Israel's Greatest Open Secret
A regime with an assembled cast of war criminals and mass murderers have in their possession a stockpile of nuclear weapons. In any normal civilisation, alarm bells would be screaming...
The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9 1989, was one of the most significant and symbolic events of the 20th Century. It heralded a future punctuated with peace and harmony. Western capitalism would flourish, confident of it’s victory against its former communist nemesis, as the emerging neoliberal revolution being pushed by the its incumbent Protégés in the form of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, would turbocharge its way across a receptive world. But most important was the promise of a dismantling of another symbol of the cold war, the relentless nuclear arms race. That happened as both sides cut back on their nuclear capacity. But as we look back almost 35 years to that momentous occasion, that vision hasn’t materialised. The war in Ukraine has once again raised the specter of the nuclear menace. The Middle east has been a hotbed of violence and conflict, and in the middle is Israel, quietly presiding over its worst kept secret.
Middle East Hotspot
Israel maintains a deliberate ambiguity policy over its nuclear capability in order to deter its neighbours, whilst avoiding provocations that may spur an arms race in the Middle East. Although, as we’ll find out, the days of Israel’s exclusive membership of the Middle Eastern nuclear club may well be numbered.
Israel's nuclear build up reads like something out of a 007 novel. It began almost on the day Israel became a state. This article from FAS (Federation of American Scientists), outlines the clandestine history of Israel's relationship with 'The Bomb'. In 1949, uranium was found incorporated within phosphate deposits in the Negev desert following a two year geological survey. The Israel Atomic Energy Commission was established in 1952, with the intention of putting Israel on the nuclear map. Its chairman, Ernst David Bergmann, wanted to ensure "that we shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter." Machon 4 emerged as the key processing laboratory for uranium. By 1953, this was well established. It had also successfully developed a method for producing heavy water, enabling Israel to produce vital nuclear materials.
Israel then engaged with France, leading to the signing of an agreement on 3 October 1957, to build a 24 MWt reactor. In addition, unpublished protocols allowed the secret construction of a chemical reprocessing plant that would remain outside the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This was built at Dimona, in the Negev desert under the leadership of Col. Manes Pratt of the IDF Ordinance Corps:
To maintain secrecy, French customs officials were told that the largest of the reactor components, such as the reactor tank, were part of a desalinization plant bound for Latin America. In addition, after buying heavy water from Norway on the condition that it not be transferred to a third country, the French Air Force secretly flew as much as four tons of the substance to Israel.
Such was the importance and scale of the project, that a dedicated intelligence agency, the Office of Science Liasons (LEKEM) was set up ‘to provide security and intelligence for the project.’ With the cold war at its peak and the Suez Crisis providing a major focal point in the Middle East, Israel wanted the bomb, with willing French assistance providing the backing. Until 1960 when David Ben-Gurion finally revealed that the complex ‘was a nuclear research center built for "peaceful purposes,”’ the nature of the plant was covered up. During this period the US was unaware of what was going on and:
through a combination of benign neglect, erroneous analysis, and successful Israeli deception, failed to discern first the details of Israel's nuclear program. As early as 8 December 1960, the CIA issued a report outlining Dimona's implications for nuclear proliferation, and the CIA station in Tel Aviv had determined by the mid-1960s that the Israeli nuclear weapons program was an established and irreversible fact.
Despite several visits from US inspectors, they were subjected to persistent evasiveness from Israel, even going to the extent of installing:
false control room panels and to brick over elevators and hallways that accessed certain areas of the facility. The inspectors were able to report that there was no clear scientific research or civilian nuclear power program justifying such a large reactor - circumstantial evidence of the Israeli bomb program - but found no evidence of "weapons related activities" such as the existence of a plutonium reprocessing plant.
In 1966, it became apparent to the US that Israel was arming itself with nuclear warheads. Yet there was a cover up. US ambassador to Israel Walworth Barbour (1961-73) failed to pass on vital information to his administration, going as far as to stifle intelligence gathering from Dimona.
Over the years, estimates varied on Israels nuclear capability. By the turn of the century, US intelligence estimated around 75-130 weapons, utilising the Dimona nuclear reactor as a source of plutonium, as the graph below indicates.
What nuclear weapons?
With Israel firmly committed to doing its own thing, whilst hoodwinking the world into thinking that any nuclear preoccupation is purely peaceful, its nuclear program continued apace - at whatever cost.
Israel's deception drew Norway into the international web. It revolved around the supply of heavy water to Israel under the promise of peaceful intent, initially back in 1959. Other countries have been involved in what appeared to be black market trading of heavy water. During the 1980’s Norwegian heavy water was diverted from West Germany to India and Romania. Some of that discreetly found its way into Israel, breaching controls on the distribution of heavy water. It also violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which forbids the transfer of heavy water without international controls. Israel refused inspections at the time, obfuscating its use of the water, claiming a usage loss rate that didn’t stand up to scrutiny:
Confronting Israel will make its bomb a public issue–something Israel has tried to avoid. It will not be easy for Israel to explain why it has broken an international obligation in order to make atomic bombs. Israel will be the first country to break the peaceful use and inspection pledges, upon which the world nuclear trade depends.
