weekend
themes
Recently
unearthed US government documents have shed some light on how the
White House repeatedly missed an opportunity to disclose the Israeli
secret nuclear weapons program. The creation of the Israeli Dimona
nuclear site has long been shrouded in secrecy, however, recently
disclosed US government documents show that Washington either missed
or deliberately turned a blind eye to warning signs about Jerusalem's
nuclear program.
The creation
of the Israeli Dimona nuclear site has long been shrouded in secrecy,
however, recently disclosed US government documents show that
Washington either missed or deliberately turned a blind eye to
warning signs about Jerusalem's nuclear program.
In 1955,
under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's rule, Israel launched a
secret program aimed at producing nuclear explosives. Three years
later Shimon Peres, a senior defense official, devised the project's
cunning plan:
"France
would be the primary foreign supplier of the reactor and related
technology, Norway would provide the heavy water and possibly be the
backup plan, and the United States, through a small peaceful package
gathered under Eisenhower's "Atoms of Peace" program, would
serve as the camouflage for the whole project—mostly as a way to
conceal the Dimona project from the United States itself,"
narrated Avner Cohen, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of
International Studies at Monterey, and William Burr, a senior analyst
at the National Security Archive.
Remarkably,
Washington indeed posed a severe threat to the Israeli nuclear
weapons project: since 1946, the United States had been a vocal
antagonist of the spread of nuclear weapons. The United States also
supported the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) in 1957, an international safeguard.
Meanwhile,
in 1958 and 1959 the United States' officials received the first
warning signs about Israel’s secret project. Richard Kerry (the
father of US Secretary of State John Kerry), who was working at the
US embassy in Norway, found out that the country provided Israel with
20 tons of heavy water, a key ingredient for a nuclear reactor. A
year earlier in Tel Aviv another American diplomat learned that
Jerusalem was working on a nuclear project.
Curiously
enough, "these 1958 and 1959 reports were buried in obscurity,"
the analysts pointed out.
In
July 1960б the US government officials received a report through an
American source in Tel Aviv stating that Israel was building a
nuclear reactor with French assistance.
Again,
inexplicably, American officials did not rush to launch an immediate
investigation into the case. The report was qualified as a document
of "Routine collection priority."
The
CIA proceeded with the investigation and soon found out more peculiar
details of Israel’s cunning plan. However, it seems that
Washington's policy makers found themselves on the horns of dilemma:
they had to disclose the secret Israeli project and at the same they
not aggravate tensions with Tel Aviv.
Eventually,
in December 1960, Ben-Gurion officially admitted that Israel was
building a nuclear reactor, and asserted that the reactor was for
peaceful purposes. Remarkably, the US State Department bought into
this idea, welcoming the statement of the Israeli prime minister.
Over
the next decade Israel had been successfully developing its nuclear
program, blocking attempts of the international community and nuclear
safeguards to carry out a thorough examination of the issue. Finally,
US President Richard Nixon accepted the Israel’s "de-facto
nuclear status."
The
question remains open, whether the United States' policy makers truly
missed an opportunity to stop the Israeli nuclear weapons project or
deliberately turned a blind eye to Tel Aviv's deterrence plan.
Source:
Comments
Post a Comment