Israel's Nuclear Weapons Program
The fact that Israel possesses nuclear weapons is not in dispute, but how did it procure them and with whose help? Val Reynoso investigates.
Israel's nuclear-weapons program was initiated by the founding prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, who stated that Israel could only survive as a newly formed, fiscally poor nation if it possessed nuclear weapons to deter militaries, such as those from then-enemies Egypt and Jordan.
Israel made an agreement in 1957 with France, which helped install a plutonium-based facility in the Israeli city of Dimona. The United States was a close political ally to Israel, but was not prepared to provide Israel with nuclear weapons. The nuclear facility was built under extreme secrecy in the Israeli Negev desert near Dimona in 1958.
The construction occurred a year after former Israeli director-general of the Ministry of Defense, Shimon Peres, established a technical cooperation and political agreement with France on the reactor and reprocessing plant and that Israel would only use plutonium for what they defined as peaceful purposes.
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