Giuseppe Nardulli
Union of Scientists for Disarmament-USPID, Italy and
Physics Department and Center for Peace Research,University of Bari, Italy [1]

Seminar given at the Summer School On the Diplomatic Aspect of the Middle East Peace Process
Molfetta, Italy, September 7-17, 1998

1. Israel and Nuclear Weapons

The Israeli government has repeatedly declared that Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East. In spite of this ambiguous declaratory policy, many experts believe that Israel not only has a nuclear weapon capability, but also possesses already nuclear weapons. In this paper we shall discuss in some detail the evidence for the Israeli nuclear capability, the main features of its nuclear infrastructure and the relation of the nuclear weapons with the security in the Middle East and with the peace process in this area. We shall also discuss which measures can be adopted to reduce the role, and, eventually, to eliminate nuclear weapons from the Middle East. Let us stress from the very beginning that, as expressed in several public statements also by Israeli representatives, getting rid of nuclear weapons in the Middle East is not an immediate goal, but a long term objective that will be realized only after the creation of peaceful relations between Israel and its Arab and Islamic neighbours. In absence of such guarantee, Israel will rely on its nuclear weapons as a last resort option: public opinion or international pressure can do very little about it. On the same time this is not an issue to be put aside waiting for better times. As a matter of fact the example of Israel can be followed by other countries and Israel's nuclear monopoly in the area can be interrupted by the nuclear proliferation of other countries, which might have dire consequences on the stability of Middle East. For this reason some preliminary actions can be already performed, e.g. beginning a real discussion on a Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (NWFZ).Before discussing in detail these issues, however, let us begin by commenting on the meaning of the Israeli official formula about nuclear weapons.

According to William Quandt [2], the understanding of the ambiguous phrase by then Israeli Ambassador to the USA Yitzhak Rabin was that Israel would not be the first to test such weapons or to reveal their existence publicly. If this interpretation is correct, the official Israeli position does not contraddict the overwhelming evidence on the existence of such weapons. It remains to be understood, however, to which extent these weapons are integrated in the Israeli military structure. It is not my capacity to answer this question. However, even if (a big if) they were fully integrated, it is clear that at the moment they have no military role and may serve Israel's security interests only indirectly, either by giving hope to the Israelis in times of gloom or by cautioning Israel's enemies [3].

The belief that Israel has a nuclear weapons capability stems from a huge body of evidence based on several sources: the first images were observed in 1958 by the American U2 flights; subsequently other sources became available, e.g. satellite imagery[4], the declarations of eye-witnesses, most notably Mordechai Vanunu [5] with its interview at the London newspaper Sunday Times in 1986, and intelligence information[6].

The Israel nuclear programme began around 1957, in the aftermath of the Suez war of 1956. In that war Israel, differently from the US[7], collaborated with France and UK for the control of the Suez channel endangered by the nationalization program of Nasser. Having common enemies in the Middle East region [8] and a common interest to develop autonomous nuclear weapons, Israel and France began a collaboration on a nuclear programme. With French assistance Israel initiated the secret construction of a nuclear reactor and a reprocessing plant at Dimona[9]. The reactor was put on line in 1963-64 and modernized in the seventies. The reprocessing plant was completed on 1960. Some information on these developments was filtered to the US by the U2 flights and other intelligence sources and was a source of embarassment for the US. As a matter of fact the United States were officialy tied to a nonproliferation policy, but were also reluctant to assume decisions hostile to their Middle East ally. Moreover, the weight of the Hebrew community was and is considerable in USA especially during elections. For all these reasons the general attitude assumed by the US toward the clandestine Israeli nuclear programme was to look the other way, i.e. one of benign neglect, sometimes more reluctantly (especially during the Eisenhower, the Kennedy, and the Carter Administrations), sometimes without particular troubles. Clearly the realization of a covert nuclear programme was only achievable by violating the rules of the game. One episode deserves mention. In March 1968 one of the Mossad's agents in West Germany purchased uranium for $4 million, officialy on behalf of an Italian chemical company in Milan. The sale was approved by Euratom and uranium was shipped aboard the ship Scheersberg A. The ship left Antwerp and, once at sea, its precious material was transferred to an Israeli fighter, so that the uranium never reached its official destination.

