defense Force Science Corps was sent out on a survey of the
Negev desert to locate uranium reserves. In 1952, the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC)
was created. By 1953, a new method of producing heavy water was developed, and in the fall of

2
“1948: the State of Israel is Founded,” BBC News, 6 May 1948
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7381315.stm (Accessed June. 1, 2014).
3
Leonard Spector, The Undeclared Bomb, (Cambridge: Ballinger, 1988), p. 168.
1956, Paris agreed to provide Israel with an 18 Megawatt (MWt) research reactor. After the Suez
Crisis (1956-57), however, France promised to build a 24 MWt reactor instead and, in protocols
that were not committed to paper, a chemical reprocessing plant. The plant was constructed in
secret, outside the IAEA inspection regime at Dimona. The United States first detected the
Dimona construction after U-2 over flights in 1958.4

By September 1969, US intelligence knew that Israel had completed “several sites
providing operational launch capabilities.” Although the United States did not approve of the
Israeli nuclear program, it barely tried to stop it.5 There is no evidence that Israel has ever carried
out a nuclear test. However, on November 2, 1966, a possible test perhaps a zero yield or
implosion test occurred in the Negev desert, and in 1979 a US Vela satellite detected a double
flash of light at or near the Indian Ocean surface believed to be Israel’s joint nuclear test with
South Africa but this was never confirmed.6

The United States promised to defend Israel against direct threats to Israel's security
arising from the regional deployment of ballistic missiles of intermediate range or greater. The
agreement now acts as “a virtual US umbrella” over Israel against missile attack. This step were
also leading toward regional hegemony and increasing insecurity situation in Middle East.
Especially after the revolution of Iran and hostages crisis were the sing for Israel. This did not
stop Israel from enhancing its own nuclear capabilities. In June 2000, reports surfaced that Israel
will arm submarines with nuclear-armed cruise or ballistic missiles.7

Today Israel’s arsenal is contain of 75 to 200 weapons comprising bombs, missile

warheads, and possibly non-strategic (tactical) weapons. In January 2009, the Stockholm
International Peace Institute (SIPRI) ranked Israel as the sixth world nuclear power (after the five
UN Security Council permanent members) on the basis of the number of deployed nuclear
warheads. Unlike the U.S., Russia, UK, France and China, however, Israel is not a signatory to
the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel declared that it will not be the first state to
4
David Stout, “Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal Vexed Nixon,” New York Times,
5
Avner Cohen and William Burr, “Israel crosses the threshold,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June 2, 2014
6
Thomas C. Reed and Danny B. Stillman, “The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its
Proliferation,” (MBI Publishing Co., 2009).
7
Anthony Cordesman, “Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction,” CSIS,
introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East and is on record as supporting a WMD-free
Middle East. 8

Current Issues:
More than half a century after the initiation of the Israeli nuclear program, and more than
four decades after Israel crossed the nuclear threshold, it is worthwhile to revisit Kent’s forecast.
Specifically, there are two sets of questions that are worth exploring. First, how did Israel invent
nuclear opacity? Second, what was the regional impact of Israel reaching nuclear monopoly?
That is, what has been the impact of Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly on the dynamics of the
Arab-Israeli conflict, in particular on the dynamics of war and peace in the region over nearly a
half a century? This chapter is divided to two basic parts. First, it narrates historically the
formation of Israel’s unique posture of opacity, to be contrasted against the “standard” model by
which other states acquired nuclear weapons. Second, it carefully examines the impact of Israel’s
opaque nuclear monopoly on the dynamics of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and in particular on
issues of war and peace in a regional context. More than half a century after the initiation of
Israel’s nuclear program, and more than forty years after Israel crossed the nuclear threshold, our
historical understanding of the impact of Israel’s nuclear weapons program on the region is still
murky, if not fundamentally lacking.

