Dimona, the 1979 flash, the Yom Kippur War and the Jericho: how the world’s least-acknowledged arsenal has been studied anyway.
I bought Jeffrey Richelson’s Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea. The book is amazing, particularly the chapter dedicated to the 1979 “flash” over the South Atlantic that may have been a…
Readers have probably already noted that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ventured beyond the carefully worded description of Israel’s nuclear status—Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear arms in the region— in effect confirming Israel’s possession of…
Israel’s nuclear posture is unique. Some countries with “advanced nuclear capabilities,” such as India and China, have publicly adopted “No First Use” postures. Israel has adopted a declaratory policy that it will not be the first to “introduce” nuclear weapons…
A picture is worth… You already know the saying. But what’s a picture worth when it comes without a caption? This may sound like an off-brand Zen koan, but it’s actually the windup to a small exercise in decoding ambiguous…
In the Guardian today, Chris McGreal has a sensationalist treatment of an episode in Israeli-South African relations from 1975. “Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons,” screams the headline! Subhead: “Exclusive: Secret apartheid-era papers give first official…
The Hebrew word for nuclear opacity or ambiguity is amimut, which Avner Cohen believes to be “Israel’s original contribution to the nuclear age.” Avner has written two books on Israel’s bomb. His latest, The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the…
One of the nicest things about relocating to Monterey is that Avner Cohen, a colleague from my days at the University of Maryland, has relocated too. Avner, like me, is a lapsed philosopher with a deep interest in nuclear weapons…
The circus continues! In Obama’s America, the truth is revealed! The US helped with Israel’s H-Bomb. But wait, there’s more! To punish Bibi Netanyahu, our Muslim Brotherhood lovin’ president released a declassified a report detailing said cooperation with Israel on…
Israel maintains a technologically advanced but understudied ballistic missile arsenal. Jeffrey and Aaron dive into the French, South African, and American influences on the arsenal, how to model the Jericho missile families, and the history of the Israeli ballistic missile…
You might have seen reports this week that there was a large explosion at an Israeli missile facility. There wasn’t an explosion. It was a routine test of a solid-rocket motor. Here’s the deal. On April 20, an Israeli twitter…