By 1973, when the Yom Kippur war began the Israel's nuclear stock comprised around 25 bombs. After that war the nuclear effort continued. In 1984 the construction of a new power plant, with 250 Megawatts power, was officialy announced. On the basis of all the data gathered so far one can guess that Israel has assembled around 100 warheads to date[10].

1.1 Nuclear facilities and capabilities

The main facilities comprising the Israeli nuclear infrastructure are as follows:

1. Dimona. At Dimona, in the Negev desert, are located a heavy water reactor, a chemical reprocessing plant and a few other buildings (called machons: in Hebrew facility or institute). The large silver-domed reactor, sixty feet in diameter, is visible from the nearby highway and is located in machon 1. Uranium, in the form of rods, is used in the reactor as a fuel for the nuclear reactions. The uranium fuel rods remain for a few months in the reactor; heavy water is used as a moderator. The heavy water, through a heat exchanger, is cooled by ordinary water, which results in a steam sometimes visible from the outside[11]. Machon 2 is the chemical reprocessing plant. Here plutonium, a by-product of the fission reaction, is extracted from the spent uranium rods, whereas the residual uranium is reprocessed to be used in new fuel rods (before the reprocessing procedures begin, the rods must be cooled for weeks in water filled tanks, thus reducing drastically radioactivity). According to Vanunu the average weekly production is 1.2 kilograms of pure plutonium, which would enable Dimona to produce 4-12 nuclear weapons per year. This implies that the reactor would operate at 120-150 megawatts, much higher than the original power of 26 Megawatt.
   Other Machons at Dimona are for auxiliary use. For example, in Machon 3 natural uranium is processed for the reactor and lithium 6 is converted into a solid for insertion in the nuclear warhead. In Machon 4 the radiactive waste products are treated, etc.
2. Soreq. The Soreq Nuclear Research Center includes a research reactor placed under IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections. R&D on nuclear weapons is reported [12] to take place at this Center.
3. Yodefat. It is reported [13] to be an installation for assembling and dismantling nuclear weapons.
4. Kfar Zekharya. In this location, approximately 50 Jericho-II missiles are deployed in bunkers at Zachariah/Hirbat Zachariah/Kfar Zekharya, several miles southeast of Tel Aviv in the Judean hills.
5. Eilabun. It is reportedly a tactical nuclear weapons storage facility in eastern Galilee.

Other facilities also relative to the Isreali nuclear infrastructure are:

1. Be'er Yaakov. The Jericho long-range missiles are reportedly manufactured at an underground factory at Be'er Yaakov.
2. Nevatim. This is an underground strategic air command post located at the Nevatim Air Base near the Negev desert.
3. Palmachim. Near the Palmachim (Palmikin) Air Force Base on the coast of Israel, south of Tel Aviv, there is a missile test and space launch facility.
4. Rafael. According to some sources [14] the Rafael Armament Development in Haifa is the location of a nuclear weapons design laboratory, a missile design development laboratory and a weapons assembly plant.
5. Sedot Mikha. At this Israeli Air Force base three squadrons equipped with Jericho nuclear tipped missiles are located.

As we saw, according to the IISS the total Israeli nuclear arsenal comprises around 100 nuclear weapons. The delivery vehicles for these weapons are various. First of all the two missiles Jericho-1 and Jericho-2 have to be mentioned:

1. Jericho-1 (Luz YA-1) SRBM was deployed in 1973; it is a single stage, single warhead missile (the warhead can be conventional, chemical or nuclear) with a range of 500 Kms and throw-weight of 500 kilograms. It is based on the French Dassault MD-600 design. The total number in in the stock should be around 50.
2. Jericho-2 (Luz YA-3) MRBM was deployed in 1990; its throw-weight is 1000 kgs and its range is 1500 kms. It carries a single warhead (conventional, chemical or nuclear). The total number should be around 50. Jericho-2 represents an improvement as compared to Jericho-1: it is two- stage, with higher range and payload more than sufficient to carry a nuclear warhead. Given its range it is capable of hitting practically any target in the Middle East, including Iran. Jericho-2 is similar to Shavit (Comet) space launch rocket that was used to launch the first Israeli satellite (Ofeq-1) into orbit in September 1988.

