One rule for Israel and another for Iran risks nuclear disaster

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points to a red line he has drawn on a graphic representing an Iranian nuclear bomb as he addresses the UN in 2012.

Photo: Reuters Israel’s avowed goal in the Middle East war is to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Yet the double standard associated with this is hardly sustainable in the long run.

The worst-kept secret in the world of nuclear politics is that Israel possesses a formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons.

It began developing these in the 1950s and reached a fully operational capability by the late 1960s.

Although Israel refuses to confirm or deny this fact, arms control organisations have assessed that the country has some 80 to 90 nuclear weapons.

In recent days, Iran targeted Israel’s nuclear facility in the southern town of Dimona, injuring more than 100 people.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called for restraint to avoid a “nuclear accident”.

People inspect the site of an Iranian missile strike in Dimona, Israel, on Sunday.

More than 100 people were injured in the attack.

Photo: AFP There is much evidence to support the existence of Israel’s arsenal.

In 1963, then deputy defence minister Shimon Peres famously stated Israel would not be the first to “introduce” nuclear weapons to the Middle East.

What this actually meant was spelled out a few years later by the Israeli ambassador to the United States.

For a weapon to be “introduced”, he said, it needed to be tested and publicly declared.

Merely possessing them did not constitute introducing them.

Several whistle-blower accounts, intelligence reports and satellite imagery confirm the extent of the Israeli programme and its capabilities.

More recently, Amichai Eliyahu, a far-right minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, alluded to using nuclear weapons in Gaza – a tacit acknowledgement of Israel’s capabilities.

He was later reprimanded by Netanyahu.

And in 2024, Avigdor Lieberman, a former defence and foreign minister, threatened to “use all the means at our disposal” to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon.

He added: “It should be clear at this stage it is not possible to prevent nuclear weapons from Iran by conventional means.” It is important to remember that Israel not only developed its nuclear weapons in secret – employing subterfuge, misleading claims and even the suspected theft of bomb-grade nuclear material from the US – it has also rejected international inspections of

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