In 1986, an Israeli civil servant who worked in the state-owned nuclear industry flew to London where he was invited to meet with reporters working for The Sunday Times. In these meetings, Mordechai Vanunu revealed Israel’s top secret – that they were in control of a growing stockpile of nuclear warheads.
In the weeks immediately following his explosive revelations, Mr Vanunu visited Rome where he was abducted by agents of the Israeli security services. Back in Tel Aviv, Mr Vanunu was placed on trial for treason. He served an eighteen year sentence in solitary confinement.
Now released, Mr Vanunu converted to Christianity. Prohibited from travel to other nations where he has been offered academic posts, Mr Vanunu is now living in the sanctuary of a Church in Israel.
In the early 1990s, one of America’s premiere journalists, Seymour Hersh, published a best-selling book, The Samson Option, detailing Mr Vanunu’s testimony and a great deal of new information about Israel’s vaunted nuclear defense capability.
While the vast majority of the peoples of the earth have known about Israel’s nuclear arsenal since 1986, many Americans still do not accept the existence of WMDs under the direct control of the Israeli defense establishment. In the mid-1990s, Michael Moore – not known for his conservatism nor his reflexive support of Israel – made disparaging remarks during an interview that touched on the existence of the Israeli nuclear arsenal, because he was obviously oblivious to either Mordechai Vanunu’s testimony or Mr Hersh’s bestselling book.
In the reports below, The Sunday Times have just revealed new evidence that Israel is currently planning to launch a nuclear attack against Iran. Aimed at destroying the embryonic Iranian nuclear industry, the war heads will be delivered via conventional jet fighters. In The Sunday Times coverage, no reference was made to the possibility of a nuclear strike from Israeli submarines that have been equipped with Sea-to-surface missiles that could be fitted with nuclear warheads.
Two years ago, Seymour Hersh began publishing a series of papers in The New Yorker detailing a vast planning project in Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon to attack and wage war on Iran. In the interim, many other authors have now reported details of the highly publicized policy of the Bush-Cheney White House to use military force to compel Iran to abandon any ambitions she might have to develop nuclear weapons. These American military options include the use of nuclear weapons.
From a lengthening series of reports, it is now clear that the Bush- Cheney administration has been severely weakened by the recent midterm elections, and they apparently no longer feel capable of launching a direct nuclear strike against Iran. In negotiations in Washington between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President George Bush as well as in the highly publicized negotiations between Vice President Dick Cheney and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, it would now appear that the planning to strike Iran has altered only slightly from the grandiose schemes designed by Donald Rumsfeld prior to his retirement on the day after the midterm elections las year. Rather than a direct American nuclear strike against Iran’s nuclear targets, Israel has been given the assignment of launching the nuclear strike aimed at the Iranian cities: Natanz, Isfahan and Arak.
What remains to be seen is whether the American media – now ranked 53rd on the International Press Freedom Index – will cover the story – and whether the American people will be informed of the intimate collaboration between the Bush-Cheney White House, the Olmert government in Israel and other governments now known to be involved in the military planning to contain Iran’s still nascent nuclear development.