Other nuclear capable Israeli delivery vehicles are the F-4E-2000 Phantom aircrafts(~50 in total) and the F-16 Falcon aircrafts (~205 in total). The Phantom, produced in the US, though aging, is still a successful aircraft and it will remain in service until the year 2,000; its range is of approximately 1,600 kilometers. The F-16 is a highly successful American fighter, produced in huge numbers (more than 4,000) and widely exported (Israel has been the largest importer); its range is 630 kms.

Finally Israel might have also some nuclear capable artillery. According to Hersh [15], after the 1973 war the Israeli Defense Force established three nuclear artillery battalions each equipped with twelve self-propelled 175mm cannons. More than one hundred nuclear warheads are stockpiled for these cannons according to Hersh. These allegations of a large Israeli nuclear artillery are however disputed.

1.2 Nuclear alerts

The Yom Kippur October 1973 war reinforced Israel's relying on the nuclear option. Whereas the Israeli possess of nuclear weapons did not worked for conventional deterrence[16], it is possible that during the war the presence of the Israeli nuclear forces put some restraints on the operations of the Arab forces. When Israeli force were driven back across the Sinai by the Egyptians and the Golan heights were threatened by the Syrians, according to some sources Israel's nuclear forces and, in particular, a squadron of Phantoms, were put into alert.

Israeli nuclear forces were put into alert a second time during the Gulf war. An American satellite showed that the Israeli Premier Shamir had responded to the Scud barrage by ordering mobile missile launchers armed with nuclear weapons moved into the open and deployed facing Iraq, ready to launch on command [17]. It is clear that the threat menacing Israel, a nervine gas attack from Iraq, was terrible, especially for its symbolic meaning for the Hebrew population. Nobody knows what would have been the answer of Shamir to such an attack. It is clear, however that two of the three most dangerous nuclear crises [18] after Nagasaki happened in the Middle East and were related to the Israeli possess of nuclear weapons.

1.3 Israel and CTBT

Israel signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) on 8 August 1963, just three days after the signing of UK, the USA and the USSR. In spite of this, there are allegations that in 1979 Israel performed a nuclear test in the atmosphere in collaboration with South-Africa (which completed its first nuclear weapon shortly after the alleged test). The allegations are based on two flashes of light [19] recorded on September 22, 1979 by the American satellite VELA in the South Indian Ocean. VELA was a nuclear detection satellite which had already recorded 41 similar flashes; in all cases they were subsequently confirmed as nuclear explosions (most of the previous observations were from atmospheric Chinese tests performed at Lap Nor and from French tests in the South Pacific). At the headquarters of the Air Force Technical Application Center at Patrick Air Force Base at Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA, the flashes were interpreted as the result of a nuclear test held off the Coast of Prince Edward Island, about fifteen hundred miles southeast of the cape of Good Hope in South Africa and at a comparable distance from Antarctica.The immediate interpretation within the Carter Administration was that the flashes might be evidence of a nuclear test performed jointly by Israel and South Africa. Nuclear cooperation between Israel and South Africa had begun after the 1967 Six Day war. The aftermath of the war saw a cooling of the French-Israel relations on nuclear. According to the French author Pierre Pean, [20] one of the first links was established in Johannesburg in 1967 when a French nuclear scientist who had worked at Dimona and a group of Israeli nuclear scientists who had worked with the French at Saclay met in that city. According to Ari Ben-Menashe (see the footnote on the previous page), Israel was trading its nuclear expertise for the South African uranium ore. At the beginnings of the seventies South Africa began the construction of a plant for the production of enriched uranium at Valindaba, near Pretoria (the plant was not under the IAEA safeguards). In those years the apartheid white regime in Pretoria considered itself in a difficult situation: it was fighting an internal war against the African National Congress, a war in Namibia and was encircled by states where movements fighting for the independence from former colonial powers were active, most notably in Angola and Mozambique. The Afrikaan government believed that its security might be guaranteed by the possess of a few nuclear warheads [21]. It is quite possible that within the collaboration between Israel and South Africa, an atmospheric nuclear test took place; however this is far from proved. A panel chaired by J. Ruina from MIT concluded in July 1980 that the flash "was probably not from a nuclear explosion". Other scientists from Los Alamos and members of the Nuclear Intelligence Panel (NIP) held that a low yield nuclear weapon had been detonated.

In any event Israel took an active role during all the negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva devoted to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). It is very likely that Tel Aviv has now no interest in further tests and its position on this issue should be welcome by the international community.