Israel rejected all attempts to allow Norway to carry out an inspection, initially in February 1987. What followed was a pattern of deceit that was becoming a familiar trademark, with Israel first claiming they had “technical problems.” They then came away with the preposterous claim that the IAEA, which would carry out the inspections, was “biased.” At the time, just before the breakup of the Soviet Union, the US was apparently against nuclear proliferation, but Norway hadn’t asked for US support. The FAS article sums up:
Norway’s dispute with Israel is truly an international problem–a precedent for the whole world. If Israel can break its promises, defy Norway, and use a peaceful nuclear import to make atomic bombs, anyone can. Israel’s actions threaten all the countries that belong to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, not just Norway. To solve this international problem, Norway needs an international solution.
In a retrospective article (1993) following the previous articles above, Gary Milhollin (Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin Law School, and founder of the Wisconsin Project) outlines how Norway was hardly an innocent bystander. He noted that by 1987, ‘Norway had produced 440 to 450 tons of heavy water’, and that virtually all of it was exported without proper inspection controls to various countries, including Israel, with the purpose of producing nuclear weapons:
Twenty tons went into Israel’s Dimona reactor in 1963, which has now made enough plutonium for well over 100 atomic bombs.
Finally in 1990, Israel had returned about half of the water it had imported from Norway. Israel maintained its concealment of plutonium production. But already evidence of Israels’ clandestine operations had been revealed. French journalist Pierre Pean published revelations based on French files, that the infrastructure at Dimona was established for bomb production. Another vital source was Mordechai Vanunu, discussed in more detail below. The Wisconsin Project was highly instrumental in holding Norway to account, thus forcing Israel to make some concessions.
Next on the list of players is Argentina. Argentina's role was pivotal in the genesis of Israel's nuclear program. That role is documented in the US National Security Archive. US and British declassified documents reveal that Israel in 1963-64, secretly acquired 80-100 tons of Argentine uranium oxide (yellowcake), a processed uranium ore.
Intelligence from Canada and the US Embassy in Argentina exposed the scandal. Israel’s standard response to US questions was evasive, refusing to give answers about the transaction. These little known documents:
shed light on one of the most obscure aspects of Israel's nuclear history - how secretly and vigorously Israel sought raw materials for its nuclear program and how persistently it tried to cultivate relations with certain nuclear suppliers. Yellowcake was critically important to Israel for fuelling its nuclear reactor at Dimona and thereby for producing plutonium for weapons. The story of the Argentine yellowcake sale to Israel has remained largely unknown in part because Israel has gone to great lengths to keep tight secrecy to this day about how and where it acquired raw materials for its nuclear program.
The US put diplomatic pressure on Argentina to apply safeguards on any transactions, but this failed. Nothing could be done to stop the deal. Behind this was a concern for Middle East stability, which could come under threat from a nuclear armed Israel. There was also the concern for the global expansion of nuclear weapons. Israel stonewalled any investigations into the issue. Israel’s motive for obtaining raw materials from Argentina was the prohibitive expense of extracting phosphate deposits of uranium from the Negev and French restrictions on uranium supplies. At that time, any real controls on nuclear proliferation was limited. This predated the establishment of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) in 1974, set up ‘to contribute to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons through the implementation of two sets of Guidelines for nuclear exports and nuclear-related exports.’
Yet despite all this, it has come to light that the US’s closest ally was also supplying Israel with the raw materials for developing the bomb. A Newsnight investigation for the BBC revealed for the first time in 2005 that Britain was complicit in supplying Israel with heavy water. 20 tonnes of heavy water were sold to Israel in 1958. It was intentionally kept secret from Washington:
"On the whole I would prefer NOT to mention this to the Americans," concluded Donald Cape of the Foreign Office.
The transactions were done in a conniving manner, taking the form of redirected supplies from Norway:
The papers in the National Archives in London show how officials presented the sale internally as a straight sale from Norway to Israel. But the minutes reveal that the heavy water was shipped from a British port in Israeli ships - half in June 1959 and half a year later.
But more was to come. In a follow-up investigation a year later Newsnight revealed that the UK was supplying Israel with plutonium in 1966 through top secret papers obtained via a Freedom of Information request. Apparently the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office attempted to block the sale of 10mg of Plutonium, but civil servant Michael Israel Michaels, who had close ties to Israel, pushed it through.
One of the most daring episodes of Israel's determination to produce nuclear weapons was the Plumbat affair, detailed in the book (1978) published by Elaine Davenport and Paul Eddy.
In November 1968, the cargo ship Scheersberg A set sail from Antwerp, Belgium, to Genoa, Italy, carrying 560 drums of uranium oxide, sent by Asmara Chemie, an obscure West German chemical company that was used as a front, to SAICA, an Italian paint company, for commercial processing. It never arrived. Two weeks overdue, the ship arrived at the eastern Turkish port of Iskenderum, empty. The captain, Peter Barrow, lied to the Turkish authorities saying the ship had come from Naples. A few days later, Barrow and his crew abandoned the ship and disappeared.
