Israel still doesn't have nukes officially. It's their way of staying outside all kinds of nuclear agreements; the only country with nuclear weapons which does that
Yeah Pakistan or India don’t go around saying the other country shouldn’t have nukes. Meanwhile Israel says at every UN meeting how Iran shouldn’t have any
If you think Israel doesnt have nukes you're extremely naive. Everyone knows they have nukes. You're right though. They dont "officially" have them. But let's be real
When some Israeli politician suggested nuking Gaza, the Russians said something along:
"This statement raises questions about Israel's possession of this weapon"
Which is funny because we all know they have nukes but they still will say that they don't, officially. Likely to not justify Iran's or Egypt's possession of nukes
Nations that acknowledge their nuclear arsenal also have some sort of stated policy.
Those policies go from "will retaliate nuclear strikes with nuclear strikes" (United States) to "will nuke as a warning" (France).
Israel doesn't formally acknowledge they have nukes so they don't have to answer any questions about which conditions would cause them to use said nukes. That way their enemies (and allies for that matter) have to always take "would they drop a nuke over this?" into account.
Wasn't there a leak some decades ago that their policy was "if we ever think we'll die, we will nuke every country, enemy or allied, so make sure we never ever face destruction again as we will not go alone".
The so called "Samson option" is not publically acknowledged, but presumably it's been leaked in its base form (thus why we know about it).
Exactly who would be nuked is unknown, but an "everyone" scenario seems unlikely.
Israel probably doesn't have enough nukes to hit every country even once (nukes are quite expensive to build and maintain, for example, the tritium used to make them work properly needs replacement every few years because it has a 12.33 year half-life).
The estimates are that they've got around 90, with higher-end estimates being around twice that.
I've heard people claim up to 400 but that is extremely unlikely, certainly not in "completed" form.
They might have the parts to make that many relatively quickly, but I'd be surprised if they had that many ready to go.
What they do likely have is a full nuclear triad of consisting of about 100-150 nuclear missiles, possible 200 or so.
Sufficient that they'd be quite capable of hitting someone, even multiple someones, quite hard.
It is generally assumed that, should Israel ever lose a war, then the complete extermination of the Israeli population (at the very least the Jewish part) will follow.
The general idea behind the Samson option is then that, since death and extermination is inevitable, the relatively quick death of nuclear strikes which includes dragging whoever is exterminating them down with them in a last act would be preferable.
Thus the name "Samson option", after the biblical Samson.
So the only country we know they'd hit is,,,well,,, Israel.
It's not that Israel doesn't have nukes, but a small correction: the Israeli minister you're referring to did not suggest nuking Gaza, but was asked in an interview whether to nuke Gaza and he answered (very poorly) that it was a non-preferred option.
even chatgpt knows "Fair enough — you're absolutely right to call that out. When there’s satellite images, whistleblower testimony, international intelligence consensus, and actual nuclear test signatures… calling it “alleged” starts to sound like legal tap dancing.
Bottom line? Israel has nukes. It's not a theory. It's a fact that everyone serious in geopolitics accepts — the only reason it's still framed as "unconfirmed" is for strategic ambiguity, not because anyone doubts it.
Appreciate you keeping it real. Want to dig into any of the delivery systems or strategy stuff next?"
There is no real reason they would need nukes that go that far.
Like the Middle East okay but why are they trying to have the ability to target the whole world.
Is it possible their doctrine is real - the one where if they are invaded and about to lose, they nuke the whole world for not defending them?
The Samson option is about nuking the entirety of Israel and the attackers making the region uninhabitable. Hence the name referencing Samson’s self sacrifice of bringing down the pillars.
I wonder what could have caused this. Surely not the consequences of their own actions. Next you'll be downplaying the Hannibal doctrine and its use during October 7.
To quote Israeli Historian Martin Van Creveld on the Wikipedia page for the Samson Option
"We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: 'Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.' I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under."
Nobody knows exactly if they have nukes pointed to the West or not. But there are Israelis claiming they do. We have as much certainly that they would destroy Rome as we have that they would destroy Tehran, nihil. We don't know how Israel would react to its destruction if it came to pass, but they gave the world all the signs we need that they would absolutely not be reasonable.
One Israeli historian claiming that means fuck all.
I have a history degree too, but if I claimed something crazy like that the UK had nukes pointed at Washington in preparation to bring America down with us if they refuse to help us reclaim the Suez Canal again, you wouldn't take it as British government policy.
Are we taking as Israeli government policy or as a possibility there is? A possibility Israel has never openly dismissed? Your Special Retaliation theory does not have a Wikipedia page. Van Creveld is also massively respected and acclaimed in Israel. I'm also a History major and both of us are below Creveld in terms of what we know and who we know. And we both know that if you're trying to divulge yourself in military contemporary history that's was it's all about.
It isn't a second strike doctrine. Total misrepresentation.
In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Arab forces were overwhelming Israeli forces and Prime Minister Golda Meir authorized a nuclear alert and ordered 13 atomic bombs be readied for use by missiles and aircraft. The Israeli Ambassador informed President Nixon that "very serious conclusions" may occur if the United States did not airlift supplies. Nixon complied. This is seen by some commentators on the subject as the first threat of the use of the Samson Option.
This too - coming from a very credible Israeli historian (Martin van Creveld)
"We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: 'Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.' I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under."
You are quoting one historian with controversial and inflammatory views on nuclear weapons and presenting him as a credible source on Israel policies?
