Israel “has nuclear weapons” if the enemies ask, and it “does not have” if the allies ask. This is how it built its Schrödinger arsenal

How the Israeli nuclear program began

Almost from the very beginning of the declaration of Israelʼs independence in 1948, its first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion dreamed of his own nuclear program.

"What the Jews Einstein, Oppenheimer and Teller did for the United States, scientists in Israel can do for their people," he said. But at the same time, in general, he emphasized that itʼs about exclusively about the peaceful use of atomic energy.

It all started with conventional weapons. In 1947, Ben-Gurion appointed his young (24-year-old) protégé Shimon Peres, in charge of arms procurement for the future Israeli army. Even at the stage of the UN debate on the division of Palestine, the Arab states openly threatened the Jews with a war of extermination.

"Ben-Gurion took several sheets of tattered paper from his pocket and handed them to me. It was a list with two columns, one short and one long. ʼThese are the weapons we have,ʼ he pointed to the first column. ʼAnd this is the weapon we need. If we stay with what we have, it will be the end of us,ʼ" Peres recalled about his appointment.

Shimon Peres did not disappoint. He illegally bought weapons all over the world. He even managed to get tanks, planes and guns and secretly transport them to Israel as spare parts. All because the United States, Britain and France announced an arms embargo on the Middle East, hoping that this would preserve peace in the region. Instead, the Soviet Union willingly and openly supplied arms to the Arabs.

Despite the victory in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-1949, Ben-Gurion and his entourage understood that this was only the beginning of the confrontation. Israel needed a reliable partner for the supply of weapons — preferably someone from the major Western powers. In the early 1950s, Shimon Peres, who had already become the youngest director general of the Ministry of Defense, unexpectedly suggested France. Even Ben-Gurion was skeptical of such a beginning idea.

"The French?! But they lost the war," he exclaimed every time Peres started a conversation about France.

However, Peres expected that it would be possible to come to an agreement with the French. Because the Arab neighbours of Israel, especially Egypt, were also a threat to the then French colonies in North Africa — they supplied weapons to local rebels. Peres went to Paris for negotiations and again did not miss. Since 1953, France began supplying Israel with a wide variety of weapons. French Mirage fighters later became the basis of the Israeli Air Force.

The climax came in 1956. Then Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser received a bunch of weapons from the USSR and hoped to "wash away the shame" of the previous defeat in the war with Israel. Before that, he made the "fatal decision" to nationalize the Suez Canal, which was controlled by a British-French company. So Nasser gained two more powerful opponents.

On the evening of October 24, 1956, representatives of France, Britain, and Israel met at a villa in the suburbs of Paris to finalize a plan of action against Egypt. The Europeans proposed the following scenario: Israel starts a war with Egypt, then France and Britain get an excuse to intervene and immediately regain control of the Suez Canal. After much deliberation, Ben-Gurion agreed to such a plan. Shimon Peres, who was also part of the delegation, took advantage of the moment and asked the French for something substantial in return. He chose the moment when French Foreign Minister Christian Pinault and Defense Minister Maurice Bourges-Maunoury were discussing something in private. He approached them and asked if France would agree to provide Israel with a nuclear reactor.

Franco-British meeting during the Suez crisis of 1956. French Foreign Minister Christian Pinot is on the far right.

Getty Images / «Babel'»

David Ben-Gurion in a military plane discussing the plan of action of the Israeli army during the Suez Crisis, 1956.

Getty Images / «Babel'»

Peres shared Ben-Gurionʼs idea that Israel needed a nuclear program. But he was concerned not so much with the scientific as with the political aspect.

"If we built a reactor, the enemies would never believe that we did it for peaceful purposes. My theory was based on this reasoning: the very reputation of having nuclear weapons can be a deterrent," Peres recalled.

However, he was sure that the French would refuse. They already took a risk by supplying Israel with weapons to bypass the embargo. Perezʼs request really stunned Pinot and Bourges-Maunoury. They went to the far room of the villa to discuss the matter in private. But soon they returned and, to Peresʼ surprise, replied that they were ready to conclude a preliminary draft of the agreement right now.

