LOS
ANGELES, October 11 (IslamOnline.net) - While Israel stepped up its
hostile rhetoric against Arab countries, especially Syria, U.S.
officials revealed that Tel Aviv has succeeded in modifying U.S.-made
cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to be launched from
submarines, a U.S. paper reported Saturday, October 11.
The
move, which was confirmed also by an Israeli official, would enable
Israel to launch atomic weapons from land, air or sea, according to the Los
Angeles Times.
The
officials, who spoke to the paper under condition of anonymity, said
that they unveiled the information to caution "Israel's
enemies" in the wake of an Israeli raid on Syria last week.
The
LA Times further said that in the
mid- 1990s, Israel ordered three specially designed submarines from
Germany and they were delivered in 1999 and 2000.
The
diesel-powered vessels have a range of several thousand miles and can
remain at sea for up to a month.
An
Israeli government spokesman, Daniel Seaman, confirmed that the three
new submarines carried Harpoon missiles, but he declined to specify the
type of warhead the missile could carry, the daily added.
Israel
has neither confirmed nor denied having nuclear arms, but Washington has
accepted it as a nuclear power since 1969 and analysts say it has up to
200 sophisticated nuclear weapons, the fifth- or sixth-largest arsenal
in the world.
"A
big source of contention is Israel," the LA Times quoted
a senior official as saying. "This is a magnet for other countries
to develop nuclear weapons."
Arab
diplomats said Israel's enhancement of its secret nuclear arsenal could
trigger a nuclear race in the troubled region.
"The
presence of a nuclear program in the region that is not under
international safeguards gives other countries the spur to develop
weapons of mass destruction," the daily quoted as saying Nabil
Fahmy, Egypt's Ambassador to the United States.
The
daily added that the disclosure would certainly complicate efforts by
the United Nations to persuade Iran to abandon its alleged nuclear
weapons program and sign an additional nuclear protocol.
Growing
Arsenal
Israel's
nuclear arsenal has grown from an estimated 13 nuclear bombs in 1967 to
400 nuclear and thermonuclear weapons to date, according to the paper.
Last
year, the CIA and the Pentagon said in one of their reports that Israel
now has between 200 and 400 enhanced radiation and hydrogen weapons and
a United States Air Force report asserts that Israel is building a
nuclear naval force meant to respond to any nuclear strike, it added.
"The
Israeli nuclear weapons program grew out of the conviction that the
Holocaust justified any measures Israel might take to ensure its
survival.
"Consequently,
Israel has been actively investigating the nuclear option from its
earliest days.
"For
reactor design and construction, Israel sought the assistance of France.
Nuclear cooperation between the two nations dates back as far as the
early 1950's, when construction began on France's 40MWt heavy water
reactor and a chemical reprocessing plant at Marcoule.
In
the fall of 1956, France agreed to provide Israel with an 18 MWt
research reactor."
On
October 3, 1957, France and Israel signed a revised agreement calling
for France to build a 24 MWt reactor, known as Dimona, and, in protocols
that were not committed to paper, a chemical reprocessing plant, the LA
Times reported.
