Nuclear Notebook: Israeli nuclear weapons, 2022

Conducting research on Israeli nuclear weapons has historically been very challenging, not least because Israel purposely does not acknowledge its own possession of nuclear weapons. Moreover, Western governments normally do not include Israel in their descriptions of nuclear-armed states. Additionally, Israeli nuclear whistleblowers have faced significant penalties; in 1986, former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence services and spent 18 years in prison after giving a detailed interview about Israel’s nuclear program to the Sunday Times(Myre 2004). This chilling effect means that individuals with knowledge of Israel’s nuclear program have been understandably reluctant to provide on-the-record information, which dilutes the ability of open-source researchers to analyze Israel’s nuclear forces. Thankfully, over the past two decades, historians like Avner Cohen and William Burr have contributed invaluable research that has made previously unknown nuances of Israel’s opaque nuclear policy available to the public.1