The mystery came to light in an Oslo police station in 1973, after Mossad agent Dan Aerbel was arrested on suspicion of murder, following the recent assassination of a target. Facing interrogation by Norwegian investigators, and after a period of denial, Aerbel began to reveal all, claiming ‘he was a member of an official Israeli assassination squad, originally set up under direct orders from Prime Minister Golda Meir,’ admitting his involvement in the assassination. Finally after weeks of interrogation came a dramatic revelation, which initially meant nothing to the police interrogator, but which then found its way to Norwegian intelligence. Aerbel stated that he:
he had owned a ship called the Scheersberg A. The Norwegian secret agents made the connection, and a mystery with enormous international implications was at last solved.
Aerbel's temporary ownership of the Scheersberg A could only mean that the true destination of her cargo on this mysterious voyage had been a place called Dimona. And that meant there could now be no doubt that Israel had acquired the means to develop nuclear weapons.
Operation Plumbat was a remarkable and daring operation, which had eluded the world for five years. Aerbel's role was to dispose of the evidence by getting rid of the Scheersberg A. But how did it all begin?
It came in the wake of the 1967 war, as Israel wanted to consolidate the territory gained in the war. It was determined to obtain nuclear weapons for defense of "Greater" (Eretz) Israel and Europe had 200 tonnes of uranium oxide ("yellowcake") sitting in a silo in Belgium, which Israeli nuclear scientists were ready to convert into bombs at Dimona. There was a problem though. Israel was not allowed to have uranium.
Standing in the way was EURATOM, the European Economic Community's new regulatory agency. Euratom's role was to ensure the security of Europe's nuclear stocks and enforcing anti-nuclear arms proliferation treaties banning E.E.C. member states from exporting nuclear materiel to governments not allowed to develop nuclear capacity — which included Israel. But Euratom had limited enforcement clout. As a result, Israel through Mossad was able to exploit the weakness to push the operation through. Finally Asmara Chemie applied to Euratom for approval, which it did without much investigation, even though it did think it was slightly unusual to move the uranium by ship instead of rail, but nothing came of it.
The Sheersberg A set off. It would transfer its clandestine cargo over to the Israeli’s halfway through the voyage:
The Sheersberg A could not take the uranium directly to Israel without giving the game away. Her arrival would have been routinely reported to Lloyd's of London, which maintains agents at every port and keeps a record of shipping movements. So, in halcyon weather, she headed for the waters between Cyprus and the coast of Turkey — and for a silent rendezvous with an Israeli freighter.
Perhaps the greatest revelations of all concerning Israel’s nuclear program came from Mordechai Vanunu. This is covered by a Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) account, The Relevance of Mordechai Vanunu Disclosures to Israel’s National Security, presented at the International Conference of Democracy, Disarmament and Human Rights in Tel-Aviv, October 1996. Vanunu's disclosures confirmed once-and-for-all Israel's nuclear capability.
From 1976 to 1985, Vanunu worked at the Dimona plant. Before he left he took a series of photographs within the plant. A year later he took his story to the Sunday Times. Israel had no intentions of letting Vanunu away with his disclosures. He was was kidnapped by the Mossad in Rome and returned to Israel, where he was tried and convicted of treason and espionage and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Summed up here are some of the key points from the report of Vanunu’s revelations:
Highly-enriched (weapon-grade) uranium was being produced by gas centrifuge technology, possibly supplemented by laser enrichment technology, which was known to be under development in Israel since the early 1970s.
During the 20 year period [sic], 1963-1993, Israel could have produced as much as 800 kg of plutonium-equivalent. Thus, Israel could have made about 150 to 200 modern boosted warheads.
There was no doubt now that Israel’s nuclear program was much more advanced that originally thought and that the weapons being developed were ahead of the five declared nuclear weapon states.
Vanunu had limited expertise on weapons development and as such would not have had a great impact on Israeli national security. But there is no doubt that his story revealed important facts concerning Israel’s nuclear program. Indeed the report makes the interesting observation that Vanunu’s revelations would have consolidated Israeli national security by enhancing the deterrent value of a nuclear arsenal. But this irony seems to have been lost on Israel.
He has his own website where he tells his story, outlining how he served 18 years in prison and continued thereafter to have his freedom restricted to this day by a regime where the word mercy appears to be missing from its vocabulary.
Another area of contention was Israel's relationship with South Africa during the mid seventies. Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime. These revelations are found in the book The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's secret alliance with apartheid South Africa, by Sasha Polakow-Suransky, published in 2010.
Following the 1973 war, Israel’s economy was in dire need of a boost. Arms sales to South Africa was a solution. The secretive relationship was good for Israel and also helped SA circumvent sanctions on arms imports. But it wasn’t just conventional weapons that interested SA. Israel, although not actually sending nuclear weapons to SA was helping Pretoria build the bomb, against US and international restrictions and pressure:
This mutually beneficial relationship was forged outside the jurisdiction of international conventions such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the cornerstones of Western efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The two countries developed and improved their respective weapons systems under such secrecy that not even American intelligence agencies knew the full extent of their cooperation.
