LOS ANGELES, 12 October 2003 — Israel has modified US-made cruise missiles to carry nuclear warheads on submarines, giving it the ability to launch atomic weapons from land, air or sea, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday. Israel’s newly acquired submarine capability will complicate efforts to persuade Iran to abandon a suspected nuclear weapons program, the Times said.
The missile modification was described to Times reporters by two US officials and confirmed by an Israeli official, the Times said. All three spoke on condition of anonymity. “The Americans said they were disclosing the information to caution Israel’s enemies at a time of heightened tensions in the region and concern over Iran’s alleged ambitions,” the Times said.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied having nuclear arms, but Washington has accepted it as a nuclear power since 1969 and analysts say it has up to 200 sophisticated nuclear weapons, the report said. “We tolerate nuclear weapons in Israel for the same reason we tolerate them in Britain and France,” a senior US official was quoted as saying. “We don’t regard Israel as a threat.”
Arab countries have criticized the United States and the United Nations for pressuring Iran to accept tougher inspections while ignoring Israel’s stockpile. “A big source of contention is Israel,” said a senior UN official trying to convince Iran to undergo additional inspections. “This is a magnet for other countries to develop nuclear weapons.”
According to a report from Berlin, Israel’s spy agency Mossad has drawn up pre-emptive attack plans on six sites in Iran it suspects are being used to prepare nuclear weapons, Der Spiegel magazine says in its Monday edition, citing Israeli security officials.
A special Mossad unit received orders two months ago to prepare plans for attacks on half-a-dozen targets, the magazine said. Complete destruction of the targets by F-16 fighter bombers was deemed achievable by Mossad, it said.
In another development, an Israeli negotiator will soon travel to Germany to try to finalize a prisoner exchange with the Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance group, Israeli public radio reported yesterday. Reserve Gen. Ilan Biran was assigned to the mission after Friday night’s meeting of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s security Cabinet, it said.
The meeting was also attended by the heads of the Shin Beth domestic security agency, foreign intelligence agency Mossad and military intelligence. Israel said Friday it intended to “pursue negotiations” with Hezbollah and to “bring the affair before the government for approval, once the accord is finalized.”
Hezbollah’s leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah also said Friday evening that his movement had reached an agreement to exchange prisoners with Israel, but that some details remained to be settled. Following an Aug. 24 session, which the Israeli press reported was chaired by the coordinator of the German secret service, Ernst Uhrlau, Israel handed over the remains of two Hezbollah fighters, in the first tangible sign of progress for prisoner exchanges in years.
Hezbollah was said to have held in custody since October 2000 three Israeli soldiers captured in an occupied zone bordering Lebanon, Israel and Syria. However, it is now widely believed they are dead. It also has Elhanan Tanenbaum, a kidnapped businessman and reserve colonel, who Hezbollah claims is an Israeli spy.
Israel has around 20 Lebanese prisoners, including two Hezbollah leaders. Abdel Karim Obeid and Mustafa Dirani, captured in Lebanon in 1989 and 1994, were to be used as bargaining chips for information on the Israeli navigator Ron Arad who went missing 17 years ago when his plane went down over Lebanon in 1986.
However, Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Massoud Idrissi, yesterday categorically denied press reports Arad was alive and being detained in a prison near Tehran. “This information is totally false. We have denied time and time again this type of information spread by Israel, which every time it is under pressure, peddles such accusations that are null and void,” Idrissi told reporters during a visit to Sidon in southern Lebanon.
“We know nothing about Ron Arad,” he insisted.
The unverified press report, published in the top-selling Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot on Friday, quoted three exiled Iranian officials. According to the report, Arad, who tried to escape his captors while still in Lebanon, was transferred to Syria in 1994 and later to Iran.
Arad’s family has been leading a campaign to ensure his fate is not separated from that of other Israelis involved in the possible prisoner swap.
