Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
International Herald Tribune
May 10, 2008 By Bennett Ramberg
For months Washington officials remained silent. They would not discuss Israel's Sept. 6, 2007 strike on Syria's suspect nuclear site.
Then, on April 29, following secret congressional intelligence briefings, President George W. Bush spoke out at a news conference. "We were concerned that an early disclosure would increase the risk of a confrontation or retaliation in the Middle East," he said.
He added that the administration elected to release information now because it "felt the risk of retaliation . . . was reduced."
The emphasis on "retaliation" should have prompted a follow-up question from the White House press corps. What retaliation so worried Washington and, indeed, Jerusalem, that they remained mum for so many months?
Looking back, a little-noticed November 2007 article in the London Sunday Times article provided an inkling. It reported something unusual: Israel had gone on "red alert" to protect the one asset that would mark the target for a retaliatory tit-for-tat, the country's nuclear weapons reactor at Dimona.
But the Times failed to grasp the full implications. Situated in a relatively remote corner of the Negev desert, Dimona is the heart of Israel's atomic weapons program. During its 40-plus years of operation, it has produced plutonium for upwards of 200 nuclear weapons. But while the installation promotes nuclear deterrence, it also offers Israel's adversaries a weapon of their own, a radiological sitting duck.
History provides grounds for concern. In the 1960s, Egypt contemplated attacking the plant. In 1991, in the heat of the Persian Gulf war, Saddam Hussein launched several rockets at Dimona, one of which nearly hit the mark. In 2004, Iranian officials announced that the reactor was in their cross hairs; in 2007, Syria made the same announcement.
Such threats take place against a regional military tapestry that has established atomic plants as fair game. During the 1980s Iraq-Iraq war, the combatants attacked reactors under construction. In 1981, Israel destroyed Saddam's Osirak reactor. At the outset of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, American warplanes struck an Iraqi research reactor outside Baghdad followed, in 2003, by Washington's invasion of Iraq, purportedly to ferret out all WMD.
In no case did strikes release radioactive elements into the environment. But because Dimona is an operating atomic facility, a successful assault today would be different.
Recognizing the risk, Israel long ago took a number of steps. In addition to locating the installation as far as possible from major population centers, it placed reprocessing and weapons assembly facilities in deep underground bunkered cells. It further ringed the plant with antiaircraft and, later, missile defenses.
Still, there remains the peril that adversaries could defeat these defenses in ballistic and cruise-missile strikes, lifting the reactor's radioactive contents into the environment.
Dimona is no Chernobyl. It generates less than five percent of the ill-fated Soviet reactor's power and its radioactive inventory reflects its small size.
Computer modeling suggests that were prevailing winter winds to push the radioactive plume into the West Bank, the contamination could generate hundreds of cancers.
In the late fall, seasonal weather could carry light radioactive concentrations over Israel's heavily populated coastal communities. Although health risks would be very low outside the immediate vicinity of the installation, concerns nonetheless could generate costly economic dislocations and, like Chernobyl, significant and lingering public anxiety over health impacts.
Then there is the matter of retribution. A successful attack by Iran, for example, could prompt the Israeli public to demand a response in kind. Although the Persian state is building a Dimona-like reactor in Arak, if Jerusalem was bent on inflicting radiological revenge, its forces would go after the Bushehr nuclear power plant which Tehran plans to open later this year or next.
Once the plant has operated for a period of time and built up a radioactive inventory, the consequences of a strike could rival the 1986 Chernobyl accident. But prevailing northerly winds would drive much of the effluent into the thinly populated south.
With a number of Middle East countries planning to build similar nuclear power plants in the decade ahead, discouraging military assaults - at least against active reactors - should be a priority for all. The 1990 Indo-Pakistan agreement forbidding attacks on nuclear facilities provides a model.
But Israel, which finds itself in a vulnerable place today, has another option. It can close Dimona.
The plant, one of the world's oldest, has generated all the nuclear material military planners plausibly could use. In addition, closure would set a nonproliferation standard for the Middle East - no more dedicated nuclear weapons reactors, a goal that would enhance Jerusalem's security.
In so doing, it would eliminate the radiological specter that, since September 2007, kept - and should still keep - Jerusalem and its Washington ally up at night.
Bennett Ramberg, who served in the State Department in the George H. W. Bush administration, is the author of "Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy."
