On Saturday, an Iranian missile struck Dimona, a city in southern Israel near the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, a facility where Israel first developed nuclear weapons and is believed to still be a crucial part of Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons program.
Iranian media said the strike on Dimona was a response to a US or Israeli attack that hit Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. Iran denounced the strike on Natanz as a “criminal attack” and said it violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Israel has never signed or ratified since it has a secret nuclear arsenal.
According to Israeli officials, at least 175 people were injured by Iranian strikes that hit residential areas in Dimona and the nearby city of Arad. Israeli military officials said the IDF failed to intercept Iranian missiles in both cities.
The targeting of Dimona has drawn attention to Israel’s nuclear weapons program, which is often missing from the conversation in US media when discussing Iran’s nuclear program, which has never been used to develop weapons. Israel’s nuclear arsenal is estimated to be somewhere between 70 and 400 warheads, and there are signs it may be expanding.
Last year, The Associated Press reported that satellite images showed construction work on a major new facility at the nuclear site near Dimona, Israel, the location of Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program. Seven experts who examined the images all told the AP that they believed the construction was related to Israel’s nuclear weapons program.
Neither the US nor Israel acknowledges the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons program, though a senior Trump advisor recently suggested Israel may consider conducting a nuclear strike if the war with Iran drags on. David Sacks, the White House’s AI and Crypto czar, said in a recent podcast interview that if air defenses are depleted, Israel could get “seriously destroyed” by Iranian missiles and then “you have to worry about Israel escalating the war by contemplating using a nuclear weapon, which would truly be catastrophic.”
Trump was asked about Sacks’s comments and whether he thought Israel might use a nuclear weapon. “Israel wouldn’t do that. Israel would never do that,” he said.
Since the Nixon administration, the US and Israel have maintained an understanding under which Washington does not acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons program or pressure Israel to sign the NPT. The ambiguity has allowed the US presidents to provide military assistance without worrying about the 1976 Symington Amendment, a foreign assistance law that prohibits aid to countries that traffic in or receive nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside of international safeguards.