2. The Iraqi quest for the bomb

On the long term Israeli nuclear weapons favour instability in the Middle East. The case of Iraq is from this point of view illuminating.

In 1991 the IAEA made known that for the first time a State party to the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) had violated the Treaty. Acccording to the IAEA reconstruction [22], Iraqi nuclear programme was huge, with a total budget of several billion dollars and a staff of more than 10,000 people including a great number of highly qualified technicians. For more than a decade this programme remained unknown not only to the IAEA, but also to the western intelligence agencies, which casted some doubts on the validity of the nuclear safeguards of the IAEA and the capacity of the international community to monitor effectively the development of clandestine nuclear military programmes (similar deficiencies occurred as we saw already, in the case of Israel and, more recently, in the case of Pakistan, see the discussion below). In the years 1991 and 1992, after the Gulf War, a team of inspectors of the IAEA acting on the basis of resolutions of the Security Council of the United Nations was able to investigate on the whole Iraqi nuclear infrastructure and, subsequently, to dismantle it completely.

In spite of the resistence offered by Iraq to international controls, the overall structure of the Iraqi nuclear programme was reconstructed successfully. The problem encountered by Iraq was basically twofold: first, the procurement of the nuclear fissile material (Highly Enriched Uranium: HEU or weapon-grade Plutonium); second, the construction of a nuclear warhead. As to the first problem, at the very beginning Iraq chosed the plutonium option; however this first attempt was blocked by the destruction by the Israeli Air Force of the nuclear reactor Tammuz 1 at Osiraq, near Baghdad[23]. After the destruction of the Osiraq reactor, Iraq followed a few different strategies, most notably the technique of electromagnetic isotope separation based on devices called calutrons [24], and the approach based on the gaseous centrifuges.

The calutron technology was developed within the Manhattan Project and was subsequently abandoned because it was considered too expensive and not sufficiently effective. It is likely that, to exploit this technique, Iraqi technicians used information easily available from declassified technical literature. The Iraqi nuclear infrastructure comprised the complex of more than one hundred buildings at Al Tarmiyah, 40 kms north of Baghdad, where the calutrons were stored. R&D for the nuclear military programme was performed at the research center at Al Tuwaitha, near Baghdad. According to John Googin, a scientist who had worked at Oak Ridge, in the framework of the Manhattan Project, Al Tarmiyah was a duplicate of the Y-12 plant of Oak Ridge, where, during the Second World War, hundreds of calutrons were maintained, with some improvements, notably the use of computerized control of the calutrons. The Al Tarmiyah complex was still unfinished at the beginning of the Gulf War and only small quantities of uranium (unsufficiently enriched to be useful for military purposes) had been produced. The plan envisaged the beginning of the production of HEU in 1994, in quantities of 7-15 kg per year, sufficient to produce 1 bomb per year [25].

Another technology employed in Iraq was based on gaseous centrifuges, where the separation of the lighter from the heavier isotopes is obtained by rotation at different speeds of the molecules of uranium hexafluoride gas. This technique is much more complex and at the moment of the Gulf war the centrifuges were not yet ready to operate.

The important lesson lesson learned by the IAEA from the Iraqi covert nuclear program is a fundamental weakness of the system of safeguards of the Vienna Agency. They concern indeed only the facilities that are declared to the IAEA and not the other parts of the nuclear infrastructure. Another political lesson concerns the possibility of a domino effect in the proliferaton of nuclear weapons. Iraqi ambitions were certainly fuelled by the existence of the Israeli nukes. Had Iraq realized its ambitions, also Iran would have been tempted to enter into the race. Something similar has happened in South Asia and concerns, maybe only marginally, also the Middle East.

3. The new threat: the Islamic nuclear weapons

Indian-Pakistani nuclear tests of May 1998 have added a new dimension to the nuclear threat and have considerably increased the risks of a nuclear war in the future. While this regional nuclear arms race has clear local roots, its impact on the global stability and, in particular, on the Middle East should not be underestimated. We do not refer here only to the threat represented for arms control and nuclear disarmament. From the point of view of a direct influence on the two main legal instruments (NPT, CTBT) to contain the spread of nuclear weapons, it could be argued that the tests have a minor impact. As a matter of fact neither India nor Pakistan are members of the NPT; furthermore they have not signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. However, more generally, the impact on the arms control and, potentially, on the stability of the Middle East is extremely significant and should be carefully analyzed.

