Israel has nuclear weapons. Iran doesn’t. But genocidal war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu (without a hint of irony) claimed his recent unprovoked attack on Iran was to stop it getting “the world’s most dangerous weapons”.
As an expert working to prevent nuclear war told us, when it comes to nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), Israel is very much ‘part of the problem’.
Not a victim. Not ‘self-defence’.
Israel has now bombed Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. And it has “worked as a team” with Donald Trump, who just carried out his own unprovoked attack on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
But as always, Israel is still portraying itself as a victim, to deflect accountability. Netanyahu has declared Israel’s actions ‘self-defence’ and claims the targeting of Iranian nuclear sites, and the country’s top nuclear scientists and military commanders, is necessary for:
rolling back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival.
Nuclear weapons: none in Iran, but Israel has them
Israel and its allies have been claiming Iran is close to developing nuclear weapons since the 1980s. Iran, meanwhile, has always said its nuclear programme is for peaceful civilian purposes only – a claim backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is constantly inspecting all of Iran’s nuclear facilities. According to leading legal scholars, Israel’s actions are therefore illegal, as there is no justification for its attack.
The settler-colonial state, meanwhile, has made a mockery of international legal systems, and has operated with complete impunity since its creation in 1948. Realising its allies will even let it get away with committing a genocide, it now sees this as the ideal time to strike its long-time foe, Iran, and weaken the ‘axis of resistance’ and support for Palestine.
Israel’s attacks on Iran conveniently come not only at a time when it is stepping up its campaign of annihilation in Gaza – providing a welcome distraction while the slaughter of innocent civilians continues – but also in the midst of US-Iran nuclear talks (to prevent the development of a weapons programme) which, as a result, have now collapsed.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East which has nuclear weapons. But it has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and refuses to place its nuclear facilities under the watch of UN inspectors. This is unlike Iran, whose facilities are monitored constantly and which, as a non nuclear-weapon state which is a signatory to the NPT, has also agreed not to seek or acquire these weapons.
Dishonesty surrounds Israel’s nuclear programme
Susi Snyder is programme coordinator for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). She told the Canary that:
Everybody knows Israel has nuclear weapons, but the country will not confirm or deny it, and that is their policy of strategic ambiguity. As long as they don’t admit they have nuclear weapons, they don’t admit they are part of a problem of weapons of mass destruction, particularly in the region. It’s terribly dishonest and means we can’t negotiate about their nuclear arsenal, and we can’t put their nuclear programme under international inspection. They have taken themselves out of the international community by doing this.
Israel’s nuclear programme began in the late 1950s but was under the radar for several years. Initially, US officials were deceived into thinking the nuclear site at Dimona, in the Negev Desert, was a textile factory. Then, as construction was completed, Israel changed its story and said the nuclear reactor was purely for civilian purposes, and did not contain the chemical reprocessing plant needed to produce nuclear weapons.
Although much is unknown about Israel’s nuclear arsenal, declassified documents, whistleblower testimony and satellite imagery have provided useful information. We have learnt that Israel did not develop its nuclear programme alone. Instead, there was direct involvement and complicity from several countries, during its early development. France provided Israel with the technology and expertise not only to build the reactor, but also to construct a reprocessing plant at Dimona for the extraction of Plutonium, an essential component of nuclear weapons, while Norway supplied heavy water (a vital ingredient for the production of plutonium), which was sold to Britain and then secretly transferred to Israel.
Nuclear whistleblower helped us learn more about Israel’s nuclear secrets
In an attempt to keep details quiet, Israel has dealt harshly with nuclear whistleblowers, such as Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli former nuclear technician and peace activist who, in 1986, confirmed Israel had nuclear weapons, and revealed details about its programme to the British press, showing Israel’s nuclear arsenal was larger and more advanced than people previously believed.
Israeli intelligence agency Mossad soon lured Vanunu to Italy. There, it drugged and abducted him, secretly transporting him to Israel and convicting him in a closed trial. He spent 18 years in prison for speaking out about Israel’s nuclear weapons, including 11 years in solitary confinement. He is still banned from leaving the country and speaking to journalists.
The complete absence of oversight, combined with the lack of international pressure and public statements from global powers, reflect a broader pattern of diplomatic silence that started in the early days of Israel’s nuclear programme and continues today. Its allies, including the UK government, protect Israel by refusing to acknowledge the open secret that it has nuclear weapons, shielding it from the international criticism it deserves.
In addition, the US has adopted a policy not to pressure Israel to join the NPT. And US presidents since Bill Clinton have promised Israel, by signing a secret letter, that any arms control efforts will not affect Israel.
Israel’s nuclear arsenal is unregulated and ambiguous, but supported by the West
Hypocrisy and double standards are plain to see. Israel gets Western support even though its nuclear arsenal remains unacknowledged and unregulated. Iran, meanwhile, faces crippling sanctions and military pressure over its civilian nuclear programme, despite allowing thousands of inspections under the NPT and the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal.
Israel is not only believed to possess 90 nuclear warheads, but also to have produced enough plutonium to produce 100 to 200 more nuclear weapons. And according to new research from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), it is actively modernising its nuclear arsenal.