SA in the early days was a major source of uranium to nuclear countries. During the 1960’s, SA began exporting yellowcake to Israel. These exports were above board - sort of. Once the two countries started developing their own weapons, such things went under the radar. With the anti-apartheid campaign turning up the heat on SA, other countries turned elsewhere for uranium supplies. In short, Israel needed uranium and SA needed new customers, and the episode with the Scheersberg A caught SA’s attention.
In 1976, a secret meeting took place in Israel between SA military intelligence and LAKAM. It was this outfit that had masterminded the Scheersberg A affair. Following this meeting a long running agreement would be mutually broken by both countries.
In July 1976 aspiring SA premier P. W. Botha arrived in Israel. He visited the Soreq Nuclear Research Center, where, according to declassified material from the Pentagon, “nuclear weapons design and fabrication“ apparently took place. The visit was portrayed as trade meetings. Since 1965, Israel had stockpiled 500 tons of SA uranium. His predecessor was reluctant to give way to Israel over the issue. But Botha was aiming for the top position and this was his chance. On returning home, Botha lifted the safeguards that removed any obligations on SA inspections of the vast reserves of yellowcake. Israel had carte blanch to do what it wanted. Not only that, but a further 100 tons would be forthcoming. In return, Israel supplied SA with tritium, which helps to boost the yield of atomic bombs.
South Africa was probably more instrumental than other nations in allowing Israel to develop its nuclear capability.
The German Connection
Of course if you have nuclear weapons, you need the infrastructure to move and carry them. We next welcome Germany onto the nuclear stage, related to Israel’s acquisition of a fleet of Dolphin class submarines. The story of Germany's close cooperation with Israel is told in an article from Del Spiegel (2012).
Spiegel revealed that with the help of advanced German electronics:
Israel has managed to create for itself a floating nuclear weapon arsenal: submarines equipped with nuclear capability.
Initially, German military cooperation with Israel was taboo, but now the cat was out of the bag. The missiles on board the subs were developed by Israeli arms company Rafael and have an estimated range of 1500 kilometers. The new underwater arsenal exists because Israel perceives a serious threat from its neighbours:
The submarines are the military response to the threat in a region "where there is no mercy for the weak," Defense Minister Ehud Barak says. They are an insurance policy against the Israelis' fundamental fear that "the Arabs could slaughter us tomorrow," as David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the State of Israel, once said. "We shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter," was the lesson Ben-Gurion and others drew from Auschwitz.
Underlying this relationship is an apparent need for Germany to atone for the holocaust, basically a self-delusional myth (see below). As Spiegel puts it, 'Is Berlin recklessly promoting an arms race in the Middle East?’ According to Angela Merkel, “Israel's security is never negotiable." Indeed German support for Israel is as old as the country itself, even to the point of violating Germany's arms export laws, with a history of pushing through military deals without parliamentary approval. As always with Israel, intrigue was the order of the day. When it came to political conniving, Germany was no exception. In 1958:
The German defense minister even had arms and equipment secretly removed from German military stockpiles and then reported to the police as stolen.
Many of the shipments reached Israel via indirect routes and were declared as "loans."
It’s reckoned that these sleight of hand German arms shipments played a key role in Israel’s remarkable success in the 1967 war.
In 1961, the nuclear dimension began to develop under the code name ‘Operation Samson’. In 1965, Germany loaned Israel 630 million deutsche marks ($355 million) under the premise of building a desalination plant operated with nuclear power - which was never built. The money it would seem had disappeared into Israel’s nuclear black hole. It would appear that Israel’s nuclear program was ultimately paid for by German finance.
Intriguingly, the order for the first 2 subs were agreed after the fall of the Berlin wall. Although the deal nearly fell through, the 1991 Iraq war - which resulted in Israel coming under attack from Iraqi scud missiles - secured the deal. It was helped in part by the fact that German technology was incorporated within the Scuds - an unfortunate association. The Germans had also supplied poison gas to Iraq. As Spiegel noted 'Israel-Germany-gas' wouldn't circulate very well. But with finance an initial obstacle against the deal, Germany pulled a rabbit out of its hat and managed to fleece another money tree, to the tune of 880 million deutsche marks.
The building of the subs was initially conducted in secret where:
one of the most secretive arms projects in the Western world has been underway in Kiel, where a special form of bonding between the German and the Israeli people developed.
A unique feature of the Dolphin class is the inclusion of four additional 650mm torpedo tubes, ‘a special design not found in any other submarine in the Western world.’ There’s viable speculation that the design was intended to accommodate ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads. Germany’s position here was to effectively animate the three wise monkeys. How Israel fitted out their subs was their business.