1. First of all we should keep in mind that India and Pakistan have fought several wars since the proclamation of their independence: in 1947-48, in 1965 and in 1971. Technically they are still at war for the Kashmir, a region where a low-intensity conflict is present and where the continuing insurgency in the Indian part makes the situation extremely volatile.
2. The presence of nuclear weapons already tested enhances the risks of a nuclear regional war that might have a tremendous impact on the vastly populated Indian subcontinent.
3. Both India e Pakistan have passed the military nuclear threshold [26] using the cover of civilian nuclear programs, which exhibits the permeability of the barrier between civilian and military nuclear programmes. For example a good deal of the Plutonium produced for Indian nuclear weapons was obtained by the research reactor CIRUS given to India by Canada with heavy water supplied by the United States within the Atoms for Peace programme.
4. The nuclear programmes of the South-Asian countries were the results of several violations of the international laws and were realized with the benign neglect of the major nuclear powers. From this viewpoint they have some similarity with the Israel's secret nuclear project. The Kahuta plant was built with stolen blueprints of the Almelo enrichment plant in the Netherlands. After the coup by which president Bhutto was deposed in 1977, General Zia ul Haq was able to receive increased US assistance in the wake of Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and successfully diverted US pressure to stop its nuclear programme.
5. The proposal advanced by India and Pakistan to join the CTBT having, in return, the recognition of nuclear weapon state, is dangerous. If the joining of CTBT is rewarded with the possibility of getting nuclear reactors without stringent safeguards (as suggested by H. Blix just before the tests), it may represent an incentive to further proliferation by other threshold states.
6. The presence of nuclear weapons in an Islamic state may have an impact on the Middle East and on the security of Israel. In principle the reasons for the Indian-Pakistani nuclear arms race are strictly regional and are unrelated to the Middle East. From the viewpoint of Pakistan, it is indeed clear that the Indian threat represents the main security policy problem. Historically, its entering into the regional arms race always followed the Indian actions [27]: for example the Pakistan's interest for nuclear weapons was triggered by the abovementioned indian nuclear test of 1974; also the May 1998 Pakistan's tests followed the Indian ones. On the other hand there is no guarantee that the nuclear arms race can be confined to the South Asia, though dangerous this perspective might be. Other states in the region may be led to enter into the arms race to guarantee their own security. An example is given by Iran, whose rivalry with Pakistan is enhanced by their recent support to different fighting factions in Afghanistan. Or, to give another example, Iraq which might be induced to resume its nuclear programme interrupted by the Gulf War. It is clear that in the long run the nuclear arms race can spread to the Middle East and have a disastrous impact on the Middle East stability.
7. Last, but not least, one should take into account the possibility of nuclear terrorism of both India and Pakistan. To quote an article of a decade ago, which seems today even more relevant, some Pakistani official might seek to emulate the exploits of fellow countrymen involved in nuclear smuggling and be tempted to sell nuclear technology to political extremists within their own country or to agents of an Arab country that they perceive as friendly[...] In the hands of political extremists or a maverick state, an atomic device or weapons usable material could become a power intrument of nuclear blackmail and terror in a holy Jihad against enemies.[28]

4. New opportunities for nuclear disarmament

As discussed above the presence of nuclear weapons in the Middle East is a source of instability and any process that may lead to their elimination should be welcome. Among the proposals advanced so far one singles out as the most promising. This is the proposal to establish a Nuclear-Weapon-Free-Zone in the Middle East, which has been advanced within the UN and will be reviewed below. In spite of the difficulties encountered by the peace process, this idea seems to be strengthened by the current discussion on the abolition of nuclear weapons. This debate has received a rather large attention in the past few years by a surprisingly vast array of official and non official bodies [29] and, for its relevance will be reviewed here.

4.1 The nuclear abolition debate

The most significant steps of this process can be summarized here are as follows.