Israelʼs nuclear program almost failed

Most Israeli government officials and officials have criticized the nuclear deal with France. The head of the Foreign Ministry at the time Golda Meir argued that this would harm relations with the United States. The head of the Mossad Isser Harel feared a "Soviet response." Finance Minister Levi Eshkol said that he would not allocate a single shekel for such an expensive project, otherwise "we will be left without bread and even without rice."

At first, the scientists were not happy either. Israeli physicists feared that working in the governmentʼs nuclear project would damage their international reputation. They were even less eager to work in the Negev desert, where they planned to build a research center. And in general, they were convinced that the idea of Israelʼs nuclear program is not just utopian, but also dangerous.

"We [Ben-Gurion and I] had no money, no engineers, no support from physicists, from the Cabinet of Ministers, from the military leadership, not to mention the opposition... We only had the promise of the French and the support of each other," Peres recalled.

First, they decided to find money. And for this, they contacted "the most reliable sponsors of Israel around the world and turned to them with a very emotional, very personal and absolutely confidential request." In the shortest possible time, it was possible to collect an amount that covered approximately half of the projectʼs cost.

Then it was possible to persuade several scientists with a name and experience, first of all — Ernst David Bergman, Manes Pratt and Israel Dostrovsky. They also recruited young scientists, in particular from the Institute of Technology in Haifa. Specialists were sent to France for several months to exchange experience. At that time, Israelis were the only scientists in the world who had access to French nuclear facilities.

Everything was not easy with France, despite previous promises. Although at first everything seemed to be going well. In the summer of 1957, Bourges-Maunoury became prime minister, and Peres periodically visited France to coordinate the details of the already full-fledged nuclear agreement directly with the prime minister. But at the beginning of November of the same year, the government of Bourges-Maunoury began to fall apart. Peres rushed headlong to Paris. He arrived on November 6, just as the French parliament was about to announce a vote of no confidence in the government and Bourges-Maunoury was holding what is likely to be the last meeting of his cabinet. Peres persuaded the prime minister to sign the document on the nuclear agreement before he lost his position. But it didnʼt work out. Late in the evening, the government resigned.

The next morning, they met in the office of the ex-prime minister. And then Bourges-Maunoury surprised Peres: "He took a form from the table that no longer belonged to him and wrote a letter to the head of the French Atomic Energy Commission. The French government has approved the deal, he confirmed, and the chairman must implement it in full. He signed it as the Prime Minister of France and dated yesterday at the top of the page." Later, Bourges-Maunoury would say that he did it "to prevent a new Holocaust of the Jewish people."

The Israelis began building a nuclear research center in the Negev desert near the city of Dimona. All of a sudden, the project was again threatened with failure. In June 1958, the new French government of Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle demanded the cancellation of the nuclear agreement with Israel. This was most categorically demanded by the Minister of Foreign Affairs Maurice Couve de Murville.

So Peres again flew to Paris for negotiations and, convinced of de Murvilleʼs steadfastness, resorted to political blackmail. For example, if France unilaterally terminates the agreement, then Israel does not see the point of observing it, in particular the clause about non-disclosure of the details of their joint work to the Arab world. This could result in at least an Arab boycott of French companies, and then there is the troubled Algerian colony of France in Africa. In the end, de Murville gave up and agreed to fulfill all French obligations regarding the construction of a nuclear center in Israel.

How Israelʼs "nuclear ambiguity" appeared

In September 1960, Ben-Gurion summoned Foreign Minister Golda Meir, Mossad director Isser Harel and Shimon Peres, who at that time was already deputy defense minister, to an urgent meeting at his residence in Tel Aviv. The reason was two messages from the Israeli special services. First, the other day a Soviet plane was circling Dimona and taking pictures of the construction of the nuclear center. Second, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko unexpectedly flew to Washington. According to Harel, these events were connected and promised great troubles.

After long arguments, they decided to stick to Peresʼs position — not to rush things and to provide some explanations only if they are required. We had to wait until December. First, photos of construction in Dimon and reports that a "small country" was developing nuclear weapons appeared in the Western press. Soon the newspapers began to directly point to Israel.

Then Ben-Gurion spoke in the Israeli parliament with an official statement that a nuclear reactor was indeed being built in the desert, but it would be used purely for peaceful purposes. In the spring of 1961, he flew to Washington to assure American President John Kennedy that Israel did not have nuclear weapons and was not going to create them. It would seem that the incident was exhausted and the tension subsided.

