In a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Ze’ev Snir, the former head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Committee, repeatedly emphasized that the “survival” of his country is extremely dependent on its close relationship with the United States.
In his conversation with journalist Nadav Eyal, Snir didn’t dwell much on the substantial military, economic, or security assistance the U.S. has historically given to Israel. His emphasis and deep anxiety centered on U.S. backing for Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal.
Survival, in the Israeli political vocabulary, has a particular connotation. Questions like “Will Israel survive?” and “Is Israel Finished?” are frequently discussed by Israeli policymakers, scholars, and journalists. Survival was at the heart of the decision by Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion to initiate a nuclear weapons program and ultimately acquire a nuclear arsenal. Precisely because he realized that Israel could not rely on the assurances of any superpower, Ben Gurion viewed nuclear weapons as Israel’s ultimate insurance policy. Thus when a person like Snir who has been responsible for Israel’s nuclear program for years states that “without American support, Israel will struggle to survive,” and then corrects himself to say, “and this is an understatement, it will not survive,” the implications are hard to ignore.
For decades, the de facto legitimization of Israel’s nuclear deterrent has rested on the concept that Israel is a unique democratic society in an undemocratic and violence-prone neighborhood — a ‘‘villa in the jungle,’’ as former prime minister Ehud Barak colorfully called it decades ago. The same representational framework has been used to justify preventing any possible changes to Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly, since states of the “jungle” would be “bad” proliferators: “oriental others, whose irrationality, irresponsibility, and lack of restraint means their possession of nuclear technology is a clear danger to international security,” in the words of Tom Vaughan, a British academic.
The United States backed this framework in a secret understanding reached between Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1969. The U.S. implicitly legitimized Israel’s nuclear weapons program so long as Israel didn’t reveal it. The U.S. also tolerated Israeli steps to prevent other Middle Eastern countries from acquiring nuclear weapons technology, from the Israeli bombing of the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981 to the destruction of a Syrian reactor in 2007 to repeated cyber and kinetic attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities and personnel.
After Osirak, the U.S. adopted a policy of “official criticism,” but acted to prevent Israel’s suspension from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or from any other UN body. On September 24, 1982, when the motion to suspend Israel from the IAEA was put to a vote, the U.S. not only rejected it, but launched a frantic lobbying effort to convince as many representatives as possible to abstain, reject, or be absent from the hall when the vote came up. The draft resolution failed, and the issue boiled down to the adoption of a resolution rejecting Israel’s credentials to participate in the IAEA General Conference session. The U.S. was thus key to limiting collective punishment and legitimizing the Israeli counterproliferation policy under the banner of the “right to self-defense.”
A similar dynamic occurred after the Israeli strike on the Al-Kibar nuclear facility in Syria in 2007. The U.S.’s supportive policy was expressed in different forms. On the practical side, the U.S. chose not to disclose intelligence obtained on the Syrian reactor and Israeli intentions in striking it. A U.S. intelligence report in April 2008 emphasized that “Israel had taken military action because it considered a Syrian nuclear capability to be an existential threat to the state” as well as a threat “to regional peace and security.” Furthermore, President George W. Bush is said to have told Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, “I just want you to know that if there will be a response, you can count on all of America being behind you.”
The recent comment by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides that “Israel can and should do whatever they need to deal with [in regards to Iran] and we’ve got their back” caused consternation among those who worry that Israel will drag the U.S. into a war with Iran over that country’s advancing nuclear program, but seemed in keeping with the historic U.S. stance. It came as no surprise when, addressing Nides’ comments, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stated that “We’re committed to Israel’s security. We are committed together to the proposition that Iran never acquire a nuclear weapon. […] The President’s been very clear that every option is on the table to do that.”
Another example of “existential dependence” and “legitimized exceptionality” provided by Snir in the interview relates to decades-long efforts by the Arab Group to get Israel to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards. As Snir points out, Arab countries have lobbied for “a resolution that requires the [IAEA] Director-General … to publish a comprehensive report on the Israeli nuclear program. In October 2015 when I was there, we achieved our greatest success against it. How did we achieve it? The reason we succeeded is simple: the Americans were with us. Massively. Massively. If they weren’t with us, it would have passed. Now, you can say one resolution, not too much to worry about. From there begins a slippery slope. It would have ended in the Security Council.”
