The U.S. ambassador in Israel was on an official tour. He visited a fertilizer plant in Sodom, just off the Dead Sea coast. Tour done, it was time to return. For the journey back to Tel Aviv, the Israeli Air Force gave him a helicopter. They were flying over the Nezhev desert. That’s when the ambassador spotted an industrial facility.
It was located in the middle of nowhere. So the ambassador asked the Israeli official, The answer came from Adi Cohen. He was then working at Israel’s finance ministry. Cohen said it was a textile factory, except it wasn’t. What the US ambassador saw was the Dimona nuclear facility, the site of Israel’s nuclear program. Cohen later talked about this conversation.
He says he was stumped, so in the end, he went off script. He called the facility a textile factory. It was a cover that stuck. Many Israeli officials would later borrow Cohen’s statement, few people buy it. Most of the world knows Israel has nuclear weapons. No one admits it though. You could call it a poorly kept secret. But why did Israel need nukes in the first place? How did they get them? And why keep them secret? Time for a flashback. Our story begins in 1948. Immediately after Israel was created, it came under attack. Arab countries ganged up on it.
Israel would defeat all of them. But Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion saw the larger picture. This was just round one. Arab countries would regroup and come back. There would be round two. And when it came, he wanted to be ready. Ben-Gurion knew about the power of nuclear weapons. He was also tech savvy. In 1948, he would write to new recruits And this is what he told them.
We are living in an era that discloses the atom, its miraculous composition, and the tremendous power hidden in it. When Gurdian wanted to harness that power, the only question was how. He needed scientists to do the magic. And he found a willing candidate in his new country, Ernst David Bergmann. His story is very interesting. Bergmann was born in Germany. He went on to become an organic chemistry expert at the University of Berlin. But in 1933, he had to leave the country.
The Nazis had begun hunting Jews, and a chemistry professor wouldn’t have lasted long. So he first went to London, and from there he left for what was then Palestine. Ben-Gurion and Bergman hit it off. In 1948, he was appointed head of the IDF scientific division. In 1951, he became the scientific advisor to the defense ministry, and in 1952, he was given charge of the newly formed IAEC, the Israel Atomic Energy Commission. You could say he was Israel’s Oppenheimer, or their homie baba, depending on where you live. So Israel now had two things.
Political will from Ben Gurion, and scientific knowledge from Bergman. What they needed was an enforcer now. A military man who would do the dirty work. Enter Shimon Peres. Again, it’s an interesting career path. Peres was not your typical military man. He wasn’t even part of the Israeli armed forces. Yet in the 1950s and 60s, he wielded immense power. Perhaps more than the generals. So these three figures were key to the nuclear program. It’s hard to say when they decided to build a bomb. After all, Israel has not admitted to any of this. But most historians point to 1955.
Israel, France, and Britain had already conspired That plan blew up in their face. But it did cement ties between Israel and France. So in 1957, Paris signed on. They gave Israel a plutonium reactor. Hundreds of French workers came to Dimona. They had two jobs. One, to build the reactor and two, to build a reprocessing plant. And this plant was very important.
It would recycle nuclear fuel. The unusable waste part would be removed. Only the usable plutonium would remain. At one point, more than 2,500 French workers lived in Dimona. It was all top secret. You couldn’t even write back home. You had to write letters to a fake P.O. box in Latin America. But despite all of this, the Americans did find out. In 1960, they got photographic evidence.
Israel was building a reactor in the Nezhev desert. So Eisenhower wanted answers. He was the U.S. president. Ben Gurion said it was all peaceful. He also made a statement in the Israeli Knesset, till date it’s the only mention of Demona in Israel’s parliament. And what did the prime minister say? Same thing he told the Americans. Demona is meant for peaceful purposes.
Israel needed electricity, nuclear power was the only way. Just one problem though, the Americans were not convinced. Remember the helicopter ride in 1960? Chances are the ambassador’s question was not out of curiosity. He likely knew about the reactor. All he wanted was an official Israeli reaction. Eisenhower could not do much about it. He left office in 1961. John F. Kennedy took over from him. Kennedy tried to play hardball.
He made Israel agree to regular inspections by the United States. 1961, 1962 and 1964 and each time they gave a clean chit. But behind the scenes Israel was busy, they were sourcing key components from abroad. One agency played a key role in that, it’s called LACAM, the Science Liaison Bureau. So how did he end up spying? Well, Milchen is an Israeli. He met Perez at a nightclub in Tel Aviv. Later in his life, he explained why he chose to be a spy, and this is what he said. Do you know what it’s like to be a 20-s kid and his country lets him be James Bond? That was exciting. So, Milchen was on board and he used his connections well.
He photographed blueprints that helped Israel’s program, even got a US nuclear scientist to join his company board. And guess how? By offering him a meeting with actor Richard Dreyfus. So Israel was on a roll. They got the blueprints, they got the reactor, but now they needed heavy water. Another key part of the nuclear program, this time Norway obliged, they’d sold heavy water to the UK not all of it had been used up. So Israel bought the extra.
How did the Americans miss all of this? Especially after sending multiple inspection teams? Well, simple answer. Israel hid things well. Apparently they built false walls in front of the lifts going underground at Demona. That’s where the reprocessing plant was being built. So the Americans only saw the reactor. The plant underneath was hidden.
Even American spy planes could not spot it. So through the inspections and scrutiny, the work continued. And by the late 1960s, the bomb was ready. Just one question remained now. How and when would they test it? In 1967, Israel came close to it. The Six-Day War was underway. Israel ended up winning a stunning victory over the Arabs. But their government had a plan B ready, if things go south. Test a bomb in the Sinai desert.
That would have made the Arabs pull back. As it turned out, plan B was not really needed. By 1968, the Americans got the full picture. They knew Israel had a bomb. Yet they couldn’t do anything. Because at that time, the NPT was being discussed. That’s the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT. The US wanted to limit nuclear bombs to five countries. The US, the UK, France, Soviet Union, and China. So Washington could not go public with Israel. It would have killed the NPT. Just think about it. If the Arab nations knew about Israel’s nukes, would they have signed? the NPT? Absolutely not. In the end, the Arab countries did sign.
Israel maintains a policy called nuclear ambiguity. They won’t confirm they have nuclear weapons. They won’t deny it either. How then do we know all of this? Thanks to declassified documents from the US, from the US government, also interviews and statements given by the people involved. And it was all started by this man, Mordecai Vanunu. He is a former Israeli technician. He worked in Dimona from 1977 to 1985. Before he quit his job, he photographed the whole place, the plutonium parts, the thermonuclear model, even the secret work on Tritium. He leaked all of this to British media in 1986.
That’s when the world realized that Israel has nuclear weapons. Until then, it was all a secret. After 1986, it became an open secret. He was convicted and imprisoned for 18 years, 10 of which he spent in solitary confinement. It tells you how guarded Israel is. But what’s the status today? Occasionally, Israeli politicians do let it slip. Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2020 called Israel a nuclear power. The purpose of this project is to turn Israel into an energy plant.
Last week we started to release gas from the Lviv-Yadan-Yarden reactor. But has this policy worked for them, for the Israelis? It’s honestly hard to say. The last major Arab-Israel war was in 1973, the Yom Kippur War. That’s when Arab states ganged up on Israel. But after the whistle was blown in 1986, it has not happened again.
