Nuclear security

Does Israel really have 200 nuclear weapons, or was Colin Powell exaggerating?

Israel has long maintained a policy of “nuclear ambiguity,” neither confirming nor directly denying that it has a nuclear arsenal. A Nuclear Notebook report by Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris of the Federation of American Scientists, published by the Bulletin in late 2014, estimated that Israel had approximately 80 nuclear warheads for delivery by two dozen missiles, and said that claims of 200 to 400 warheads are exaggerated. “Whatever the composition of the Israeli nuclear arsenal,” Kristensen and Norris wrote, “we neither see the indicators that Israel has sufficient nuclear-capable launchers for 200 to 400 nuclear weapons, nor understand why a country that does not have a strategy for fighting nuclear war would need that many types of warheads or warhead designs to deter its potential adversaries.”