Israel’s PM Yair Lapid makes remark to nuclear weapons arsenal

• Israel is assumed to have a few hundred nuclear bombs, having developed the capability in the 1960s.
• Israel has never openly claimed possession.
• Israeli authorities prefer to make only oblique or vague references to nukes.
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Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid made a rare reference to the country’s widely suspected nuclear arsenal, During a speech on Monday.

Lapid, speaking at an event to mark a change in leadership at the country’s Atomic Energy Commission, referred to Israel’s defensive and offensive capabilities, as well as what he dubbed its “other capabilities,” which were assumed to include nuclear weapons.

“The operational arena in the invisible dome above us is built on defensive capabilities and offensive capabilities, and what the foreign media tends to call ‘other capabilities.’ These other capabilities keep us alive and will keep us alive so long as we and our children are here,” Lapid said.

Israel is usually assumed to have a few hundred nuclear bombs, having developed the capability in the 1960s. In contrast to the majority of presumed nuclear weapon states, Israel has never openly claimed possession. 3

Instead, it adopts a ‘opacity’

policy, which means that when pressed, Israeli authorities prefer to make only oblique or vague references to nukes.

Shimon Peres, then a junior defense minister, made the first such comment in the early 1960s, saying that Israel would “definitely not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the neighborhood.”

More recently, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appeared to recognize Israel’s nuclear capacity when he put the country alongside the United States, Russia, and France as possessing nuclear weapons, though he later attempted to retract the remarks, which were made on German television.

During a presentation to his Cabinet, Benjamin Netanyahu, too, referred to Israel as a “nuclear power,” before correcting himself to say “energy power.”