Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons Exclusive: Secret apartheid-era papers give first official evidence of Israeli nuclear weapons The secret military agreement signed by Shimon Peres, now president of Israel, and P W Botha of South Africa. Photograph: Guardian Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons. The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes". The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret. The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor denying their existence. The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa's post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky's request and the revelations will be an embarrassment, particularly as this week's nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York focus on the Middle East. They will also undermine Israel's attempts to suggest that, if it has nuclear weapons, it is a "responsible" power that would not misuse them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-weapons
Israel refuses to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Israel and refuses to even confirm or deny that it has nukes.
Most of us have accurately assumed that they do but I didn't know they were trying to sell them to unstable governments.
A war buddy! From the same article above, Some weeks before Peres made his offer of nuclear warheads to Botha, the two defense ministers signed a covert agreement governing the military alliance known as Secment. It was so secret that it included a denial of its own existence: "It is hereby expressly agreed that the very existence of this agreement... shall be secret and shall not be disclosed by either party". The agreement also said that neither party could unilaterally renounce it.
Lots and lots of diamonds? It does seem more than a little fishy... not that Israel has nukes, of course, but that they would sell them to South Africa. Or that they would offer, I guess. Why did South Africa say no? Or did Israel withdraw the offer? It was 35 years ago, and it's being offered as evidence that Israel can't be responsible with its nukes? Ed O.
