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 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…
Except, of course, the RSA was a responsible power, at least militarily. Anyway, at that time, didn’t the RSA have its own bomb? So it would be more like America selling nukes to Britain.
And remind me, how many nukes has Israel given to terrorist allies? We do not expect Iran to be so restrained.
The US appears to have been aware of this as of 1977, and the fact of this widely popularized since around 2000. Given that you’re 10 years too late in announcing this bit of trivia, I can’t say that anyone is surprised, no.
And who was South Africa going to nuke? The great African nation of Wgasa? For what it’s worth, South Africa aggressively deploying a nuclear weapon is portrayed in Larry Bond’s novel Vortex. The nuke is used within South Africa on an invading force. Why else would SA want nukes? I’m asking honestly here as I’m a long way from that region’s politics and may be missing something obvious.
I am interested in the curious relationship between Israel and South Africa but not in the context of yet another “Oh noes, look what teh evil joooooos almost did!” Besides I thought the nuclear buddy-buddy relationship between Israel and SA was an open secret anyhow courtesy of the Vela Incident which was 30 years ago.
It looks likely that the two collaborated to developed some of their first nuclear bombs together. South Africa had uranium deposits that made it ideal for development, and Israel needed the nukes for defense and was willing to fund the development. As soon as anyone turned their eye to South Africa itself, SA appears to have been more than happy enough to dismantle everything they had. They had no use for them.
David Albright and Chris McGreal have claimed that South African projects to develop nuclear weapons during the 1970s and 1980s were undertaken with some cooperation from Israel.
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The United Nations Security Council Resolution 418 of 4 November 1977 introduced a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa, also requiring all states to refrain from “any co-operation with South Africa in the manufacture and development of nuclear weapons”.**
According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, in 1977 Israel traded 30 grams of tritium for 50 tons of South African uranium and in the mid-80s assisted with the development of the RSA-3 ballistic missile.
Also in 1977, according to foreign press reports, it was suspected that South Africa signed a pact with Israel that included the transfer of military technology and the manufacture of at least six nuclear bombs.
In 2000, Dieter Gerhardt, Soviet spy and former commander in the South African Navy, claimed that Israel agreed in 1974 to arm eight Jericho II missiles with “special warheads” for South Africa.
All the bombs (six constructed and one under construction) were destroyed and South Africa acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty when South African Ambassador to the United States Harry Schwarz signed the treaty in 1991. On 19 August 1994, after completing its inspection, the IAEA confirmed that one partially-completed and six fully-completed nuclear weapons had been dismantled. As a result, the IAEA was satisfied that South Africa’s nuclear program had been converted to peaceful applications.
In 2010, documents released by the South African government confirmed the existence of Israel’s nuclear arsenal, and revealed that Israel had offered to sell Apartheid South Africa nuclear weapons
“We”? You may not think so, but I don’t believe for a moment that Iran or any other nation is going to hand over nukes to terrorists. Governments don’t do that.
And no, they aren’t stupid enough to hand terrorists nukes to use on Israel or us and expect plausible deniability to save them. They know quite well that it wouldn’t matter, we and/or the Israelis would kill them all plausible deniability or not.
Eh, it’s only illegal if you get caught. I’m sure the US, Sweden, Switzerland, and every other nation on the planet has done dishonest, slimy things. Thinking that you can get 100% clean ruling government and total adherence to domestic and international law is a dream. What matters is how close they are to 100%. On global terms, Israel and South Africa were still ahead of practically everywhere even in the 70s, and they’ve both improved significantly since then.
Excuses Excuses… everyone was aware of that Israel was in bed with the Apartheid government during a time when the rest of the world was rallying to isolate them. During my time in undergrad this issue caused a lot of anti-apartheid activist to link SA’s oppressive actions towards the ANC to the Palestinian cause.
I think it’s far more important today to look forward to positive relations and good decisions…
Speaking as an Israeli… my country’s relationship with South Africa was nothing to be proud of. It was realpolitik at its worse: they had something we wanted, we had something to offer in return, and the hell with the implications. It’s a bit of history we’d like to forget, if forgetting history were the kind of thing we did.
Just to put things in context, though - and not as an excuse - these were the 1970s. What country didn’t have a repulsive ally or two back in the 70’s? It was an ugly, ugly decade.
I didn’t say they weren’t evil, I just said that they were good at following their own codified laws that had been passed by due process of their legal system.
And apartheid may not have been great, but it’s a far cry from genocide, tribal warfare, anarchy, and many forms of tyranny. You have to remember that nearly all of the world really really sucks. South Africa only got its name on the map because it was run by highly educated white people, not because it was the pinnacle of human evil.
A quick click on Google News shows it’s also on ABC and Bloomberg and Reuters and, naturally, AP – not to mention that Google News of course links to Ha’aretz and the Jerusalem Post (which are also covering the story) and to Aljazeera.net and Hamsayeh.net (likewise).
Surprised that Israel has nuclear weapons? No. Everybody knows that. Surprised that they were doing business with South Africa? On reflection, no - I’d forgotten about it but it’s not news to me. That was the focus of Al Sharpton’s ‘diamond merchant’ remarks, as I recall. It’s disgusting but not something that startles or upsets me.
This may be a subject for another thread, but the problem is that once the technology and weapons are in place, the government doesn’t have to turn anything over to terrorists - and probably wouldn’t, for the reasons you gave - but a small faction within the government could do it.
I would say that secret police, death squads, strict censorship, nationalism, misogyny, religious fundamentilism and historical revisionism counts as tyranny, wouldn’t you?
The South African government was totalitarian in nature with the white afrikaaner male as the pinnacle of god’s creation. Have no doubt that if there was a chance that the National Party would lose an election they would react like any of the corrupt governments in Africa and respond with violence and intimidation to maintain power.
Also remember that during the timeframe that the SA government was trading weapons and technology with Israel it was in the middle of a war along its border. The SA goverment didn’t want weapons for self defence, they had a nice little war going on and needed support to keep it going.