One pervasive motive behind Israel’s more flexible nuclear option was the Iran threat. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has been a thorn in the side of Israel and its western cohorts. Nevertheless, Germany’s delicate relationship with Israel has not been without its critics. As former chancellor Helmut Schmidt put it:
"I wonder whether it was a feeling of closeness with American policies, or nebulous moral motives, that led Chancellor Merkel to publicly state in 2008 that Germany bears responsibility for the security of the State of Israel. From my point of view, this is a serious exaggeration, one that sounds very nearly like the type of obligation that exists within an alliance.
"Germany has a particular responsibility to make sure that a crime such as the Holocaust never again occurs. Germany does not have a responsibility for Israel."
Merkel was well aware of the delicacy of the situation and even made demands to Israel regarding its responsibility to the Palestinians. But of course Israel as always would do its own thing, leaving Merkel to step back and observe the status quo.
Today, as reported by the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), Israel has 5 submarines in operation. The first was commissioned in 1999, with the fifth one delivered in 2016. Although it hasn’t been conclusively confirmed that the subs are carrying nuclear weapons, a sixth vessel has been delivered to Israel, ‘which is said to be capable of carrying nuclear missiles, and be equipped with a VLS (vertical launch system).’ It was also agreed in 2016 that three additional subs would be constructed and delivered around 2027. They will replace the older three subs.
Germany continues to arm and abet Israel to this day, even as catastrophe in Gaza unfolds. As the headline from Middle East Eye reads, ‘In supporting Israel's genocide, Germany has learnt nothing from history’. The article notes:
amid the unfolding genocide in Gaza, German leaders convened in a Berlin synagogue to mark the 85th anniversary of the 1938 November pogrom that formed part of the genocide perpetrated by Germany against Jews in Europe.
At the event Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated, “Germany’s place is on Israel’s side”. And just like other European countries, the whole asylum issue has been drawn into the debate, where people applying for German citizenship must declare support for Israel, or risk application failure. This two-faced duplicity was amply illustrated when it emerged:
that Hubert Aiwanger, the deputy governor of the state of Bavaria, had shared antisemitic propaganda in the 1980s, his party’s vote share increased in the following elections, and the government rewarded him with a fourth ministry.
Also, it became clear in 2011 that German history hadn’t entirely succeeded in teaching an important lesson when it was revealed that:
neo-Nazis had been on a seven-year murder spree while shielded by the intelligence service.
Some countries, such as France, are calling for a ceasefire. But not Germany. Its support for the brutal apartheid regime has increased since October 7.
The article apply sums up the colonial mindset of Germany and most of its neighbours:
Eighty-five years after the November pogrom, Germany should have learned that a genocide cannot be atoned for by enabling another genocide. Similarly, those who think that stoking Islamophobic and anti-migrant sentiments will fulfill Germany's historical responsibility to fight antisemitism have learned nothing from history.
But worse of all, Germany’s holocaust duplicity has been in full display at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as Israel ‘defends’ a genocide case invoked under the genocide convention by South Africa for its savage assault in Gaza since October 7, 2023. As Haaretz reports, ‘Germany announced it will intervene on Israel's behalf as a third party in the case’.
https://twitter.com/RegSprecher/status/1745810578839314935
According to a press release Israel was:
moved by Germany's "standing on the side of truth, and that this blood libel, which is pure hypocrisy and malice, could not be allowed to triumph over the moral principles that are shared by our two countries and the entire civilized world."
The Iran Issue
As noted above, Israel has had Iran within its sights. In 2009, Israel flexed its muscles by taking one of its subs through the Suez Canal. This was a response to Iran’s domestic nuclear development program and was no doubt calculated to send a message to Tehran that Israel doesn’t like what it’s doing.
Netanyahu left no doubts. In an interview with the Atlantic in 2009, he sent a message to Barack Obama that if the US didn’t stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Israel would. Without the slightest hint of irony, Netanyahu stated:
"You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran."
Former defence minister Moshe Ya’alon, made a revealing statement concerning the Iranian threat to US interests in the region:
“This is an existential threat for Israel, but it will be a blow for American interests, especially on the energy front. Who will dominate the oil in the region—Washington or Tehran?”
But despite all the noises coming from Tel Aviv, Israel has backed off from military intervention in Iran. Instead it has turned its attention to its sophisticated intelligence network. With a little help from its friends - particularly in the US - Israel turned to cyber warfare.
The book Countdown to Zero Day - Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon (2014), by Kim Zetter, tells the story of a highly sophisticated cyber attack using the Stuxnet worm that infected Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.
Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, in stark contrast to Israel, has been closely monitored by the IAEA with the full agreement and cooperation of Tehran. The facility based near Natanz in central Iran lies 50 feet under the desert. Its centrifuges had been processing uranium hexafluoride gas for nearly 2 years. In June 2009, the facility became ground zero for what would turn out to one the most spectacular and remarkable cyber attacks ever conducted. By curious coincidence, this occurred at the same time Israel sent its sub through the Suez canal. It also marked the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom, as the Suez Canal article above noted, ‘the Israelis see as promoting the pursuit of nuclear weapons to threaten them.’
