Under a long-standing policy, Israel refuses to acknowledge it has nuclear weapons, relying on the often-repeated mantra that it would not be the first country to introduce such weapons into the region. Unlike Iran, Israel is not a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/netanyahus-crazy-talk-seen-threatening-israels-nuclear-ambiguity/
The Israelis first sought nuclear assistance from the United States under the Atoms for Peace initiative. In 1955, the two countries signed a nuclear cooperation agreement through which the United States provided Israel with a small research reactor under bilateral safeguards and with peaceful-use provisions. Understanding this agreement would not provide Israel with the technology needed for a weapons program, Bergmann asked the Americans for an upgrade, “something like a real reactor,” to produce plutonium.[6] U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) chairman Lewis Strauss essentially told Bergmann that the United States would not provide Israel plutonium or hot cells, and that any nuclear reactor it built would be safeguarded.[7] Recognizing that the United States could only provide limited nuclear assistance, Bergmann advised Peres in mid-1956 that Israel would need to build two reactors at the same time, one with American assistance and another one on its own.[8] Peres turned down that suggestion; instead attention quickly was given to France as another potential nuclear supplier.
http://www.nti.org/country-profiles/israel/nuclear/
At a subsequent meeting with Ben-Gurion, de Gaulle offered to sell Israel fighter aircraft in exchange for stopping work on the reprocessing plant, and came away from the meeting convinced that the matter was closed. It was not. Over the next few months, Israel worked out a compromise. France would supply the uranium and components already placed on order and would not insist on international inspections. In return, Israel would assure France that they had no intention of making atomic weapons, would not reprocess any plutonium, and would reveal the existence of the reactor, which would be completed without French assistance. In reality, not much changed - French contractors finished work on the reactor and reprocessing plant, uranium fuel was delivered and the reactor went critical in 1964.
The United States first became aware of Dimona's existence after U-2 overflights in 1958 captured the facility's construction, but it was not identified as a nuclear site until two years later. The complex was variously explained as a textile plant, an agricultural station, and a metallurgical research facility, until David Ben-Gurion stated in December 1960 that Dimona complex was a nuclear research center built for "peaceful purposes."
There followed two decades in which the United States, through a combination of benign neglect, erroneous analysis, and successful Israeli deception, failed to discern first the details of Israel's nuclear program. As early as 8 December 1960, the CIA issued a report outlining Dimona's implications for nuclear proliferation, and the CIA station in Tel Aviv had determined by the mid-1960s that the Israeli nuclear weapons program was an established and irreversible fact.
United States inspectors visited Dimona seven times during the 1960s, but they were unable to obtain an accurate picture of the activities carried out there, largely due to tight Israeli control over the timing and agenda of the visits. The Israelis went so far as to install false control room panels and to brick over elevators and hallways that accessed certain areas of the facility. The inspectors were able to report that there was no clear scientific research or civilian nuclear power program justifying such a large reactor - circumstantial evidence of the Israeli bomb program - but found no evidence of "weapons related activities" such as the existence of a plutonium reprocessing plant.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/
Transkript:
David Goessmann: The New York Times quotes American and Israeli officials saying the military attack on Gaza was a practice run for any future armed confrontation with Iran. Israel keeps threatening Iran with a military attack. U.S. president Barack Obama has repeatedly declared that in case of Iran “all options are on the table” while the sanctions against Iran deteriorate the economy and even strengthen President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At this point there is no indication and evidence that Iran has even facilities to start building a nuclear bomb. What is your assessment of the U.S.-Israeli policy, supported by European countries, in regard to Iran and the probability of a military escalation?
Gilbert Achcar: Yes. When you look at this problem the only sensible, peaceful policy in the region, the only sensible alternative to this escalation that exists, would be a nuclear free Middle East. And this is a perspective for which many people have been fighting and actually it's even the official position of Arab states to call for a nuclear free Middle East.
David Goessmann: There are UN resolutions for that.
Gilbert Achcar: Of course. You have a Helsinki conference about it and all that. But who is rejecting that ? Not Iran because, as you just said, the Iranians keep saying "We are not building a nuclear bomb. We do not even want to build one, because we believe this is a non-muslim weapon" as Chamenei and even Ahmadinejad said. Because it kills indiscriminately and that's against our religion. They have made statements of this kind. And yet, Iran is signatory to the NPT, the nuclear anti-proliferation treaty. Israel is not. And everyone knows that Israel is nuclear state. Everyone knows that Israel has at least 200 nuclear warheads. It's a major nuclear power, it's not even a small nuclear power, it's a major nuclear power. So, when the United States threaten Iran with war, it is like confirming the right of Israel to have a nuclear monopoly in the region. And this is the best way to avoid any peaceful solution. Because the United States could have a very different policy, which is to put pressure on Israel for de-nuclearisation, for an agreement, which Iran would definitely sign, as all the states of the region, for a nuclear free Middle East. Washington is the only power capable of imposing that on Israel. For two reasons: Because on the one hand Israel depends on the United States to a great extent. Secondly, because the United States can offer their nuclear guarantee to Israel. And Israel knows anyhow that is has a de-facto guarantee for its existence from the United States. So it doesn't accumulate nuclear weapons on its soil. This is a sensible policy to do. But this is not, of course, what Netanjahu and other Israeli governments have been doing. What they are doing is just, you know, trying to - on the one hand assert their right to a nuclear monopoly and the willingness to strike. You know, we have already strikes in Iraq in 1981, the Israeli aviation destroyed the nuclear reactor in Iraq. Recently in Syria, because they said there is some kind of nuclear activity there, and the threat to do that in Iran. Each time, this is creating huge dangers, because when you bomb a nuclear reactor, like the one Israel bomb in Iraq in 1981, what guarantee you don't have is that this won't lead to a catastrophe. At least the recent Japanese type of catastrophe, or the Chernobyl kind of catastrophe. So, when you say you want to bomb nuclear facilities or whatever in Iran, the very thought of that is just criminal. It's just criminal. This shows that there is no rational pro-peace perspective. The only rationality at all is a warmongering rationality, which is a danger for not only the region. I would say for humantiy. Because this just feeds into some kind of crazy cycle of race to weapons of mass destruction and the rest. Who knows what can happen? It's all the more irrational from a peaceful perspective for a state like Israel to do that, that is such a small state, and, as you know, a nuclear cloud does not stop at the border. And an army, even the strongest army on earth can not stop a nuclear cloud, if ever you have one. This is really playing with fire and it's extremely dangerous what is happening.
http://www.kontext-tv.de/broadcast/141212/gilbert-achcar/nuclear-weapons-middle-east
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