1. At the 1985 Conference of Review and Extension of the Non Proliferation Treaty, an international network of non-governmental organisations adopted the statement Abolition 2000, urging the need, for the year 2000, of a convention on the complete abolition of all nuclear weapons on the planet.
2. In December 1995, a panel of scholars, government officials and retired military officers under the sponsorhip of the Stimson Center (Washington DC) issued the report An evolving US Nuclear Posture. In this report the panel asserted that nuclear weapons have a decreasing utility for the US interests and recommended a commitment by the US to the long tem goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. The panel was chaired by former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General (retd) Andrew Goodpaster and included, among the others, the retired Generals W. Burns and CC. Horner and Ambassador Paul Nitze. The same panel produced in March 1997 a second report: An American Legacy: Building a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World.
3. On 10 December 1995 The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Pugwash Movement and its president, Joseph Rotblat. The recognition gave world-wide visibility to this movement, founded in 1955 by a group of distinguished scientists, including Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russel.
4. On 8 July 1996 the International Court of Justice expressed an advisory opinion stating that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be "generally contrary to international law". Even though the statement is ambiguous (it declares permissible the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances of self-defence), it endorses "the obligation to pursue in good faith and to bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament".
5. In November 1995 the Australian government convened an international commission, named Canberra Commission with the mandate "to propose practical steps towards a nuclear-weapon-free world". The Commission comprised a broad spectrum of opinions. Among them we mention Joseph Rotblat, Robert O'Neill, former Director of the IISS, UK Field Marshall Lord Michael Carver (UK), former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard, former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. In August 1996 the Commission issued a document (Report of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons) which called for the nuclear powers to make an "unequivocal commitment" to the elimination of nuclear weapons.
6. On 5 December 1996 60 retired senior military officers from 17 countries, including General Andrew Goodpaster and General Lee Butler of the US issued a statement proclaiming nuclear weapons a threat to humanity and endorsing their complete elimination. Such a statement, coming from respected military officers showed the amplitude reached by the abolitionist position in the world.
7. The Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the US National Academy of Science, under the direction of General W. Burns, published in Autumn 1997 a report, The Future of US Nuclear Weapons Policy, urging strong reductions in nuclear weapons arsenals.
8. Another Commission, headed by David Hamburg, president of the Carnegie Corporation (NY) and former US Secretary of State, issued a report in December 1997: Preventing Deadly Conflicts and advocated the need to "work toward the elimination of nuclear weapons within a reasonable timeframe".
9. The Council on Foreign Relations formed in 1996 the John McClay Roundtable on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. While this group did not endorse abolition of nuclear weapons, within it there was support for this position, which is extremely significant since the Council on Foreign Relations is an institution firmly based in the mainstream of the US foreign policy.

All these recent developments show how far the abolitionist position has gone from the initially marginal positions of antinuclearist movements such as Pugwash, to influential and semi-official bodies of the US Defence and Foreign Policicy communities. The reason for these developments are clearly rooted in the end of the Cold War. On one side the antinuclear activists see a window of opportunity to promote the antinuclear issue. The US-USSR rivalry does not exist any longer: USSR disappeared and the state of relations between US and Russia is still good enough to put this issue on the political agenda. On the other hand it is clear that this peculiar situation may not be durable and the opportunity should be exploited as far as it still persists.

From the side of the military-political establishment, a second factor comes into play: with the end of the Cold War many people in the military have drastically changed their view of the cost benefit calculus associated with nuclear weapons. It became increasingly clear that many military officers accepted nuclear weapons only " as a repugnant necessity of the Cold War". In the aftermath of the Cold War there is a growing consensus that the risks and the lasting threat posed by nuclear weapons, i.e. their political cost, vastly exceeds their benefits or their military utility.

It is in this changed scenario, much more favourable to the abolition, or, at least, to strong cuts in the nuclear arsenals, that the problem of the elimination of the nuclear threat in the Middle East should be, in our opinion, discussed.

4.2 A Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone in the Middle East?

In an already cited statement, the Israeli representative to the Amendment Conference of the States parties to PTBT, Mr. David Ben-Rafeal expressed Israel's opinion towards the establishment of a NWFZ in the Middle East in the following terms: While we view the attainment of a Comprehensive Test Ban an important global objective, we view the establishment of a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone in the Middle East as an imperative regional objective. Only such a zone, freely and directly negotiated by the states concerned, can ensure the non-introduction of nuclear weapons into our region. Revelations of the recent months regarding Iraqi nuclear ambitions have reinforced the judgement that no other legal framework can substitute effectively for a Nuclear Weapons Free zone. Israel deeply regrets that while certain states proclaim their commitment to a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone, they remain unwilling to enter into a dialogue with us to pursue this goal. Today, as yet another war rages in the Middle East, we renew our call to the states of the region to join Israel in direct negotiations on the establishment of the Zone.