Interestingly, Snir was among many others in Israel’s security elite who signed letters to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging him to halt the planned judicial overhaul, which would make the Supreme Court subservient to the majority in parliament. What most worried Snir were the implications of the reversal of the “villa in the jungle” paradigm, which has long enjoyed the benevolence of the United States under the banner of shared democratic principles.
If Israel’s ongoing occupation and control of the Palestinian territories has been compartmentalized in discussions of Israeli democracy, Netanyahu’s recent efforts and his formation of a cabinet which includes the most extreme elements of the Israeli right wing have raised alarms worldwide. In the US, criticism has taken the form of official warnings, letters, a boycott of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich during his recent visit to Washington, and President Joe Biden’s reluctance to invite Netanyahu to the Oval Office.
The prospect of an erosion of this union of values is at the heart of the questions many have historically had about Israel’s survival. On May 1967, a few days before the outbreak of the Six-Day War, President Lyndon Johnson met with Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban. After reassuring him that there was no sign that the Egyptians were planning an attack, Johnson repeated several times, “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go it alone.”
These same words echo today. Should the attributes associated with the “villa” imagery change and the U.S. acknowledge it, Israel’s nuclear politics may also face a reckoning. As pointed out by scholar Or Rabinowitz, as long as Netanyahu is not welcome in Washington, the Biden administration is not reviewing the “secret letter’’ that has served as a commitment by successive American presidents not to pressure Israel regarding its nuclear arsenal. Second, as emphasized by former Israeli intelligence and strategic planning official Udi Evental, Israel’s efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons depend on the U.S. both operationally and politically in the aftermath of any attack — what Evental defines as a ‘‘political iron dome.’’
Ludovica Castelli is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Leicester and focuses on the nuclear history of the Middle East.
The Fragile Balance Between Israel’s Domestic Crisis and Its Nuclear Status
By Ludovica Castelli
Middle East & North Africa
In a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Ze’ev Snir, the former head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Committee, repeatedly emphasized that the “survival” of his country is extremely dependent on its close relationship with the United States.
In his conversation with journalist Nadav Eyal, Snir didn’t dwell much on the substantial military, economic, or security assistance the U.S. has historically given to Israel. His emphasis and deep anxiety centered on U.S. backing for Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal.
Survival, in the Israeli political vocabulary, has a particular connotation. Questions like “Will Israel survive?” and “Is Israel Finished?” are frequently discussed by Israeli policymakers, scholars, and journalists. Survival was at the heart of the decision by Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion to initiate a nuclear weapons program and ultimately acquire a nuclear arsenal. Precisely because he realized that Israel could not rely on the assurances of any superpower, Ben Gurion viewed nuclear weapons as Israel’s ultimate insurance policy. Thus when a person like Snir who has been responsible for Israel’s nuclear program for years states that “without American support, Israel will struggle to survive,” and then corrects himself to say, “and this is an understatement, it will not survive,” the implications are hard to ignore.
For decades, the de facto legitimization of Israel’s nuclear deterrent has rested on the concept that Israel is a unique democratic society in an undemocratic and violence-prone neighborhood — a ‘‘villa in the jungle,’’ as former prime minister Ehud Barak colorfully called it decades ago. The same representational framework has been used to justify preventing any possible changes to Israel’s regional nuclear monopoly, since states of the “jungle” would be “bad” proliferators: “oriental others, whose irrationality, irresponsibility, and lack of restraint means their possession of nuclear technology is a clear danger to international security,” in the words of Tom Vaughan, a British academic.
The United States backed this framework in a secret understanding reached between Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1969. The U.S. implicitly legitimized Israel’s nuclear weapons program so long as Israel didn’t reveal it. The U.S. also tolerated Israeli steps to prevent other Middle Eastern countries from acquiring nuclear weapons technology, from the Israeli bombing of the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981 to the destruction of a Syrian reactor in 2007 to repeated cyber and kinetic attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities and personnel.
