Jeffrey’s post about the National Security Archives’ recently-released documents related to the South African and French nuclear arsenals reminded me that Mordechai Vanunu issued his estimate of the Israeli nuclear weapons arsenal this past December.
Vanunu, in a 21 December interview with Voyenny Parad, said:
Question: Do you know how many nuclear bombs Israel has?
Mordechai Vanunu: When I worked at Dimona, nuclear materials were already being produced there – plutonim, lithium, tritium, and others. Enough to make ten nuclear bombs per year. In other words, starting from 1985, Israel has over 200 nuclear warheads by now.
It’s a bit old, but this paper from the USAF Counterproliferation Center contains a series of estimates of the Israeli arsenal (see Appendix A).
ACA uses an estimate of 75-200 nuclear weapons , FYI.