BERLIN/TEHRAN: Israel is arming submarines supplied and largely financed by Germany with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, influential German news weekly Der Spiegel reports in its issue to be published yesterday.
The magazine said in a cover story likely to touch off a debate in Germany that Berlin had until now denied any knowledge that German submarines were being used as part of an Israeli atomic arsenal.
Israel is the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear-armed power.
However, former high-ranking officials of the German Defense Ministry told the magazine that the government always assumed that Israel was putting nuclear warheads on the Dolphin-class vessels. The article, based on a months-long probe, cited files from the foreign ministry in Berlin indicating that the West German state was aware of the practice as early as 1961.
Germany has already supplied Israel with three of the submarines in question, footing most of the bill, and another three are to be delivered by 2017 under a recently signed contract.
The report said that Germany hoped to see Israeli concessions on settlements and approval for the completion of a sewage treatment plant in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the assistance. Israel sees its existence under threat if its arch-foe Iran goes nuclear. Like the United States, it has refused to rule out bombing Iranian nuclear sites.
Germany, bearing the historical guilt of the Holocaust, is Israel's closest ally in Europe.
But it has sharply criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pro-settlement policies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as undermining peace efforts with the Palestinians.
Tensions between Germany and Israel flared in April when Nobel prize-winning German author Gunter Grass published an inflammatory poem in which he warned that a nuclear-armed Israel “could wipe out the Iranian people (with a) first strike.”
Separately, Iran's supreme leader says any Israeli attack would be answered by a "lightning" strike by the Islamic Republic.
The remarks by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei come as Iran engages in intense talks with the US and five other world powers over its nuclear program. Israeli officials have said they leave all options open to try to derail Iran's uranium enrichment.
The West fears Iran could one day produce weapons-grade material. Iran says it only seeks reactors for energy and medical research.
In a speech yesterday, Khamenei said, “any wrong step" by Israelis would come back on them like "lightning."
Khamenei was speaking on the 23rd anniversary of the death of his predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini.
FROM: AGENCIES
Israel arming subs with nuke missiles
