Israel has the most sophisticated conventional and nuclear weapons program in the Middle East, largely because it has received considerable financial assistance from the West. Nevertheless, Israel has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and has chosen to pursue a nuclear option because it does not believe that the United States would effectively protect it in the case of a first-strike WMD attack from its immediate neighbors. Even though Israel considers the United States a strong ally, it is firmly independent and believes that it can rely only on itself for protection. Israel's geographic location makes it vulnerable to attacks by Arab neighbors. Israel has not overtly declared its nuclear capability, but there is little disagreement among experts that Israel has a well-developed nuclear program, based outside the town of Dimona. In the late 1990s, U.S. intelligence estimated that Israel could possess as many as seventy-five to 130 nuclear weapons. Estimates from other observers ranged as high as four hundred. (See Figure 4.4.) In July 2004 IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei visited Israel; however, Israeli officials contend that they will not consider disarmament until a comprehensive Middle Eastern peace is obtained, and they will not permit IAEA inspection of the Dimona nuclear complex.
Little has been published about Israel's biological and chemical weapons capabilities. However, Israel has not signed the BWC, and the NTI reports that neighboring states allege that Israel has an active biological weapons program. According to the Federation of American Scientists, Israel's offensive biological and chemical warfare program is located at Ness-Ziona. Although Israel signed the CWC, as of 2004 it had not ratified the convention. Several reports published by scientists working at the Department of Pharmacology in the Israel Institute for Biological Research at Ness-Ziona described nerve agents, and in 1992 a plane crashed en route to Ness-Ziona
FIGURE 4.2
FIGURE 4.3
that contained fifty gallons of a chemical precursor of a sarin nerve agent.
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