In 1993 Israeli Prime Minister Yizhak Rabin, affirmed Israel's policy was and is that we will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the context of the Arab-Israeli, Islamic-Israeli conflict. Today we are ready to sign on a bilateral basis agreement about a nuclear-free-zone in the Middle East with all the Arab and Islamic countries who are relevant to the issue to have a bilateral supervision that will be decided by agreement between them and us. [30].

These statements coming from representatives from the only state possessing nuclear weapons in the Middle East open the way, at least in principle, to the project of a Nuclear Weapon-Free-Zone) in this area [31]. This project has a long history [32]; it was first raised in the UN General Assembly in 1974 by Iran and was supported by Egypt. In 1988 the UN Secretary General initiated a study on effective and verifiable measures which would facilitate the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free-zone in the Middle East. The final report suggested that the zone could include all state members of the League of Arab States, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel. The report also suggested a set of confidence-building measuresas steps to prepare the final regime of NWFZ.

After the discovery of the Iraqi covert nuclear programme and the threat generated by the new status of India and Pakistan, this project seems even more necessary. Its implementation is far from obvious since it implies a recognition by the Arab and Islamic states, other than Egypt and Jordan, of Israel. Moreover it could be technically more demanding than other similar treaties, because probably also chemical weapons have to be included in the Treaty. In spite of all these problems, the discussion on this proposal should be kept alive since it helps to remind us the tremendous threat generated by the nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

