Operation Samson Israel's Deployment of Nuclear Missiles on Subs from
Germany
<
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/germany-supplies-israel-with-subs-for-its
-nuclear-arsenal-fotostrecke-83178.html> Photo Gallery: Germany Supplies
Israel with Nuclear-Capable Subs
<
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/germany-supplies-israel-with-subs-for-its
-nuclear-arsenal-fotostrecke-83178.html> Photos
AFP
Many have wondered for years about the exact capabilities of the submarines
Germany exports to Israel. Now, experts in Germany and Israel have confirmed
that nuclear-tipped missiles have been deployed on the vessels. And the
German government has long known about it. By SPIEGEL
<
http://www.spiegel.de/artikel/a-749184.html> Info06/04/2012
The pride of the Israeli navy is rocking gently in the swells of the
Mediterranean, with the silhouette of the Carmel mountain range reflected on
the water's surface. To reach the Tekumah, you have to walk across a wooden
jetty at the pier in the port of Haifa, and then climb into a tunnel shaft
leading to the submarine's interior. The navy officer in charge of visitors,
a brawny man in his 40s with his eyes hidden behind a pair of Ray-Ban
sunglasses, bounces down the steps. When he reaches the lower deck, he turns
around and says: "Welcome on board the Tekumah. Welcome to my toy."
He pushes back a bolt and opens the refrigerator, revealing zucchini, a
pallet of yoghurt cups and a two-liter bottle of low-calorie cola. The
Tekumah has just returned from a secret mission in the early morning hours.
The navy officer, whose name the military censorship office wants to keep
secret, leads the visitors past a pair of bunks and along a steel frame. The
air smells stale, not unlike the air in the living room of an apartment
occupied solely by men. At the middle of the ship, the corridor widens and
merges into a command center, with work stations grouped around a periscope.
The officer stands still and points to a row of monitors, with signs bearing
the names of German electronics giant Siemens and Atlas, a Bremen-based
electronics company, screwed to the wall next to them.
The "Combat Information Center," as the Israelis call the command center, is
the heart of the submarine, the place where all information comes together
and all the operations are led. The ship is controlled from two leather
chairs. It looks as if it could be in the cockpit of a small aircraft. A
display lit up in red shows that the vessel's keel is currently located 7.15
meters (23.45 feet) below sea level.
"This was all built in Germany, according to Israeli specifications," the
navy officer says, ,"and so were the weapons systems." The Tekuma, 57 meters
long and 7 meters wide, , is a showpiece of precision engineering, painted
in blue and made in Germany. To be more precise, it is a piece of precision
engineering made in Germany that is suitable for equipping with nuclear
weapons.
No Room for Doubt
Deep in their interiors, on decks 2 and 3, the submarines contain a secret
that even in Israel is only known to a few insiders: nuclear warheads, small
enough to be mounted on a cruise missile, but explosive enough to execute a
nuclear strike that would cause devastating results. This secret is
considered one of the best kept in modern military history. Anyone who
speaks openly about it in Israel runs the risk of being sentenced to a
lengthy prison term.
Research SPIEGEL has conducted in Germany, Israel and the United States,
among current and past government ministers, military officials, defense
engineers and intelligence agents, no longer leaves any room for doubt: With
the help of German maritime technology, Israel has managed to create for
itself a floating nuclear weapon arsenal: submarines equipped with nuclear
capability.
Foreign journalists have never boarded one of the combat vessels before. In
an unaccustomed display of openness, senior politicians and military
officials with the Jewish state were, however, now willing to talk about the
importance of German-Israeli military cooperation and Germany's role, albeit
usually under the condition of anonymity. "In the end, it's very simple,"
says Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. "Germany is helping to defend
Israel's security. The Germans can be proud of the fact that they have
secured the existence of the State of Israel for many years to come."
On the other hand, any research that did take place in Israel was subject to
censorship. Quotes by Israelis, as well as the photographer's pictures, had
to be submitted to the military. Questions about Israel's nuclear
capability, whether on land or on water, were taboo. And decks 2 and 3,
where the weapons are kept, remained off-limits to the visitors.
In Germany, the government's military assistance for Israel's submarine
program has been controversial for about 25 years, a topic of discussion for
the media and the parliament. Chancellor Angela Merkel fears the kind of
public debate that German Nobel literature laureate Günter Grass recently
reignited with a poem critical of Israel. Merkel insists on secrecy and
doesn't want to the details of the deal to be made public. To this day, the
German government is sticking to its position that it does not know anything
about an Israeli nuclear weapons program.