After Osirak, the U.S. adopted a policy of “official criticism,” but acted to prevent Israel’s suspension from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or from any other UN body. On September 24, 1982, when the motion to suspend Israel from the IAEA was put to a vote, the U.S. not only rejected it, but launched a frantic lobbying effort to convince as many representatives as possible to abstain, reject, or be absent from the hall when the vote came up. The draft resolution failed, and the issue boiled down to the adoption of a resolution rejecting Israel’s credentials to participate in the IAEA General Conference session. The U.S. was thus key to limiting collective punishment and legitimizing the Israeli counterproliferation policy under the banner of the “right to self-defense.”
A similar dynamic occurred after the Israeli strike on the Al-Kibar nuclear facility in Syria in 2007. The U.S.’s supportive policy was expressed in different forms. On the practical side, the U.S. chose not to disclose intelligence obtained on the Syrian reactor and Israeli intentions in striking it. A U.S. intelligence report in April 2008 emphasized that “Israel had taken military action because it considered a Syrian nuclear capability to be an existential threat to the state” as well as a threat “to regional peace and security.” Furthermore, President George W. Bush is said to have told Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, “I just want you to know that if there will be a response, you can count on all of America being behind you.”
The recent comment by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides that “Israel can and should do whatever they need to deal with [in regards to Iran] and we’ve got their back” caused consternation among those who worry that Israel will drag the U.S. into a war with Iran over that country’s advancing nuclear program, but seemed in keeping with the historic U.S. stance. It came as no surprise when, addressing Nides’ comments, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stated that “We’re committed to Israel’s security. We are committed together to the proposition that Iran never acquire a nuclear weapon. […] The President’s been very clear that every option is on the table to do that.”
Another example of “existential dependence” and “legitimized exceptionality” provided by Snir in the interview relates to decades-long efforts by the Arab Group to get Israel to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards. As Snir points out, Arab countries have lobbied for “a resolution that requires the [IAEA] Director-General … to publish a comprehensive report on the Israeli nuclear program. In October 2015 when I was there, we achieved our greatest success against it. How did we achieve it? The reason we succeeded is simple: the Americans were with us. Massively. Massively. If they weren’t with us, it would have passed. Now, you can say one resolution, not too much to worry about. From there begins a slippery slope. It would have ended in the Security Council.”
Interestingly, Snir was among many others in Israel’s security elite who signed letters to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging him to halt the planned judicial overhaul, which would make the Supreme Court subservient to the majority in parliament. What most worried Snir were the implications of the reversal of the “villa in the jungle” paradigm, which has long enjoyed the benevolence of the United States under the banner of shared democratic principles.
If Israel’s ongoing occupation and control of the Palestinian territories has been compartmentalized in discussions of Israeli democracy, Netanyahu’s recent efforts and his formation of a cabinet which includes the most extreme elements of the Israeli right wing have raised alarms worldwide. In the US, criticism has taken the form of official warnings, letters, a boycott of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich during his recent visit to Washington, and President Joe Biden’s reluctance to invite Netanyahu to the Oval Office.
The prospect of an erosion of this union of values is at the heart of the questions many have historically had about Israel’s survival. On May 1967, a few days before the outbreak of the Six-Day War, President Lyndon Johnson met with Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban. After reassuring him that there was no sign that the Egyptians were planning an attack, Johnson repeated several times, “Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go it alone.”
These same words echo today. Should the attributes associated with the “villa” imagery change and the U.S. acknowledge it, Israel’s nuclear politics may also face a reckoning. As pointed out by scholar Or Rabinowitz, as long as Netanyahu is not welcome in Washington, the Biden administration is not reviewing the “secret letter’’ that has served as a commitment by successive American presidents not to pressure Israel regarding its nuclear arsenal. Second, as emphasized by former Israeli intelligence and strategic planning official Udi Evental, Israel’s efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons depend on the U.S. both operationally and politically in the aftermath of any attack — what Evental defines as a ‘‘political iron dome.’’
Ludovica Castelli is a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Leicester and focuses on the nuclear history of the Middle East.
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