May 10, 2008 By Bennett Ramberg
For months Washington officials remained silent. They would not discuss Israel's Sept. 6, 2007 strike on Syria's suspect nuclear site.
Then, on April 29, following secret congressional intelligence briefings, President George W. Bush spoke out at a news conference. "We were concerned that an early disclosure would increase the risk of a confrontation or retaliation in the Middle East," he said.
He added that the administration elected to release information now because it "felt the risk of retaliation . . . was reduced."
The emphasis on "retaliation" should have prompted a follow-up question from the White House press corps. What retaliation so worried Washington and, indeed, Jerusalem, that they remained mum for so many months?
Looking back, a little-noticed November 2007 article in the London Sunday Times article provided an inkling. It reported something unusual: Israel had gone on "red alert" to protect the one asset that would mark the target for a retaliatory tit-for-tat, the country's nuclear weapons reactor at Dimona.
But the Times failed to grasp the full implications. Situated in a relatively remote corner of the Negev desert, Dimona is the heart of Israel's atomic weapons program. During its 40-plus years of operation, it has produced plutonium for upwards of 200 nuclear weapons. But while the installation promotes nuclear deterrence, it also offers Israel's adversaries a weapon of their own, a radiological sitting duck.
History provides grounds for concern. In the 1960s, Egypt contemplated attacking the plant. In 1991, in the heat of the Persian Gulf war, Saddam Hussein launched several rockets at Dimona, one of which nearly hit the mark. In 2004, Iranian officials announced that the reactor was in their cross hairs; in 2007, Syria made the same announcement.
Such threats take place against a regional military tapestry that has established atomic plants as fair game. During the 1980s Iraq-Iraq war, the combatants attacked reactors under construction. In 1981, Israel destroyed Saddam's Osirak reactor. At the outset of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, American warplanes struck an Iraqi research reactor outside Baghdad followed, in 2003, by Washington's invasion of Iraq, purportedly to ferret out all WMD.
In no case did strikes release radioactive elements into the environment. But because Dimona is an operating atomic facility, a successful assault today would be different.
Recognizing the risk, Israel long ago took a number of steps. In addition to locating the installation as far as possible from major population centers, it placed reprocessing and weapons assembly facilities in deep underground bunkered cells. It further ringed the plant with antiaircraft and, later, missile defenses.
Still, there remains the peril that adversaries could defeat these defenses in ballistic and cruise-missile strikes, lifting the reactor's radioactive contents into the environment.
Dimona is no Chernobyl. It generates less than five percent of the ill-fated Soviet reactor's power and its radioactive inventory reflects its small size.
Computer modeling suggests that were prevailing winter winds to push the radioactive plume into the West Bank, the contamination could generate hundreds of cancers.
In the late fall, seasonal weather could carry light radioactive concentrations over Israel's heavily populated coastal communities. Although health risks would be very low outside the immediate vicinity of the installation, concerns nonetheless could generate costly economic dislocations and, like Chernobyl, significant and lingering public anxiety over health impacts.
Then there is the matter of retribution. A successful attack by Iran, for example, could prompt the Israeli public to demand a response in kind. Although the Persian state is building a Dimona-like reactor in Arak, if Jerusalem was bent on inflicting radiological revenge, its forces would go after the Bushehr nuclear power plant which Tehran plans to open later this year or next.
Once the plant has operated for a period of time and built up a radioactive inventory, the consequences of a strike could rival the 1986 Chernobyl accident. But prevailing northerly winds would drive much of the effluent into the thinly populated south.
With a number of Middle East countries planning to build similar nuclear power plants in the decade ahead, discouraging military assaults - at least against active reactors - should be a priority for all. The 1990 Indo-Pakistan agreement forbidding attacks on nuclear facilities provides a model.
But Israel, which finds itself in a vulnerable place today, has another option. It can close Dimona.
The plant, one of the world's oldest, has generated all the nuclear material military planners plausibly could use. In addition, closure would set a nonproliferation standard for the Middle East - no more dedicated nuclear weapons reactors, a goal that would enhance Jerusalem's security.
In so doing, it would eliminate the radiological specter that, since September 2007, kept - and should still keep - Jerusalem and its Washington ally up at night.
Bennett Ramberg, who served in the State Department in the George H. W. Bush administration, is the author of "Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy."