Israel in possession of close to 100 nuclear warheads: SIPRI

A new report reveals that the Israeli regime is in possession of approximately 100 atomic warheads which it refuses to confirm or deny as part of its policy of nuclear ambiguity. 

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said Monday Tel Aviv has 30 gravity bombs which can be delivered by fighter jets – some of which are believed to be equipped for nuclear weapon delivery.

Israel also possesses close to 50 warheads that can be delivered by land-based ballistic missiles such as Jericho III, said to have a range of 5,500 km, the global security think tank said.

The institute said Israel has modified its fleet of German-built Dolphin-class submarines to carry nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missiles, giving it a sea-based second-strike capability.

Israel is the only possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, but its policy is to neither confirm nor deny having atomic bombs.

PressTV-‘US violating NPT, turning blind eye to Israel breaches’

Syria’s UN ambassador has lambasted the United States for violating the nuclear NPT and supporting the Israeli regime in its breach of the international accord.

Last week, managers of the Israeli Dimona nuclear reactor admitted that there has been leakage of radioactive materials from the plant in recent years.

The leak was revealed after Freedi Tawil, a former employee in the plant, sued Dimona to get paid in recompense for getting cancer.

Back in April 2016, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the nearly 53 year-old aluminum core at the nuclear facility had more than 1,500 defects.

Syria’s UN Ambassador Bashar al-Ja’afari in May lambasted Western states for helping Israel establish the Dimona nuclear center and offering it related substances, experience and technology.

Israel has never allowed any inspection of its nuclear facilities and continues to defy international calls to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, whose aim is to prevent the spread of nuclear arms and weapons technology.

The regime has a long history of aggression, occupation, militarism and state terrorism among other international crimes and is in perennial wars with the regional countries.

In August 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened Iran with “atomic annihilation” right from the regime’s secretive atomic weapons facility.

PressTV-‘UN must condemn Israel’s nuclear threat against Iran’

In a letter to the UN, Iran urges the world body to condemn Israel’s nuclear threat against the Islamic Republic and bring its atomic program under its supervision.

Tel Aviv is also at the center of fabrications against Iran's nuclear energy program which is subject to round-the-clock monitoring by the UN. 

Last July, Tehran laughed off Israel's "absurd” claims that its Mossad agents had barged into a nuclear site in southern Tehran and spirited away loads of "secret documents".

In September, Netanyahu sparked a wave of derision among Iranians after saying Israel had discovered a secret atomic warehouse in Tehran, which turned out to be a carpet cleaning factory. 

PressTV-Zarif blasts ‘warmonger’ Netanyahu for nuclear threat

Foreign Minister Zarif hits back at Israeli PM Netanyahu for ‘shamelessly’ threatening Iran with ‘nuclear annihilation.’

In December 2013, the former speaker of the Knesset, Avraham Burg, broke the taboo to declare Israeli possession of both nuclear and chemical weapons and described the official non-disclosure policy as "outdated and childish".

Western governments have played along with the policy of "opacity" by avoiding all mention of the issue.  

The list of nations that secretly sold Israel the material and expertise to make nuclear warheads, or who turned a blind eye to its theft, include today's staunchest campaigners against proliferation: the US, France, Germany, Britain and even Norway.

Experts, however, say Israel's nuclear-weapons project could never have got off the ground without an enormous contribution from France.

Paris that took the toughest line on counter-proliferation when it came to Iran's peaceful nuclear program helped lay the foundations of Israel's atomic weapons.

"In Dimona, French engineers poured in to help build Israel a nuclear reactor and a far more secret reprocessing plant capable of separating plutonium from spent reactor fuel," the Guardian wrote in 2014. 

According to the British paper, there were 2,500 French citizens living in Dimona by the end of the 50s, transforming it from a village to a cosmopolitan town.

"French workers at Dimona were forbidden to write directly to relatives and friends in France and elsewhere, but sent mail to a phony post-office box in Latin America," the American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in his book The Samson Option. 

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