Israel's Nuclear Weapons
On April 5, 2009, speaking before throngs of supporters in a Prague square, President Barack Obama declared America's commitment to a world without nuclear weapons. With this as an apparent impetus, the Arab world has pressed for greater international attention to . . . Israel's nuclear activities. It did so most recently at a Washington conference devoted to keeping nuclear materials out of terrorist hands, and at a subsequent review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at UN headquarters in New York.
Under Arab prodding, the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including the U.S., issued a statement calling for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons. Its clear target was Israel, the only country in the area considered to be already in possession of such weapons, thus further sidetracking the irresolute international effort to block Iran from building them. The Arabs are also lobbying to put Israel on the agenda when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meets next month in Vienna.
What is Israel's nuclear posture? The Jewish state insists it will not be the first to "introduce" nuclear weapons into the region. Its leaders have signaled, however, that the country has a weapon of last resort should the state be about to fall. Historically, the argument advanced by Israeli doves was that the country's presumed nuclear capacity had forced the Arabs to come to terms with the permanence of the Jewish state, and, by obviating the need for strategic territorial depth, made a withdrawal to roughly the 1967 borders into a viable option. In an exquisite irony, Israel today is being simultaneously pressed to go ahead with the withdrawal, to abjure its nuclear deterrent, and to reconcile itself to the fact that even its most moderate Arab interlocutors do not accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state.
To some Israeli strategists, nevertheless, the time has arrived to jettison nuclear ambiguity and to allow IAEA inspections of the Dimona reactor. But the more prevalent view is that, with Iran on the cusp of a bomb, an abrupt, forced abandonment of nuclear ambiguity will make deterrence less credible, intensify the pressure to disarm entirely, and render the Middle East even less stable than it is.
Israel's policy makers have repeatedly stressed that they would welcome a region free of all weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological arms, not to mention a considerable reduction of conventional forces. This goal, however, can only be achieved in the context of a freely arrived at and comprehensive peace settlement. That happy day is, unfortunately, a distant dream, and it will surely never arrive without first removing the risk of atomic weapons in the hands of Iran's bellicose and fanatical leaders. The question is how vigorously the world's civilized nations are determined not only to prevent Tehran's weaponization but to derail those in the Middle East and elsewhere who would cynically manipulate the cause of disarmament in pursuit of their vendetta against Israel.
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