By Cernig
Bronwen Maddox, Chief Foreign Commentator of the London Times, has a typically confused report today on Jimmy Carter's revelations about Israeli nukes. It's headlined "Jimmy Carter says Israel had 150 nuclear weapons" and then the main story says that "Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday". This kind of confusion is typical of Maddox. She might be a foreign affairs guru (and to be honest, I'm not all that impressed) but she really could do with a better editor.
I suspect the "had" in the headline is the correct tense - since Carter hasn't been president for a while now and thus unlikely to be privy to current Israeli weapon counts. That preserves Israel's strategic ambiguity - everyone has known for forever that Israel has nukes and, normally, current estimates say about 200 of them but no-one is certain...still. Heck, Israel might have secretly unilaterally disarmed in the last two years for all we peons know although Olmert and Bob Gates both indicated they still had them in 2006. But that won't stop the American Right getting faux-outraged that Carter revealed another nation's decades-old secret.
Update: The BBC has the whole Carter quote, which reveals he was guessing in line with expert estimates.
Mr Carter gave the figure for the Israeli nuclear arsenal in response to a question on US policy on a possible nuclear-armed Iran, arguing that any country newly armed with atomic weapons faced overwhelming odds.
"The US has more than 12,000 nuclear weapons; the Soviet Union (sic) has about the same; Great Britain and France have several hundred, and Israel has 150 or more," he said.
...Most experts estimate that Israel has between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads, largely based on information leaked to the Sunday Times newspaper in the 1980s by Mordechai Vanunu, a former worker at the country's Dimona nuclear reactor.
The US, a key ally of Israel, has in general followed the country's policy of "nuclear ambiguity", neither confirming or denying the existence of its assumed arsenal.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert included Israel among a list of nuclear states in comments in December 2006, a week after US Defence Secretary Robert Gates used a similar form of words during a Senate hearing.
Oh Noes! Jimmuh guessed right in the middle of previous guesses about something even the Israeli PM has admitted to! Lock him up for revealing non-secrets and endangering America's...umm...national security! What could terr'ists do with such information they couldn't already do? Umm....
Yes, the rightists do seem to get outragedat that old man, don't they? They're always yelling at him o get off the lawn and threatening to take away his car keys.
ReplyDeleteAnd he just smiles that Cheshire Cat smile with a twinkle in his eye that says his inner adolescent is totally flipping them off.
Live long, Mr. Jimmy, and prosper. It'll drive 'em loonier.
(Excuse my grammatical lapse and typos. Must. Get. Coffee.)
ReplyDeleteYes, Carter's "negotiations" with Hamas went exceedingly well, didn't they?
ReplyDeleteHamas received credibility for its suicide bombing approach to peace, Carter received the attention he so craves, and Israel got even less security for its tiny sliver of land.
Sure, Charmaine, with their 150 nukes, Israel just got endangered because of Mr. Jimmy. Hamas gained cred.... with whom? Nobody I know of. They touted that meeting like it legitimized their anti-Israel practices. But that kind of bluster actually convinces no one.
ReplyDeleteCarter hurt no-one. He simply tried something different because the old way was achieving nothing. And frankly, I consider repeating ineffective methods to be stuck on stupid and far more worthy of criticism.
Kevin, don't know if you've ever held a security clearance, but revealing the security secrets of our country and our allies is considered a federal crime.
ReplyDeleteA normal person signs a national security agreement (which Carter executed during his military days and/or upon taking office) that obligates secrecy. Violation of that agreement for TS material could mean many years behind bars.
As for harming Israel - Carter's "negotiation" with Hamas granted the organization greater credibility in the world community. That Hamas is leveraging that credibility to acquire more sophisticated weapons with which to target Israeli civilians is almost a certainty.
And it's odd that Carter can't find time to fault Egypt's sealed border with Gaza -- oppressing their Palestinian brothers -- nor Jordan's fence keeping the West Bankers out of their country.
Gaza, of course, used to be part of Egypt and the West Bank part of Jordan. Funny how no one seems to recall that.
Of course, everything is Israel's fault -- so why bother listing historical truths?
"Of course, everything is Israel's fault -- so why bother listing historical truths?"
ReplyDeleteLike, for example, the Bush administration announcing they had helped equip Israels nuke subs? In 2003?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/oct/12/israel1
"Violation of that agreement for TS material could mean many years behind bars."
Abject stupidity which defines the current right should be cause for jail time.
AF: the President has the right to declassify any material deemed necessary. That was likely a clear signal to Iran, who has issued a series of incendiary, existential threats to Israel.
ReplyDelete