Waves of violence still shake the region. After the conflict between Hamas and Israel in
December 2008, the fragile ceasefire was reached on January 17, 2009 and remains in force
today. Moreover, three other states in the region Iran, Iraq and Syria have been suspected of
aspiring to develop nuclear programs. In the past, Israel tried dealing with such threats
unilaterally. On June 7, 1981 Israel bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak in “Operation
Opera,” and in September 6, 2007 it launched an air strike, “Operation Orchard,” against a
presumed nuclear site in Syria. Today, it is Iran’s nuclear ambitions that are a primary concern.
In a parliamentary meeting on January 18, 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, “All
options that prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capabilities are legitimate within the context of

8
SIPRI Yearbook, 2009, www.sipri.org/yearbook/2009/files/SIPRIYB09summary.pdf. (Accessed June. 3, 2014)
how to grapple with this matter.” The potential consequences of an Israeli strike on Iran’s
nuclear facilities are still debated in the international community.9

Israel is the only country in the Middle East that is not a member of the nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Other countries in the region have repeatedly pressured Israel to
disarm. Since the 1980s, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has passed annual
resolutions calling upon Israel to join the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state. The International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has initiated a security dialogue with the Israeli government,
seeking Israeli support for a Middle East Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone. However, little progress
has been made.

Prime minister of Israel Netanyahu’s past warnings have been credited with bringing the
Iran issue to the fore and galvanizing world powers to take action on the nuclear program. He
made headlines in 2012 when he drew a red line on a cartoon bomb during his speech at the U.N.
General Assembly. During a swing through Washington early this month, Netanyahu tried to
draw attention to the Iranian issue in stops at the White House and in an address to AIPAC, the
pro-Israel lobbying group. Israel then engaged in a six-day PR blitz when naval commandos
seized a ship in international waters that was carrying dozens of sophisticated rockets Israel said
were bound for militants in the Gaza Strip and sent by Iran. The effort was capped by a display
of the seized weapons.10

That is a matter of creativeness and evolution. The initial idea was simple to prepare a
last-resort option. Some hoped to develop a system of open deterrence, others opposed, and the
compromise and adopted the policy of opacity. Opacity, and its domestic origins, is a
compromise between two different strategic camps. The idea is essentially to create some sort of
national insurance policy. All these are elements of a broad national insurance policy which
ultimately is being left in the hands of the prime minister and executed by the nuclear agency
9
“Israeli PM: All options legitimate to prevent nuclear Iran,” CNN.com, Jan. 14, 2008,
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/01/14/israel.iran.ap/index.html. (Accessed June. 3, 2014.)
10
“Israel & Middle East, “ National Post, March 21, 2014,
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/21/israel-threatens-to-strike-irans-nuclear-facilities-in-attempt-to-ratchet-up-
international-pressure-on-tehran/. (Accessed June 3, 2014.)
under him. At the same time, the discourse in Israel in the last few years has somewhat changed,
in the sense that people say somewhat more openly that Israel has nuclear weapons as a factual,
no problematic statement. There is no more any effort to stop that kind of conversation, because
it’s kind of anachronistic. Any effort to stop that would be totally ridiculous.

Arab’s Perceptions:

To understand why the Arab countries did not unite to counter the Israeli nuclear program
as an overriding threat to their common security, it is important to examine Arab perceptions of
Israel’s military posture at the time. While it is convenient to assume that acquisition of nuclear
weapons by a country automatically engenders proliferation attempts by its regional adversaries,
there are several factors that played into the Arab countries’ perception of the Israeli nuclear
program that likely influenced their decision not to pursue a countervailing nuclear weapons
option. One of the most basic reasons for a lack of countering reaction in the Arab world was the
opacity of the Israeli nuclear program. Despite veiled hints and vague declarations on the part of
various Israeli officials, Israel neither confirmed nor denied whether it had constructed nuclear
weapons or even whether it was working towards their construction.