'Purposes of Nuclear Capability'
But now, former top German officials have admitted to the nuclear dimension
for the first time. "I assumed from the very beginning that the submarines
were supposed to be nuclear-capable," says Hans Rühle, the head of the
planning staff at the German Defense Ministry in the late 1980s. Lothar
Rühl, a former state secretary in the Defense Ministry, says that he never
doubted that "Israel stationed nuclear weapons on the ships." And Wolfgang
Ruppelt, the director of arms procurement at the Defense Ministry during the
key phase, admits that it was immediately clear to him that the Israelis
wanted the ships "as carriers for weapons of the sort that a small country
like Israel cannot station on land." Top German officials speaking under the
protection of anonymity were even more forthcoming. "From the beginning, the
boats were primarily used for the purposes of nuclear capability," says one
ministry official with knowledge of the matter.
Insiders say that the Israeli defense technology company Rafael built the
missiles for the nuclear weapons option. Apparently it involves a further
development of cruise missiles of the Popeye Turbo SLCM type, which are
supposed to have a range of around 1,500 kilometers (940 miles) and which
could reach Iran with a warhead weighing up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds).
The nuclear payload comes from the Negev Desert, where Israel has operated a
reactor and an underground plutonium separation plant in Dimona since the
1960s. The question of how developed the Israeli cruise missiles are is a
matter of debate. Their development is a complex project, and the missiles'
only public manifestation was a single test that the Israelis conducted off
the coast of Sri Lanka.
The submarines are the military response to the threat in a region "where
there is no mercy for the weak," Defense Minister Ehud Barak says. They are
an insurance policy against the Israelis' fundamental fear that "the Arabs
could slaughter us tomorrow," as David Ben-Gurion, the founder of the State
of Israel, once said. "We shall never again be led as lambs to the
slaughter," was the lesson Ben-Gurion and others drew from Auschwitz.
Armed with nuclear weapons, the submarines are a signal to any enemy that
the Jewish state itself would not be totally defenseless in the event of a
nuclear attack, but could strike back with the ultimate weapon of
retaliation. The submarines are "a way of guaranteeing that the enemy will
not be tempted to strike pre-emptively with non-conventional weapons and get
away scot-free," as Israeli Admiral Avraham Botzer puts it.
Questions of Global Political Responsibility
In this version of tit-for-tat, known as nuclear second-strike capability,
hundreds of thousands of dead are avenged with an equally large number of
casualties. It is a strategy the United States and Russia practiced during
the Cold War by constantly keeping part of its nuclear arsenal ready on
submarines. For Israel, a country about the size of the German state of
Hesse, which could be wiped out with a nuclear strike, safeguarding this
threat potential is vital to its very existence. At the same time, the
nuclear arsenal causes countries like Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia to regard
Israel's nuclear capacity with fear and envy and consider building their own
nuclear weapons.
This makes the question of its global political responsibility all the more
relevant for Germany. Should Germany, the country of the perpetrators, be
allowed to assist Israel, the land of the victims, in the development of a
nuclear weapons arsenal capable of extinguishing hundreds of thousands of
human lives?
Is Berlin recklessly promoting an arms race in the Middle East? Or should
Germany, as its historic obligation stemming from the crimes of the Nazis,
assume a responsibility that has become "part of Germany's reason of state,"
as Chancellor Merkel said in a speech to the Israeli parliament, the
Knesset, in March 2008? "It means that for me, as a German chancellor,
Israel's security is never negotiable," Merkel told the lawmakers.
The perils of such unconditional solidarity were addressed by Germany's new
president, Joachim Gauck, during his first official visit to Jerusalem last
Tuesday: "I don't want to imagine every scenario that could get the
chancellor in tremendous trouble, when it comes to politically implementing
her statement that Israel's security is part of Germany's reason of state."
The German government has always pursued an unwritten rule on its Israel
policy, which has already lasted half a century and survived all changes of
administrations, and that former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder summarized in
2002 when he said: "I want to be very clear: Israel receives what it needs
to maintain its security."
* Part 1: Israel's Deployment of Nuclear Missiles on Subs from Germany
*
<
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/israel-deploys-nuclear-weapons-on
-german-built-submarines-a-836784-2.html> Part 2: Franz-Josef Strauss and
the Beginnings of Illegal Arms Cooperation
*
<
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/israel-deploys-nuclear-weapons-on
-german-built-submarines-a-836784-3.html> Part 3: First Submarines Are
Secretly Assembled in England
*
<
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/israel-deploys-nuclear-weapons-on
-german-built-submarines-a-836784-4.html> Part 4: The Shipyards of Kiel
*
<
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/israel-deploys-nuclear-weapons-on
-german-built-submarines-a-836784-5.html> Part 5: The Germans and the Atomic
Question: No Questions, No Problems
*
<
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/israel-deploys-nuclear-weapons-on
-german-built-submarines-a-836784-6.html> Part 6: Broken Promises and the
Deal for Submarine Number Six
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Received on Mon Jun 04 2012 - 18:29:01 EDT