Underpinning Israeli culture is a considerable mythology surrounding history and religion, subject to considerable distortion it could be argued. Researchers into the attack found connections of this nature. Linked to this was a comment from Ahmadinejad where he apparently called ‘for Israel to be wiped off the face of the map’. The claims though had been mistranslated, although his sentiments towards Israel were well known. The historical connections were related to ancient Persia. As part of the program related to the worm, reference was made to “guava” and “myrtus.” It goes back to a story from 4BCE when Queen Esther, who was Jewish, saved Persian Jews. She was married to king Ahasherus, who was unaware of her religion. She learned of a plot from his prime minister Haman to wipe out Persian Jews with the Kings backing. She revealed her true identity, begging the King to stand with her and the Jews. He supported her resulting in a turn around whereby the Jews defeated their enemies. To this day:
The Purim holiday, celebrated annually by Jewish communities around the world, commemorates this deliverance of Persian Jews from certain death.
The link the researchers found was that before she became Queen, her name was Hadassah, which in Hebrew means myrtle, or myrtus. Of course Ahmadinejad became the proverbial Haman. There is though another possible interpretation whereby myrtus has a technical interpretation and Guava relates to a California firm called Guava Technologies, which may make equipment used at Natanz. Both have botanical connections. ‘Myrtus is the genus of a family of plants that includes several species of guava’. But who wouldn’t entertain a good story!
On the political front, Ahmadinejad was seen as a problem. His apparent denial of the Holocaust was bad enough. Combine that with Israels’ concern with the enrichment process and you have a recipe for visceral hysteria in Tel Aviv. But if Iran was cooperating with the IAEA, why should there be a problem? IAEA enforcement though is rather limited despite its remit. It can’t pursue intelligence, relying instead on member nations, dominated by the US. That makes the agency just as vulnerable as the rest of the UN to US influenced hegemony.
So what actually happened and how did it all begin? It started in small computer security firm in Belarus called Virus-BlokAda. Technicians had been looking at a virus they had detected. Their examination revealed something much more sophisticated, not seen before. Its program was designed to evade antivirus engines, with the potential to infect millions of machines. However the virus had so far only been found in Iran.
An extremely clever ruse was applied that would enable the virus to infect the relevant machines. An authentic digital certificate from RealTek was used, to fool the machines into recognising the virus as authentic Windows software. It’s likely RealTek was somehow hacked to obtain the certificate. This was a completely new tactic. Microsoft and RealTek needed to be notified. But due to lack of response, they were forced to go public. The cat was out of the bag:
The computer security industry also rumbled into action to address the worm that now had a name—“Stuxnet,” an alias Microsoft conjured from letters in the name of one of the driver files (mrxnet.sys) and another part of the code. As security companies added signatures to their engines to detect the worm and its exploit, thousands of malicious files started showing up on the machines of infected customers.
One thing was perplexing. Machines that were infected weren’t being compromised. The clue came from Germany. It was discovered that Stuxnet was focused on compromising a Siemens based industrial control system. Frank Boldewin had penetrated the code. He noted in a forum, “looks like this malware was made for espionage.” With the knowledge that the attack was specifically targeted, general computer users weren’t at risk. End of story? Not really.
Stuxnet ended up at Symantec as part of a routine evaluation of malware that had been found. Even here it became apparent that the worm was way beyond anything that had been looked at before. Leading the investigation was Liam O’Murchu in their Southern Californian Threat Intelligence Lab. He realised that this was ‘far too sophisticated to be the work of mere cyber-criminals.’ Eventually a team of engineers would piece together a disturbing picture. It was becoming apparent that Iran was the target.
There’s a similarity with sophisticated malware and conventional weapons:
Like conventional weapons, most digital weapons have two parts — the missile, or delivery system, responsible for spreading the malicious payload and installing it onto machines, and the payload itself, which performs the actual attack, such as stealing data or doing other things to infected machines. In this case, the payload was the malicious code that targeted the Siemens software and PLCs [programmable logic controllers].
But finally the most convincing link to Israel was the ancient Persian story. The researchers found that the virus was targeting specific PLCs:
Embedded in the attack code was a detailed dossier describing the precise technical configuration of the PLCs it sought. Every plant that used industrial control systems had custom configurations to varying degrees; even companies within the same industry used configurations that were specific to their needs. But the configuration Stuxnet was looking for was so precise that it was likely to be found in only a single facility in Iran or, if more than one, then facilities configured exactly the same, to control an identical process. Any system that didn’t have this exact configuration would remain unharmed; Stuxnet would simply shut itself down and move on to the next system in search of its target.