In 1968 Israel admitted to having the technical knowledge to build a bomb and later
declined to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but even these facts cannot be viewed as a
threat on par with possession or ongoing construction of a nuclear weapon. As a result, the Arab
community had no definitive proof of the exact nature of the threat they faced, and thus no
concrete danger to rally against. Even Nasser’s threatening pronouncements of parallel nuclear
construction as a life or death matter for the Arabs hinged on the presumption that Israel was
actively moving towards a working nuclear weapon rather than a breakout capability; he did not
address what the Arab reaction would be in the absence of a declared Israeli nuclear bomb.
Judging from accounts at the time, there was not even a clear sense of Israel’s level of capability
or potential timeline; by 1965, five years after the announcement of the reactor at Dimona, the
best guess of the Arab world was that Israel was two to three years away from having a weapon,
reflecting the lack of hard evidence.11

Without the definite threat posed by an acknowledged Israeli nuclear weapon, the Arab
countries were reduced incapable of judging the best response to unclear threat that might never
materialize. Surrounded by hostile neighbors, possessing comparatively little land, and hosting a
population of Palestinians who feel they have been wrongfully displaced by the creation of a
Jewish state, Israel faces existential threats from within and without. Given its precarious
security environment, Israel’s military posture focuses on defense rather than expanding its
territory or dominating regional power dynamics. The assessment of the Arab community in the
1960s was that Israel would not seek to expand its control over new territory due to the immense
difficulty in managing an increased Arab population within its borders, and that any land gained
in conflict would merely be used as a bargaining chip to mitigate threats to the integrity of Israeli
borders.

Thus, in Arab perceptions at the time, even a nuclear-armed Israel would not pose the
threat of a strong regional power seeking hegemony over its neighbors through offensive military
action.
A second factor affecting the Arab decision regarding Israel’s nuclear threat was the perception
of Israel’s military posture as being aggressive, yet not expansionist.

A third factor, which could be considered a corollary to the second, was the perception
that since Israel would not seek regional hegemony or territorial expansion, any nuclear arsenal
would not be used to exert political influence or to gain power. Instead, the Arab community saw
an Israeli nuclear weapon serving primarily as an existential deterrent, guaranteeing that Israel
would have an option of last resort in a desperate situation, such as a breach of its borders, a
heavy toll of civilian casualties, or a major military imbalance that developed in wartime.
Additionally, it was thought that due to Israel’s geographical position so close to its potential
targets, using a nuclear weapon would be extremely difficult for offensive military purposes. In

11
Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Says Israeli Exercise Seemed Directed at Iran,” The New
York Times, June 20, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/washington/20iran.html (accessed
June 04, 2014).
the context of a weapon being saved exclusively for a time of dire military crisis, an Israeli
nuclear weapon would not be a threat to the balance of power in the region or a tool for hardline
diplomacy, and therefore was not perceived as an immediate security threat by the Arab
community.12

The fourth factor that played into Arab perceptions of Israel’s nuclear capability was the
influence of outside powers. Israel’s close strategic ties to the United States and its status as a
Western ally were seen as placing two forms of constraint on Israel’s willingness and ability to
employ a nuclear weapon in armed conflict. First, the United States is an important strategic
partner for Israel, providing it with economic and military assistance and strong political support.
This relationship was perceived as being much closer than that between the Soviet Union and the
Arab states, giving Israel a disproportionate advantage. 13 In the context of Middle East security
dynamics, this amounted to the United States backing Israel’s right to exist and likely taking its
side in any potential conflict. As a result, Israel would be able to overcome any attack by Arab
forces without deploying nuclear weapons. Second, as a result of its status both as a close U.S.
ally and as an upstanding member of the international community, Israel was subject to various
international norms and pressures. These influences were thought to place considerable
restrictions on Israel’s ability to employ a nuclear weapon against an adversary, given the pariah
status it would attain in such an event.