About two years later, in April 1963, Shimon Peres arrived in the USA to conclude the first ever agreement on the sale of American weapons to Israel — Hawk anti-aircraft missiles. Suddenly, he was invited to an informal meeting with the president in the Oval Office of the White House.

"What are your intentions with regard to nuclear weapons, Mr. Peres?" Kennedy asked bluntly and laid out American intelligence on Israelʼs nuclear program there.

Peresʼ answer came down in history:

"Mr. President, I can tell you clearly that we will not be the first in the region to have nuclear weapons."

Kennedy was satisfied with this. However, Peres initially received criticism for his "impromptu" from the Israeli ambassador to the US, from the head of the Foreign Ministry Golda Meir and from Levi Eshkol, who at that time became the prime minister. But soon they themselves agreed to this wording — neither to confirm nor to deny the existence of nuclear weapons. This became an effective political tool of Israel for many years and received the name "nuclear uncertainty".

And it came in handy many times. For example, in 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, Egypt and Syria caught Israel by surprise. But despite repeated loud statements to "throw the Jews into the sea", they did not take advantage of their tactical advantage, only captured the territories they lost during the previous Six-Day War of 1967. Later, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat admitted that he did not dare to advance further because he was afraid of a nuclear strike in return.

Peres recalls how in the mid-1990s, already after a series of peace agreements with Arab neighbors, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa asked him to show the nuclear center in Dimon. He promised that he would not tell anyone what he saw there.

“Amr, are you crazy? Suppose I take you to Dimona, and you see that there is nothing there. Suppose you stop worrying. But for me it is a disaster. Iʼd rather you keep suspecting. This is the guarantee of my safety," Peres replied.

Some rumors surrounding Israelʼs nuclear weapons

Israel created its own nuclear weapons in the late 1960s. Most researchers agree that by the start of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israel already had more than ten nuclear bombs and was indeed considering their use as a "last resort."

The US knows about Israelʼs nuclear weapons, but keeps quiet about it. Allegedly, back in 1969, American President Richard Nixon and then Prime Minister of Israel Golda Meir concluded a secret agreement. Under this agreement, Israel must keep its nuclear program secret and not conduct nuclear tests. And the United States will turn a blind eye to Israelʼs nuclear weapons and will not insist that it sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Israel conducted secret nuclear tests. Itʼs about the so-called Vela incident in September 1979. Then the American Vela satellite recorded a flash characteristic of a nuclear explosion in the Indian Ocean, approximately halfway between Africa and Antarctica. It was suspected that these were joint Israeli-South African nuclear tests. Both countries denied everything. In the late 1980s, it became clear that South Africa did have six nuclear warheads. Israel is still silent.

Israeli secret services secretly buy or steal nuclear materials all over the world. In the 1980s, the United States discovered that more than 100 kg of enriched uranium had disappeared from one of its plants. It was suspected that most of it got to Israel, but it was not possible to prove anything.

The Israeli fugitive revealed all the secrets. Itʼs about the Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, who worked at the nuclear center in Dimon. He secretly took more than 50 photos of the object, and in 1986 he left Israel and gave the pictures to the British press. Vanunuʼs photographs and testimony suggested that Israel had enough plutonium to build a nuclear weapon. However, there was no evidence that he actually created it. In Israel, of course, everything was denied. Shortly afterwards, the Mossad lured Vanunu from Britain to Italy, kidnapped him and brought him to Israel. There he was sentenced to 18 years. After his release, Vanunu remains in Israel under the supervision of special services, he is forbidden to leave the country.

Israel has a nuclear triad. That is, planes and submarines that can carry nuclear missiles, and actually intercontinental ballistic missiles that can have a nuclear charge. Itʼs about “Jericho III” missiles, which entered service with the Israeli Army in 2011. Their exact number is unknown.

At various times, Israel could have up to 400 nuclear warheads. At various times, Israel could have up to 400 nuclear warheads. Researchers estimate that at the beginning of 2024, Israel had approximately 90 nuclear warheads. And at the same time, it was modernizing his nuclear arsenal and, it seems, its reactor for the production of plutonium in Dimon.

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