The solution to the mystery was getting closer. After a bit of detective work, the search narrowed down to one possible target - Iran’s nuclear reactor at Bushehr. The gravity of the situation hit the researchers. By targeting a major facility such as this, Stuxnet was effectively an act of war. However, Frank Rieger, chief technology officer for German security firm GSMK wrote in response that Natanz was the most likely site for the attack. Then another convincing clue emerged:
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange posted a cryptic note to his website about a possible accident at Natanz. An anonymous source claiming to be associated with Iran’s nuclear program had told Assange that a “serious” nuclear accident had recently occurred at the plant. WikiLeaks usually published only documents on its site, not tips from anonymous sources, but Assange broke protocol, he said, because he had reason to believe the source was credible.
Another remarkable characteristic of Stuxnet was that it could be updated remotely:
To spread an update, Stuxnet installed a file-sharing server and client on each infected machine, and machines that were on the same local network could then contact one another to compare notes about the version of Stuxnet they carried; if one machine had a newer version, it would update the others. To update all the machines on a local network, the attackers would have only had to introduce an update to one of them, and the others would grab it.
Finally it was realised that Stuxnet was designed not for espionage but for sabotage. When the PLC was under attack, the code would disable alarm systems.
Stuxnet’s origins came from the technical expertise of the NSA working with the Israeli Defense Force’s Unit 8200—Israel’s version of the NSA. In effect, the US was responding to Israels demands to take action against Iran, action that would avoid a hot war with the country. The CIA would be charged with the responsibility of launching the covert attack, with the George W Bush administration finally giving the green light.
Stuxnet had done the damage it intended to do, succeeding in putting back Iran’s enrichment program by several years. And as the connection between the centrifuges and Stuxnet were finally confirmed, the New York Times just happened to publish a major exposé on the attack, confirming what was known already. Since the attack, reports suggest Iran has managed to purge the worm from affected systems. It had also galvanised the country’s own attention to cyberwarfare. This is confirmed by another recent article (2023) from the NYT that this is now well established. As for Iran’s nuclear capability, that’s under constant review.
The Samson Option
The Samson Option refers to the Israeli nuclear strategy whereby it would launch a massive nuclear retaliatory strike if the state itself was being overrun. The background to this policy and the history of Israel's nuclear build-up is explored in the 1991 book The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy by Seymour Hersh. Here, I’ll outline how that resulted in the formation of the Samson Option.
The nuclear build up began in earnest during the mid 1960s under a state of ultra security. Air space above Dimona was forbidden to everything, including the Israeli Air Force. So much so that:
During the 1967 Six-Day War, an Israeli Mirage III was shot down when its pilot, either confused or dealing with equipment problems, ventured into Dimona’s airspace. In February 1973, a Libyan airliner flew off course over the Sinai because of a navigational error and also, after ignoring or failing to see signals to land, was destroyed by fighter planes of the Israeli Air Force, killing 108 of the 113 people aboard. Israel claimed, without evidence, that the plane was headed for Dimona.
With Nasser’s Egypt poised to gain likely nuclear assistance from the Soviet Union in the event of a nuclear threat from Israel, the stakes were high. The Driving force was a double historical precedent:
With a nuclear arsenal there would be no more Masadas in Israel’s history, a reference to the decision of more than nine hundred Jewish defenders—known as the Zealots—to commit suicide in A.D. 73 rather than endure defeat at the hands of the Romans.
In its place, argued the nuclear advocates, would be the Samson Option. Samson, according to the Bible, had been captured by the Philistines after a bloody fight and put on display, with his eyes torn out, for public entertainment in Dagon’s Temple in Gaza. He asked God to give him back his strength for the last time and cried out, “Let my soul die with the Philistines.” With that, he pushed apart the temple pillars, bringing down the roof and killing himself and his enemies. For Israel’s nuclear advocates, the Samson Option became another way of saying “Never again.”
The Samson Option would be tested unexpectedly, when, after years of sabre rattling, Egypt, along with Syria, took Israel by surprise by advancing into the Israeli occupied Sinai and Golan Heights respectively. October 6, 1973 was the day the ‘Yom Kippur’ war started, on the actual Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the year for a Jew. As the Arab forces push the Israelis back, Israel thought it was all over. According to Moshe Dayan, Defence Minister at the time, “The situation is desperate. Everything is lost. We must withdraw.” After that, Israel played its trump card:
Israel called its first nuclear alert and began arming its nuclear arsenal. And it used that alert to blackmail Washington into a major policy change.
By demanding:
that the United States begin an emergency airlift of replacement arms and ammunition needed to sustain an extended all-out war effort.
Fortunately, through the intervention of the Soviets, who had been monitoring the situation through intelligence operatives in Israel, the Israeli threat was never realised. The Soviet Union had informed Egypt that Israel had armed warheads ready to go. It transpired that the US had intentionally delayed the supply of weapons to Israel, allowing the Arabs to ‘win some territory, and some self-respect, and thus set up the possibility of serious land-for-peace bargaining.’ As Henry Kissinger put it, the aim was to, “let Israel come out ahead, but bleed.”
But Israel never abandoned the Samson Option. As Hersh sums up in his book:
The basic target of Israel’s nuclear arsenal has been and will continue to be its Arab neighbors. Should war break out in the Middle East again and should the Syrians and the Egyptians break through again as they did in 1973, or should any Arab nation re missiles again at Israel, as Iraq did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability. Never again.
