JERUSALEM, 13 December 2006 — In an apparent reversal of a decades-old secrecy policy, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday said that Israel has the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal.
This raised a firestorm in Israel. Leading opposition lawmakers accused Olmert, whose popularity was already hard-hit by the recent Lebanon war, of incompetence and of undermining Israel’s campaign for Western nations to curb the atomic ambitions of its archfoe, Iran.
In a German television interview broadcast as he began his first official visit to Berlin, Olmert said: “Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?” Olmert aides said the remarks, which were made in English, did not constitute an admission that Israel has atomic weapons.
Independent analysts believe Israel has built between 80 and 200 nuclear warheads since the late 1960s. Israel refuses to discuss the assumed arsenal, under an “ambiguity” policy aimed at fending off regional foes and avoiding an arms race.
The reticence is a major grievance for Arabs and Iran, which see a double standard in Western calls for Tehran to accept checks on a nuclear program that it says is for civilian use.
“We always face the same question which our enemies ask: ‘Why is Israel allowed to (have a bomb) and not Iran?’” former Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, a member of the right-wing opposition Likud Party, said on Army Radio.
“This (Olmert’s remark) causes great harm to Israel. We are in the midst of a huge (diplomatic) onslaught against Iran’s attempts to make a nuclear bomb,” he said.
Yossi Beilin of the left-wing Meretz Party, which is also in opposition, questioned Olmert’s fitness to lead. “The prime minister’s amazing statement regarding nuclear capability indicates a lack of caution bordering on irresponsibility,” the top-selling Yediot Ahronot daily quoted Beilin as saying.
Though newspaper headlines accused Olmert of a “nuclear slip of the tongue,” some analysts have said that Israel, faced with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, could go public with its own capabilities to maintain a deterrent advantage.
Such thinking was fueled last week when Robert Gates, the incoming US secretary of defense, spoke of Israel’s atomic arsenal as fact. Washington has long avoided discussing its ally’s open secret explicitly.
“It could be that Olmert wanted to hint at Israel’s capability as part of the aggressive statements he has recently been making, with the goal of warning the West that if they don’t take care of Iran, Israel will,” wrote Yediot analyst Ronen Bergman.
While Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz saw no change in the ambiguity policy, he issued a veiled warning to Iran. “We continue to pursue exactly the same policy,” he said. “We will do our jobs and nobody should think for even a moment that in the light of all the developments we will remain idle.”
Israel, with a US nod, has refused to rule out pre-emptive military action against Iran akin to its 1981 airstrike against the main Iraqi atomic reactor at Osiraq.
But many independent analysts believe that Iran’s nuclear facilities are too numerous, scattered and fortified for Israel’s armed forces to take on alone.