[1]  Email: nardulli@ba.infn.it; USPID website: http://twilight.dsi.unimi.it/~uspid/ ;CIRP-UniBa website: http://www.ba.infn.it/~nardulli/cirp.html
[2]  William Quandt, Peace Process, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, 1993, p.57.
[3]  As reported by Dr S. Freier in C. Atterling Wedar, S. Hellman, K. Ssder, (Eds.), Towards a Nuclear-    Weapon- Free World. Swedish Initiatives. (ISBN 91-972128-0-6) Stockholm 1993. p 181.
[4]  Some images are available on the website http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/is-nuclear.htm
[5]  Mordechai Vanunu had worked for several years at the Dimona facility. In 1986 he gave descriptions and photographs of Dimona, its inner infrastructure, and some full sized models of nuclear weapons stored there. As discussed in the book by Seymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option, Faber&Faber, London and Random House, NY, 1991, copies  of the photos of these models were given to weapon designers at the Los Alamos and Livermore laboratories in the USA for evaluation and they concluded that Israel was capable of manufacturing one of the most sophisticated weapons in the nuclear arsenal- a low yield neutron bomb.  At the request of the Sunday Times the account of Vanunu was checked by Frank Barnaby, a nuclear physicist and  former employee at Aldermaston, a British nuclear weapons installation. Barnaby found Vanunu totally convincing.  After the publication of the interview and photos on the Sunday Times , Vanunu was kidnapped in Rome by Israeli agents, sent to Israel and sentenced in March 1988 to 18 years of maximum security prison.
[6]  Israel, The nuclear potential of individual countries- Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Problems of Extension, Appendix2 Russian Federation Foreign Intelligence Service 6 April 1995; this document is available at the Federation of American Scientists website http://www.fas.org/nuke. An old (1980) estimate of the Israeli nuclear arsenal, contained in a Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) of the CIA was 20-30 nukes. This was before the Vanunu revelations and was probably an underestimation of the Israeli arsenal.
[7]  Eisenhower  viewed the attempt of France and UK at Suez as the  last move of two declining colonialist powers and gave them no support. Clearly Eisenhower was no anticolonialist himself as the overthrow of the Iran government by the CIA in 1953 shows.
[8] Not only in the Suez channel, but more generally in Northern Africa. For example, when in January 1955 Guy Mollet assumed power in France, he took a hard line in Algeria against the Arab insurgency of FLN, that was supported by the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser.
[9]   Details of the collaboration between France and Israel can be found in the book of Pierre Pean, Les Deux Bombes, Fayard, 1982.
[10] The number quoted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS, The Military Balance 1997-98, Oxford University Press) is up to 100 warheads.
[11]  In a civilian nuclear power plant the steam would be used to drive a turbine and produce electricity. At Dimona the steam is vented in the atmosphere in the form of a radioactive cloud: in 1965 it was photographed by the US Colonel Carmelo Alba, in an intelligence mission for the US.
[12]  See   Israel, The nuclear potential quoted above.
[13]  See   Israel, The nuclear potential quoted above
[14]  See e.g the FAS website quoted above.
[15]  Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option, quoted above, p.276. The sources of Hersh are always quoted, but  the Israeli sources, in general,  are not. The exception is represented by Ari Ben Menashe.  Ari Ben-Menashe served in the External Relations Department of the Israeli Defense Force and was arrested in 1979 in the USA on charges of attempting to sell Israeli-owned C-130 military aircrafts to Iran. Ben-Menashe claimed that the illegal sale had been sanctioned by Israel and, subsequently, that it was secretly endorsed by the Reagan Administration. Ben-Menashe accused his government of betrayal since it did not endorse his position and began to talk openly of his work for the Israeli government.
[16] This however should not come as a surprise. Conventional deterrence in general works if the  aggressor is faced by the likely transformation of its attack into a costly attrition war. The possess of nuclear weapons has been of no use in the Malvinas-Falklands war between Argentina and Great Britain in 1982 or in the China-Vietnam war of 1976.
[17] Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option, quoted above, p.318.
[18] The other one is the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
[19] Nuclear explosions produce two distinct flashes of flight, one from the initial detonation, the other from the fireball.
[20] P.Pean, Les Deux Bombes, quoted above.
[21] South Africa constructed half dozen nuclear warheads that were subsequently dismantled just before ANC took power.
[22] M. Zifferero, The IAEA: Neutralizing Iraq's Nuclear Weapons potential, Arms Control Today, April 1993, p.7.
[23] The Osiraq reactor was built with the assistance of France and destroyed by an Israeli raid in 1981.
[24] In the calutron Uranium is injected in the form of ionized  gas. A strong magnetic field deviates  the  particlesaccording to their mass and, as a result, the   lighter      fissile   235-U  isotope can be   separated by the more common and heavier 238-U which is of no military   use.      Maintaining the   strong magnetic fields that are needed for this technology implies  a huge consumption of energy.   To   this end a 100 MW hydroelectric power plant had been built.
[25] The production could have been more significant had partially enriched uranium been used. Iraq possessed  some quantities of this type of uranium under the IAEA safeguards. In the eighties the amount of uranium that was available to Iraq should consist at least of 440 tons of yellowcake (concentratd uranium-oxide) legally procured by Portugal and Niger; 27 tons of the same material, not declared to the IAEA, obtained from Brazil and 164 tons of yellowcake, obtained by the Iraqi mine of Akashat and processed in Iraq at Al Qaim, in a plant built by a Swiss company.
[26] Actually India performed a nuclear test in 1974; it was officialy presented as a nuclear explosion for civilian and peaceful purposes, with no military implications.
[27] It should be noted, however that the India's interest for nuclear weapons is much more dependent on the perceived threat from China than on the menace coming from its Islamic neighbour.
[28] Paul Leventhal, Brahma Chellaney, Nuclear Terrorism Threat, Perception and Response in South Asia (presented at the Istitute for Defense Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, October 10, 1988).
[29] See e.g. SIPRI: Security without Nuclear Weapons (1992); Pugwash, Eliminating Nuclear Weapons: Feasible? Desirable? See also The International Institute for Strategic Studies, Strategic Survey 1997-98, Oxford University Press (1998).
[30] Both the Rabin and the Ben-Rafael statements are reported in M.M.Miller, Israel, in E. Arnett ed., Nuclear Weapons After the Comprehensive Test Ban, SIPRI, Oxford University Press, 1996.
[31] For a general introduction to NWFZ see: Jan Prawiz, The Role and Theory of Nuclear Weapon-Free  Zones, Proceedings of the USPID - VII International Castiglioncello Conference on Nuclear and Conventional Disarmament: Progress or Stalemate? The document can be found at USPID web site: http://twilight.dsi.unimi.it/~USPID/Cast97/Atti/Prawitz.html
[32] See e.g. the UN Documents A/9693/Add. 1, A/RES/3263 (XXIX) and UN Document A/RES 43/65