by Luke Harding and Duncan Campbell
After decades in which Israel has stuck to a doctrine of nuclear ambiguity,
Mr Olmert let slip during an interview in Germany that Israel did indeed
have weapons of mass destruction.
He told Germany's Sat.1 channel on Monday evening: "Iran, openly, explicitly
and publicly, threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is
the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America,
France, Israel and Russia?"
Mr Olmert's admission comes less than a week after the incoming US secretary
of defence, Robert Gates, speculating at a Senate confirmation hearing on
Iran's possible motives for trying to build nuclear arms, suggested that Israel had the bomb. . . .
Israel has long declined to confirm or deny having the bomb as part of a
"strategic ambiguity" policy that it says fends off numerically superior
Arab enemies. But Arabs and Iran see a double standard in US policy in the
region.
By not declaring itself to be nuclear-armed, Israel gets round a US ban on
funding countries that proliferate weapons of mass destruction. It can thus
enjoy more than $2bn (£1.02bn) a year in military and other aid from
Washington.
Israel's main atomic reactor, officially for civilian use, became
operational in the early 1960s. The CIA first concluded that Israel had
begun to produce nuclear weapons in 1968, but few details emerged until 1986
when Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at the nuclear facility, gave the
Sunday Times detailed descriptions that led defence analysts to rank the
country as the sixth largest nuclear power. . . .
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[The military assistance agreements would provide $30 billion in new U.S.
aid to Israel and $13 billion to Egypt over 10 years--Robin Wright, "U.S. Plans New Arms Sales to Gulf Allies,"
Washington Post, July 28, 2007]
