Israel, the only Middle East nuclear weapons power, fears US-Saudi deal

A new deal that would see the United States invest in Saudi Arabia‘s civilian nuclear capabilities has sparked concerns within Israel that the Kingdom could ultimately weaponize its program amid deepening unrest in the Middle East.

Israel has never publicly confirmed nor denied the existence of its own nuclear arsenal, though it has long been attested to by former top figures in both Israel and the U.S. Last year, as U.S.-Saudi discussions of potential nuclear collaboration picked up steam shortly before the 12-Day War between Israel and Iran, current and former Israeli officials told Newsweek such a move could spark a regional arms race.

Now, with the deal announced Wednesday, those fears have resurfaced in even greater magnitude at an already volatile moment for a region witnessing renewed direct clashes between the U.S. and Iran, also involving Iranian strikes on Saudi Arabia and other U.S. partners in the Middle East.

Ariel Levite, former principal deputy director general of policy at the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission who now serves as senior fellow at both the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nuclear Policy Program and Harvard’s Belfer Center Managing the Atom, pointed out that even when U.S.-Saudi nuclear discussions first gained traction under former President Joe Biden’s administration, “it was very contentious that Israel would agree to enrichment plants in Saudi Arabia and so on, which is very disconcerting.”

But then, Israel aimed to link the deal and offset its risk through a normalization of diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia. Normalization negotiations largely dissolved with the onset of the war in Gaza in October 2023, however, and frictions over the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran launched in February have put Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a far tougher position.

Wed 21 Apr 2004-—22 years ago

Mordechai Vanunu walked free from prison today after spending 18 years in jail for revealing secrets that exposed Israel as one of the world’s top nuclear powers and said he was “proud and happy” at his actions. In a defiant address outside prison, the nuclear whistleblower said his treatment inside, which included 12 years in solitary confinement, had been “cruel and barbaric” but insisted that the security services “did not break me”. He said that he wished Israel no harm and that he had “no more secrets” to tell. He planned, he said, to move to the US to get married and study and teach history. “I am now ready to start my life,” he said.

But he also called for Israel’s nuclear reactor to be inspected and railed against the “secret cooperation” between Israel and western countries such as the US, Britain, Germany and Canada. Flashing victory signs, Mr Vanunu walked into the courtyard of the Shikma prison in Ashkelon to be met by loud cheers from around 200 supporters, while a smaller group of counter-demonstrators booed. Surrounded by dozens of journalists and flanked by two of his brothers, he held an impromptu press conference, but refused to answer questions in Hebrew because of the suffering he said he sustained at the hands of the state of Israel.

“I am proud and happy to do what I did,” Mr Vanunu said. He said that Israel did not need nuclear weapons as there were no other countries in the Middle East that had any, and that there was no need for a Jewish state. “Jewish people should solve its problems with the Palestinians,” he said.

Mr Vanunu said Israel’s Mossad spy agency and the Shin Bet security services tried to rob him of his sanity by keeping him in solitary confinement. “You didn’t succeed to break me, you didn’t succeed to make me crazy,” he said. Asked if he was a hero, he said: “All those who are standing behind me, supporting me ... all are heroes ... I am a symbol of the will of freedom ... you cannot break the human spirit.”

Supporters cheered him while opponents called him a traitor and argued loudly over whether he should have been imprisoned for life or sentenced to death. “He won’t get out of here alive,” opponents screamed before his release and as Mr Vanunu’s adopted US parents, Nick and Mary Eoloff, arrived at the prison. The anti-nuclear activists, meanwhile, held flowers and carried “Thank you Mordechai Vanunu” signs. One man blew into a trumpet as a group of demonstrators held up a sheet declaring “Democracy, Human Rights and Mordechai Vanunu”.

In the short term, Mr Vanunu, who converted to Christianity in the 1980s, said he planned to go to church. Mr Vanunu leaked details and pictures of Israel’s alleged nuclear weapons program to the Sunday Times in 1986. Based on his account, experts said at the time that Israel had the world’s sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.

The revelations undercut Israel’s long-standing policy of neither confirming nor denying its nuclear capability. Israel has imposed travel restrictions and other constraints on Mr Vanunu, a former technician at Israel’s Dimona reactor, citing concern that he would reveal more classified information.

It was thought that Israeli officials will not allow Mr Vanunu to leave the country for at least a year. He has been barred from discussing his work at the nuclear reactor and has been given a map of Israel marking the areas off-limits to him, the Israeli defence ministry said. Israel’s TV’s Channel Two reported yesterday that Israeli officials fear that Mr Vanunu will release further information about the reactor, including details about data Israel received from convicted US spy Jonathan Pollard.

They also fear he will make public the names of Israeli companies that do business with the reactor. The country’s justice minister, Tommy Lapid, said Mr Vanunu has not hidden a desire to do further damage to Israel and release more state secrets. “He’s hell-bent to do as much harm as he can ... we will keep an eye on him, we will watch him. We have allowed him practically every movement but we want to know where he is and we want to know to whom he may or may not divulge state secrets,” he said.

Defending the restrictions imposed on Mr Vanunu, Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres, who spearheaded Israel’s nuclear program in the 1950s and 1960s, said yesterday that “Vanunu violated norms and betrayed his country”. Whatever his ultimate plans, Mr Vanunu is expected to live in the short-term in a luxury apartment complex in Jaffa, an old seaport and now part of Tel Aviv. His family have said they are concerned about his safety.

Earlier today the chief warden of the prison, Yossi Migdash, told Israel Radio that Mr Vanunu was anxious. “Sometimes he shuts inside himself, sometimes he asks a lot of questions, he is tense. After 18 years that he was used to a certain routine and that routine is going to change and that made him tense. There were nights he didn’t sleep,” he said. Among Mr Vanunu’s supporters were British actress Susannah York and Nobel peace prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland. “You feel, ‘Here is a hero for our times, a man who cannot be silenced,”’ York told reporters yesterday. “I just say, ‘Welcome back to life, Mordechai.”’

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