But is the Samson Option a rational option? Louis René Beres reflects on the notion of ‘pretended irrationality’, which he has argued is what the Samson Option actually is. He sums up:
Nuclear deterrence is a “game” that Israel's national leaders must play, but to compete effectively, any would-be winner must always first assess (1) the expected rationality of each critical opponent; and (2) the probable costs and benefits of pretending irrationality oneself. These are undoubtedly complex, interactive, synergistic, and glaringly imprecise "forms" of assessment, but, just the same, they constitute a much-needed foundation for Israel’s long-term security.
But then, given unfolding events at the time of writing, there is at stake the credibility and rationality of the Israeli establishment.
In previous articles in this series, I’ve underpinned biblical elements within the Israeli psyche. A paper published in Israeli Affairs, Samson, Unchained: Biblical Undercurrents in the Political Sentiments of Israeli Jews (2022, Uriel Abulof, Associate Professor of Politics at Tel-Aviv University, and Lecturer at Cornell University), delves into another enduring myth.
The Samson myth is outlined in the Book of Judges, which is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible (Torah) and the Christian Old Testament. Samson is the last Judge of the Israelite’s.
Abulof makes an interesting link with the past and the present, which combine to form our experiences. He points out:
Cognitively we live with the past, recalling events, thinking and rethinking them. Occasionally, however, we live in the past, becoming so emotionally steeped in it that memory obscures the present and future. Sometimes we relive the past, re-experiencing it as though past and present were enmeshed. When the present feels highly familiar, it may turn déjà vu (“already seen”) into déjà vécu (“already lived”), undermining one’s ability to discern what is real, with significant behavioral consequences.
This links into the ideology of Zionism and the manifestation of what he calls ‘mythical memory’, underpinning the inherent fantasy of the imagined state of Israel, thus locking the country into a mythical past, influenced by a biblical entity. More broadly he describes Israel and other countries with a mythological heritage as reanimated communities. In contemporary Israel the bible and the Holocaust have found themselves coalescing in a melting pot.
Samson has become an iconic figure, an ancient superhero, Israel’s Captain America. But the story represents a ‘powerful and fatalistic sequence of rise and fall and revenge.’ As a biblical story, it authenticates Samson’s flaws, an all too human representation. He also personifies the pursuit of power, feeding into the notion of vulnerability. This is expressed succinctly:
This pursuit, however, may go awry when a fantasy, fed by an ongoing sense of inferiority, breeds a pathological hunger for excessive power.
This is exemplified in the prevailing myth of David and Goliath, where an inferior vulnerable Israelite defeats a more powerful Philistine giant - the notion that a small nation can take on anyone. It these myths that feed Israel’s psyche. Politically, Israel projects itself as vulnerable. But cross us and we will unleash a sling-shot. Of course Israel doesn’t want to always project itself as David. It want to be seen as Samson. The IDF becomes the personification of this projection, so much so that during the 1948 war, a commando unit was named Samson’s Foxes. But of course Samson had a weakness - his hair. It was that that led to his betrayal by Delilah. The moral here as Abulof notes is:
Trust no one. Samson’s real Achilles’ heel was not his long hair but his misplaced trust and his weakness in the face of temptation which led to his betrayal. His fantasies and his flaws of character combined to produce his downfall: if what matters is power, without it, one is lost; it is unrealistic to hope for help from others.
Samson’s flaws of character resonate in the annals of the Jewish people. Carrying the scars and lessons of anti-Semitism, the mistrust of non-Jews (goyim) has become entrenched in the victimhood culture of Israel.
This created a paradox, as the early Zionists needed allies and support to pursue their dream of a new land. But the Holocaust gave the Zionists a haircut as it were. As the new country faced wars with its neighbours and later Intifadas from the indigenous natives, Israel adopted a ‘siege mentality.’
Such is the entrenched preoccupation with biblical fantasy that it could in modern parlance be regarded as a cult. For instance, the political left is seen as the the ‘domestic Delilah’.
This engaging paper outlines the Biblical backdrop that has influenced Samson’s Option. That this could lead to Armageddon should raise alarm bells. Abulof quotes military historian Martin van Creveld, in the face of the Iranian threat:
“We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.”
Given what is happening in Gaza, the fact that a nuclear arsenal in the hands of an unhinged extremist fanatical regime isn’t raising alarm bells, should be very concerning. Already there have been dangerous remarks about nuking Palestinians. Israel's Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu had stated that a nuclear strike on the Gaza Strip is "an option." Ironically this earned him a backlash from Netanyahu, who then suspended him. His remarks didn’t go down well with the rest of the government either. This would seem to be more to do with the raising of Israel’s nuclear profile that what he actually said, because Mr Eliyahu has been here before, portraying the image of Palestinians as flies who should be swatted.
No doubt in a few months time the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall will be commemorated. Germany may have cause to reflect on the holocaust it is perpetuating - again. ‘Never again’ has become a redundant Cliché.