http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/987703.html
Nuclear exposure on the River Wye
By Reuven Pedatzur
Tags: Israel
Of all the places in the world,
Jimmy Carter chose a book fair
on the banks of the River Wye
in Wales as the spot from which
to put an official end to Israel's
nuclear ambiguity.
One cannot exaggerate the
im****tance of the former
American president's statement
that Israel has 150 nuclear bombs.
More than all the estimates and leaks
about the Israeli nuclear program over
the past five decades,
Carter's comments on Sunday give
official cachet to Israel's
status as a nuclear power.
This time the speaker is not another
scientist basing his *****sments on
calculations of the output from the
Dimona reactor,
or a news re****t with an unclear source.
Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal is
being revealed by a former American
president, someone who,
upon entering the White House,
adopted the policy of covert
American nuclear cooperation
with Israel,
which was formulated four decades ago.
The principles of the nuclear understandings
between Israel and the United States were
agreed upon in 1969,
when prime minister Golda Meir
met with U.S. president Richard
Nixon in Wa****ngton.
That was the first time the United States
officially accepted Israel's status as
a nuclear power,
while agreeing not to publicly
reveal details about its weapons.
Israel committed not to carry out
nuclear testing or declare that it
has nuclear weapons.
For their part,
the Americans promised not
to pressure Israel to sign
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty.
Every American president since,
and every senior administration
official who knew the details
of the Israeli nuclear program,
kept silent and effectively
adopted Israel's official policy:
that it would not be the first to
introduce nuclear weapons into
the Middle East.
Now Carter comes along and
changes the rules of the game.
After all,
he doesn't need to rely on
foreign sources or unproven
conjecture.
When he served as president,
he knew exactly what Israel
had in its storehouses.
Jimmy Carter is not guessing
or estimating. He knows.
In his speech at the Wales book fair,
Carter did not make it clear whether
he was citing the number of bombs
Israel had when he left the White
House in January 1981,
or describing the current
size of Israel's nuclear arsenal.
This doesn't much affect
the core of the matter -
Israel's exposure as a
nuclear power.
When it comes to strategic
considerations by Israel and
its opponents,
it doesn't matter whether
there are 150, 200 or
300 bombs.
If Carter was referring to
the size of Israel's nuclear
arsenal when he left the White House,
it is possible to figure out its
current size from the information
he provided.
To do so one needs to use foreign sources,
which state that Israel produces enough
plutonium to build approximately five
nuclear bombs per year.
If that's the case,
then Israel has built an estimated
150 more bombs since 1981, putting
the size of Israel's nuclear arsenal
at some 300 bombs.
But this is merely an intellectual exercise.
What is truly im****tant is the fact that
a former American president has exposed
Israel as a nuclear power.
One can assume that Iran will now
be able to make use of Carter's comments
in order to point to the double standard
of the Western world,
which is prepared to accept a nuclear
Israel but makes a great effort to
prevent Iran from going nuclear.
However,
the more im****tant ramification
of Carter's statement is the
reinforcement of Israel's
deterrent image.
In the future,
if Iran does acquire nuclear weapons,
this image will be of critical im****tance
in the process of developing mutual deterrence.
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