Hassan Tahsin

Arab News

Any discussion of Israel’s nuclear capabilities has to begin with a question that will clarify the aims and purposes behind Israel’s possession of such weapons of mass destruction and its insistence on taking this step without regard for the threat to peace and security in the region: Does Israel’s nuclear power correspond to its security needs in the region?

The question leads us into a three-pronged discussion.

First: Israel alleges that it has sought to produce nuclear weapons in order to confront powers hostile to it in the region — Arab countries and Iran — and that the presence of such strategic deterrence ensures its continued existence and averts attempts for a collective attack that might lead to its annihilation. These allegations are unfounded. There are major discrepancies in the balance of power in the Middle East because there is only one nuclear country in the region and that is Israel. Israel alone therefore can decide to use the nuclear weapon — thus making it an optional deterrent resting on the sole decision of the nuclear state. It is not based on a “system of deterrence” in which more than one party is involved.

Second: Israel began its nuclear weapons program in order to become a regional nuclear power. Its military nuclear capability today though far exceeds what is required for it to defend itself. It is possible now to describe it as a regional nuclear power of a special kind.

In 1986 a number of neutral and reliable reports indicated that Israel — at that time — possessed more than 200 nuclear warheads. Since then, the size of its nuclear arsenal has become the subject of debate. This debate aroused the issue of “necessary limits”, which is what concerns us here. A report by an Israeli academic mentions that Israel possesses between 20 and 40 strategic nuclear bombs with a destructive power somewhere between 20 and 60 kilotons, enough to destroy all Israel’s envisioned targets in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Libya and Saudi Arabia and send them back to the Middle Ages. Consequently Israel’s exceeding the limits of necessity raises a number of concerns, the most important of which is Israel’s nuclear intentions. Nuclear deterrence in reality only needs a few strategic heads and no more!

Third: Once Tel Aviv lost French-Israeli nuclear cooperation as well as cooperation with South Africa which got rid of its nuclear capabilities prior to power being transferred to the black majority, it turned to cooperation with the US. This cooperation soon matured into unlimited and full-fledged American support for Israel. Later Israel benefited from Russia’s advanced space technology in rounding out its nuclear structure.

Israel’s continued existence as a nuclear power with international weight rather than limited regional influence owes much to US thinking. Following its reduction in the number of foreign bases, the US has turned Israel into a substitute for military bases. Israel’s nuclear superiority makes it easier for it to steer the Middle East militarily, politically and economically. While beneficial to the Zionists, it is also beneficial to the US, which gains a strategic base if Europe chooses to shun American hegemony and dissolve NATO. In fact, Israel’s continued nuclear power on such a level enables Washington to finalize its strategic security belt which is North America’s first line of defense and which will enable the US to contain the entire world including Russia ollowing its military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is no doubt that the US had no choice but to let Israel assume this role. It would have been inconceivable to turn to any Arab country for such a strategically important mission. All Arab countries are Muslim which endlessly annoys the West, especially since Islam has replaced communism as enemy No. 1.