Covert Operations:
Preventing the Islamic Republic from becoming nuclear is the most important issue on
Israel’s agenda and Jerusalem will do everything it can to prevent Tehran from acquiring a
nuclear capability. Western intelligence analysts claim that Israel is pursuing a covert war against
Iran without engaging in a direct confrontation that could lead to a war. Israel covert operations
is the assassination of important figures in the procurement and enrichment process in Iran and
Europe, intended to deprive the Islamic Republic of key technical skills at the head of the
program. Since its creation, the Mossad has been involved in the most daring covert operations
and the most cold-blooded assassinations.14

12
Ibid., p.05
13
Levite and Landau, “Arab Perceptions of Israel’s Nuclear Posture,” pp. 40-41.
14
Philip Sherwell, “Israel Launches Covert War Against Iran”, in The Daily Telegraph, 16 February 2009,
 Fast forward to the present day, the Mossad is believed to be behind the assassinations of
Ardeshire Hassanpour, a prize-winning nuclear scientist at Iran’s Isfahan Uranium Plant, who
died in mysterious circumstances in 2007 from reported ‘radioactive poisoning’15 and of Majid
Shahriari, a member of the nuclear engineering department of Shahid Beheshti University in
Tehran, killed in a car bomb attack in 2010. The Islamic Republic also attributed the
assassination of Massoud Ali-Mohammadi to the ‘enemies of the nation’, although opposition
leaders accused the government of plotting the attack in order to spread fear in the capital.16

The major damage caused to Tehran by these covert operations was the Stuxnet, the most
sophisticated computer worm ever detected and analyzed. The attack slowed the centrifuges’
operational capacity by 30 per cent over the past year and almost 9,000 installed centrifuges, less
than 4,000 were reported to be operational at the end of 2009.

President Ahmadinejad admitted for the first time in November 2010 that a computer
worm had harmed some centrifuges, setting back the nuclear program. ‘Iran’s enemies had been
successful in making problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with software they
installed in electronic devices’. Iran also told atomic inspectors in February 2011 that it had run
into a serious problem at the Bushehr reactor and was planning to unload nuclear fuel from there.

If Not Israel, Why Iran?

Given this widespread flow of interest in nuclear energy, which potentially threatens
nuclear nonproliferation efforts, the question posed earlier now comes into play: why do the
Arab states of the Middle East see Iran’s nuclear program as more of a threat than Israel’s was in

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/4640052/Israel-launches-covert-waragainst-
Iran.html.
15
Julian Borger and Saeed Kamali Dehghan, “Covert War Against Iran’s Nuclear Aims Takes Chilling Turn”, in
The
Observer, 5 December 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/05/iran-nuclear-experts-killings. (Accessed
June 6, 2014)
16
Thomas Erdbrink, “Iranian Nuclear Scientist Killed, Another Injured in Tehran Bombings”, in The Washington
Post, 29 November 2010,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2010/11/29/AR2010112901560.html. (Accessed June 6,
2014)
the 1960s? As with the Israeli program, the important factor to consider is how the rest of the
Middle East perceives Iran’s nuclear activities in terms of the regional power dynamics. Since
the end of World War II, the Middle East has been plagued by constant power struggles and
armed conflict: the Suez crisis, the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the Iran-Iraq War, the
1991 Persian Gulf War, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq have kept the entire region unstable and
perennially on the brink of chaos. Additionally, as the central nexus of world oil production and
transshipment, the region is a key nerve center for the global economy. With so many of the Gulf
States dependent on the security of the oil market for their revenue, there is a strong vested
interest in maintaining stability.

In this climate, there are five principal ways in which Iran’s nuclear program represents
the danger of a regional power imbalance that would prompt its neighbors to rush to hedge their
nuclear bets. First, there is the possibility that Iran’s program could advance far enough for the
United States or Israel to take preventive military action. Israel in particular has a history of such
action, having destroyed nuclear facilities in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007 with targeted
airstrikes.
Furthermore the Israeli air force was seen carrying out training exercises in June 2008 that
appeared to simulate a scenario in which they would attack the Iranian enrichment site at Natanz,
while requesting rights to fly through Iraqi airspace.17 In the event of a major conflict between
Iran and Israel or the United States, the rest of the Middle East has no desire to become caught in
the crossfire, militarily or politically. The United States would undoubtedly exert great pressure
on Iran’s neighbors to support action against Iran’s nuclear program, facing the Arab states with
a difficult choice of loyalties. If those states can slow or stop Iran's nuclear progress by holding it
at risk through their own latent nuclear capability, it lessens to a remarkable degree the threat
that U.S. or Israeli preemptive action would become necessary. Armed conflict could also
threaten to destabilize other states, or worse, disrupt the valuable oil market and cause economic
turmoil throughout the region.18

