What to know about Israel's nuclear weapons program

The Federation of American Scientists and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an autarkic planetary enactment dedicated to researching arms power and disarmament, estimation that Israel has astir 90 atomic warheads.

Due to Israel's authoritative stance of ambiguity regarding its atomic program, the organizations enactment the difficulties successful determining the grade of the country's atomic capabilities.

"They are intentionally secretive astir their atomic capabilities and that's portion of the argumentation that they follow," John Erath, elder argumentation manager astatine the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, said successful a telephone interrogation Wednesday.

He said that argumentation was apt successful portion to guarantee Israel's "potential adversaries would not cognize what they tin bash successful the lawsuit of a crisis."

How it began

Historical records suggest Israeli leaders had hoped to physique a atomic arsenal to assistance guarantee the country's information aft it was founded successful 1948 successful the years aft the Holocaust, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, an online encyclopedia published by the American overseas argumentation expert Mitchell Bard’s nonprofit enactment American–Israeli Cooperative Enterprise.

In a July 1969 declassified memo to President Richard Nixon, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said that Israel had committed "not to beryllium the archetypal to present atomic weapons into the Near East," erstwhile buying the U.S.' Phantom aircraft, though it has ne'er been made wide precisely what that means.

Mordechai Vanunu, a erstwhile Israeli atomic technician who worked astatine Israel's atomic reactor successful Dimona successful the Negev Desert successful the precocious 1960s and aboriginal 1970s, sent daze waves astir the satellite erstwhile helium disclosed details and photographs of the reactor to Britain's Sunday Times newspaper.