Snyder said that:
Based on an assessment of their own military spending, leaked information and satellite images, we have seen that in the last five years Israel has spent about $5.5bn on its arsenal. It has 90 warheads, about half of which can be delivered by Jericho ballistic missiles, that have a range of about 4000km. We know from satellite imagery that they are stored in caves near the Judean Hills, and are on mobile launchers so they can be driven wherever they need to go, throughout the country.
Britain’s complicity: we supply war criminals with components for their nuclear submarines
These caves are visible on commercial satellite images of the Sdot Micha facility near the town of Zakharia in the Judean Hills, approximately 30km East of Jerusalem.
Israel not only has land-based delivery systems for its nuclear weapons, but air and sea-based ones too. According to Snyder, Israel’s F15 and F16 aircraft, and its Dolphin-class submarines – which are built in Germany – also house nuclear weapons. Although their missiles have a shorter range, the submarines are able to stay underwater for 18 days, can move long distances during this time period, and are well hidden.
SIPRI estimates that Israel has 10 cruise missile warheads for its submarine fleet, which the UK has long provided components for. Research carried out earlier this year by Declassified UK found British ministers have authorised 77 export licences since 2010, to supply Israel with components for these submarines, to a value of almost £9m.
Snyder explained that:
The use of these weapons violates the principles of International Humanitarian Law, as you cannot use them without causing massive indiscriminate harm, that lasts for generations. It’s a huge risk, which is not limited just to the region, but to the world. So it’s really important that the world is addressing this and talking about this. There’s no evidence that exists that says these weapons have deterred war in the past. We have seen throughout history that when a country has nuclear weapons it is more likely to attack others, and act with impunity, because it feels it can operate without consequence.
$100bn spent on nuclear weapons by 9 countries in 2024
According to a report by ICAN, the nine nuclear-armed countries spent more than $100bn on their nuclear weapons last year. That’s an increase of almost $10bn from 2023, while companies working on nuclear weapons development and maintenance earned more than $40bn from their contracts in 2024 alone.
98 countries have rejected nuclear weapons and joined the NPT. They are not only talking about Israel’s nuclear arsenal but the arsenals of all the nine nuclear-armed states,. Because if any of these countries use their nuclear weapons, it would pose a direct risk to these non-nuclear countries, wherever they are.
Israel is a significant threat to Middle East security
Israel’s unchecked militarisation and nuclear arsenal, undeclared and outside the framework of the NPT, is a significant threat to (at the very least) Middle Eastern security and stability.
Calls for a Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East have been ongoing since 1974, when Iran and Egypt submitted a resolution to the UN General Assembly calling for such a zone, because they were concerned about Israel’s nuclear programme. But although the idea has broad support from most countries in the region, Israel’s undeclared nuclear capability and its position outside the NPT are major obstacles to its progress. Discussions and conferences have taken place but no binding agreement has been reached.
Israel always has the full support of the majority of the genocide-enabling Western countries, which have doubled down on this support since Israel has been attacking Iran.
Just last week, G7 leaders issued a statement which read:
We affirm that Israel has a right to defend itself. We reiterate our support for the security of Israel. Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror.
Keir Starmer, although calling for “restraint”, sent more aircraft to the Middle East, and on 22 June, endorsed Trump’s illegal bombing of three nuclear facilities in Iran, saying:
Iran can never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.
Although Trump described the attacks as a “spectacular military success”, nothing is further from the truth.
Risk of escalation amid the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
While the IAEA has said no increase in radiation levels have been detected in Iran at the targeted nuclear sites, there could still be serious consequences because of our unconditional support for Israel: a pariah state which, according to the UN, has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, and is led by a war criminal wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
These are very dangerous times, and there is a high probability the conflict could escalate further and lead to widespread instability. In addition, Iran has, yet again, been misled by Trump and now, understandably, totally distrusts the US. The attacks on Iran (a country which has no nuclear weapons) by Israel and the US (both nuclear states) have already led Iran to consider withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and could even drive it to develop a nuclear weapons programme – one which is unregulated and unaccounted for, exactly like Israel’s.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the invention of nuclear weapons and their first use in New Mexico, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. Since then, more than 2,000 nuclear test detonations have been carried out, and the risk of nuclear weapon use is higher than at any time since the Cold War. A dramatic expansion of nuclear power in the Middle East is also expected over the next decade, which will create many security problems.
Hope for the future if countries are held to account
Israel’s unchecked militarisation, fueled by a blatant disregard for international law and oversight, has created a dangerous precedent not only for the Middle East, but for the global community, which continues to look away. But although the situation is dire, it is not irreversible.
We know it is possible for countries to change course as, back in 1989, South Africa went through a process, with the IAEA, to dismantle its nuclear programme, completely eliminating not just the weapons it had, but also the infrastructure it had to build those weapons. There was a willingness to do this, and every material has been accounted for. Libya has also done the same.
Similar efforts must be made to create not just a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, but a world free of nuclear weapons. Diplomacy, transparency, and a willingness to hold all parties (including Israel) accountable are the only means by which we can achieve peace and security.
The world’s nine nuclear-armed countries are Israel, the US, the UK, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.
By Charlie Jaay
This post was originally published on Canary.