17
Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Says Israeli Exercise Seemed Directed at Iran,” The New
York Times, June 20, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/washington/20iran.html (accessed
June 04, 2014).
18
Lionel Beehner, “Arab Views of a Nuclear Iran,” Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder, April 20,
2006, http://www.cfr.org/publication/10491/arab_views_of_a_nuclear_iran.html (accessed June 05,
2014).
 Second, there is a growing concern among Arab states about the influence Iran wields
over the Shi’ite population of the Middle East, even within other countries. Although dominated
by Sunni majorities, many Gulf States are home to significant Shi’ite minorities, which are
perceived to feel a strong connection to Iran in its role as the most prominent Shi’ite country.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak went so far as to state that Shi’ites would exhibit more
loyalty to Iran than to their own country.35 Other Sunni leaders have expressed similar concerns,
and despite the fact that Iran is culturally Persian and not Arab, leading to questions as to
whether it could exert influence over Shi’ite Arab populations, an ascendant Iran is seen as a
threat in the minds of many Sunni Arabs who worry about their ability to maintain control over
their people. This gives the Sunni states a very powerful incentive to try to limit Iran's political
influence in the region. With Iran's influence greatly enhanced by its nuclear program, a Sunni
state's nuclear program may be seen as both countering Iran's regional power and bolstering
influence over its own people.

Third, there is a more general and pervasive concern among Arab nations that Iran’s
nuclear program could lead to a much more aggressive Iranian foreign policy and a move
towards Iranian political hegemony in the region. Despite the number of conflicts in the region
over the past two decades, there has existed a relatively stable balance of power with no one
country dominating the Middle East. As Iran gains more prestige and power from its ability to
stand up to the pressure of the United States and the rest of the world it could begin to assert
greater pressure on the affairs of Arab nations and the region’s economic interests.

This could have a destabilizing effect by threatening both the democratization process in
Iraq and the political stability of moderate regimes in the region. If other countries in the region
can match Iran's latent nuclear capability, they would be less easily bullied by Iranian posturing.
Fourth, there exists a more esoteric worry about the safety of Iran’s nuclear facilities. Although
construction of the Bushehr plant was begun by teams of German engineers, after the Iranian
Revolution, Germany refused to continue progress, and Iran turned to Russia to help it complete
work on the facility. Even twenty-three years later, memories of the Chernobyl reactor accident
have not faded, and the possibility that the Russian teams at Bushehr are using outdated and
unsafe equipment in the construction is enough to cause some Arab analysts to include nuclear
safety and a potential disaster in their evaluations of the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program.19

Fifth, some Arab states maintain close economic ties to Iran which are hampered by
economic sanctions intended to coerce Iran into halting its nuclear activities. Iran is one of
Syria’s biggest trading partners, and substantial cash flows to and from Iran, reaching into the
billions of dollars, pass through banks in Dubai. If Iran’s nuclear program continues unabated,
the likelihood of further sanctions would be detrimental to the economic interests of these states.

Thus if Iran can be dissuaded from continuing its own nuclear development by its
neighbors' demonstration that it will not attain nuclear status unchallenged, then nuclear
development by other Arab states could indirectly help lead to the lifting of sanctions.
Additionally, the impact of any outbreak of conflict on the energy sector and the Gulf’s oil
markets would pose an enormous economic danger to the entire region.

For all of these reasons, Iran’s nuclear program is perceived as a serious threat to regional
stability and the balance of power in the Middle East, both politically and economically. Arab
nations in the region have a strong interest in keeping Iran’s nuclear program from progressing
any further for fear that it could precipitate conflict or erode their own influence.

Effectiveness of Israel’s Nuclear Deterrent:

The purpose of Israel’s nuclear arsenal was to secure it from a destructive Arab attack
and force the neighboring Arab states to accept peace. The effectiveness of this deterrent shows
mixed results. Israel’s policy of “nuclear opacity” undermines the logic of deterrence, which is
based on the ability to signal to one’s enemies the capability to carry out unacceptable levels of
damage. Israel’s nuclear arsenal failed to prevent a joint Egyptian-Syrian invasion in the Yom
Kippur War of 1973, making Israel the only sitting nuclear power to be invaded (and nearly
defeated) by non-nuclear powers.

19
Ibid. P,10
 Sadat gambled that Israel would not use its nuclear arsenal since Egypt had limited war
goals to regain territory it had lost in the 1967 war and was not planning a full-scale invasion of
Israel. Perhaps if Israel declared its nuclear deterrent and made credible threats to use it Nasser
would have thought twice about invading, or perhaps Sadat was relying on his chemical arsenal
to deter an Israeli nuclear attack. However, the threat of nuclear weapons was effective in
involving the United States. Israel was losing the war and, in a desperate attempt, signaled its
intention to use nuclear weapons. This prompted the United States to provide Israel much needed
military equipment through a large airlift which helped Israel secure victory. Henry Kissinger
told Sadat that the reason for the airlift was that Israel was about to “go nuclear.” 20

Saddam Hussein wanted to launch a large-scale final war with Israel in the late 1970s but
feared the repercussions of nuclear weapons. It is unclear whether we can consider this a victory
for Israel’s undeclared nuclear deterrent since we don’t know how dedicated Saddam actually
was to carrying this out, especially with war with Iran on the horizon. Many Arab states have
resorted to terrorism in the face of Israel’s military superiority. Nuclear weapons did not protect
Israel from rocket attacks by Hezbollah in 2006, which led to Israel invading Lebanon, nor has it
prevented Hamas from recently launching Iranian-funded rockets at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Terrorist organizations cannot be deterred because the deterring state cannot threaten anything
they value. Israel’s nuclear policy has certainly not brought it peace.

Israel may be maintaining it for fear of the political effects of adopting a declaratory
policy. Israel has maintained that it will not be the nation that introduces nuclear weapons to the
Middle East. However Pakistan and India also weaponized outside the NPT and neither country
is regarded as a pariah. In fact, India is being considered for membership in the Nuclear
Suppliers Group.21

20
Warner D. Farr “The Third Temple’s Holy of Holies: Israel’s Nuclear Weapons.” Counter proliferation
Papers 2 (1999), http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/farr.htm, (Accessed June 7, 2014)
21
Paul K. Kerr, “U.S. Nuclear Cooperation with India: Issues for Congress.” Congressional Research Service, 26 June,
2012. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL33016.pdf, (Accessed June 7, 2014)
Conclusion:

Israel’s conventional and technical superiority, its peace with Egypt, and its alignment
with the West, not its nuclear weapons, are the contributors Israel is the only nation in the entire
Middle East that has not signed the NPT. Israel has also refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and has not signed the Biological and Toxin
Weapons Convention. If Israel were to denuclearize it could lead to the establishment of a
Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone in the Middle East, which Egypt and Iran have both openly
supported. However, Israel is unlikely to denuclearize since its leaders still view the nuclear
option as the ultimate deterrent against eradication. Israeli denuclearization is the only way to
ensure that the Middle East becomes and stays a nuclear weapon-free zone.

The acquisition of nuclear weapons by an Arab state in the region is considered a direct
threat to Israel, but it is Israel’s own nuclear arsenal, secret or public, that is increasing the
probability of this happening. There is no substitute for peace and stability in the region in
limitation nuclear proliferation. However, Israel’s denuclearization should precede and not be
depending on achieving peace. Otherwise Israel’s behavior will make peace even more
dangerous by leading other countries to pursue nuclear weapon programs.