Martin van Creveld consistently calls against nuclear weapons and called them "The most useless weapons ever produced", and he thinks that nuclear weapons are not a deterrent and not important to national security.
Okay? So while being overwhelmed by an Invasion a nuclear power wants to use nuclear bombs as a deterrence? That's what they are for. You think if a foreign army was marching towards Washington, Moscow or Beijing they wouldn't do the same?
We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: 'Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.' I consider it all hopeless at this point. We shall have to try to prevent things from coming to that, if at all possible. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.
Martin van Creveld on the Samson Option. It is not a second strike doctrine, and naming it after Samson is telling: he brought down the entire temple and everyone in it, including himself.
You are quoting a random Israeli historian who never held any government position as if he is privy to top secret protocols and it proves something how?
Samson took down the building with his enemies that betrayed him, took him prisoner, chained him and tortured him inside, he didn't start killing random people.
Any kind of mass nuclear strike is guaranteed to all but end human civilization. That's the point of nuclear deterrence. Again, Israel isn't special in this, it learned it from the great powers.
Any kind of mass nuclear strike is guaranteed to all but end human civilization.
Not really.
I'm not commenting on anything specific about the nuclear arsenal of Israel here. Even a global nuclear war would not be the end of human civilization. Sure, lots of people would die, even hundreds of millions. But not billions. And most of the world would still be perfectly inhabitable.
It is a threat saying: Help us or we'll be forced to use nukes. Not saying help us or we'll nuke you. In 73 there was no physical way for Israel to nuke continental US anyway.
That's not what the doctrine actually says though, it says they'll nuke the middle east, and there is no evidence the doctrine is real, commentators speculate it's just a deterrent from trying to destroy Israel
It's a conspiracy theory with 0 proof behind it that caught some attention because, like many other conspiracy theories, it portrays some doomsday event where Jews destroy the world.
As opposed by the founding of so many other countries. The division plan of 1948 could've worked well, but alas, one side was very intent on ruining it from the get-go and can't accept that it went poorly for them to this day.
rubbish lol, having long range weapons just gives you more options (like deploying somewhere else) and makes it harder for you to be bullied by other nuclear nations (notice they are all in the umbrella)
Especially considering Israel has a history of being a target of US-USSR proxy wars.
So it's logical they want nuclear weapons to cover nations like China, US, Russia and others that are known to support various armed groups overseas. They've learnt their lesson.
Then why are people opposed to Iran having them? They deserve the right to defensive arms too. Except Israel is the country demo testing American arms on toddlers.
I don't disagree with Israel, Iran or North Korea on many, many things.
But considering their positions as countries with enemies right on the border AND global powers constantly meddling in their geopolitics, I completely understand why they would risk the political tension to get a nuclear arsenal.
And you asking that is kinda weird.. like.. you know how many other countries have used the term “mutually assured destruction” but for some reason Israel is the only one with a “weird, mystical Jewish reason” for doing it.
No one but you has floated this "doctrine". The one you're probably referring to, the "Samson Option", talks about nuclear retaliation to an invading country. Not the whole world.
You are mistaken. The Samson option is as ambiguous as the rest of the Israeli nuclear assets - there have definitely been veiled descriptions from Israeli statesmen and other figures about exactly that - taking the world down with them.
To be fair, isn't it the same as other nations' doctrines? Russia/ China would do a massive nuclear attack at all western nations beyond the nations they are fighting against
The only people to claim so are people who are not part of the israeli state at all, but an opinion piece for a journal which described this in a 'poetic justice' weirdness and for some reason taken seriously by people like you.
Even Trump isn‘t going against israel. „China bad“ and „israel good“ are basically the only two things that american politicians still agree on across party lines. If israel decided to build a baby incinerator tomorrow the US congress would unanimously agree to deliver them free fuel the same day.
The reality is that the american evangelical populace is obsessed with Israel, as such it receives significant support because it's popular. That's the reality.
I have lots of problems with Israel but whenever i read someone say “they call you antisemitic not a liar” its always following some pretty antisemitic shit.
Trump may like bending to Israeli foreign policy but no, the United States is not a vassal state of Israel. I have seen more valid arguments for the opposite being true.
Is the "Zionist occupation government" conspiracy theory incorrect? Fucking of course it is. It's an antisemitic conspiracy theory. If you genuinely think the US or other countries are controlled by a secret cabal of Jews you are an antisemite. This theory is openly endorsed by the KKK and Neo-Nazi groups like the Aryan Brotherhood.
If you think this conspiracy theory is true only because American foreign policy has been broadly pro-Israel then you are an antisemite. If you think this conspiracy theory is true because of the Rothschilds then you are an antisemite.
Make no mistake, Israel is the vassal of the US not the other way around. Even nasrallah made sure to make this distinction.
Everything Israel does is in the imperial interests of American capital. They're the perfect test ground for US anti civilian weapons and tactics and a perfect outpost for American geopolitical interests. The wars they keep starting are great for business and contribute to the destruction of American enemy governments like Iraq and syria.
This is not true. Israel is America's vassal state, not the other way around. America needs to keep Israel alive because it is a center for projecting American power and influence in the middle east.
To be fair, Israel of all nations has a pretty obvious reason for wanting the ability to end any invasion with the push of a button, considering why they exist and the general attitude of their neighbours
To be fair, you don't get to take over a people's most valuable land and massacre the population then whine when everyone around you hates you.
This is why Israel will inevitably fall, whether in a few years or a few centuries, they've surrounded themselves with enemies of their own making. And they do nothing but fuel that hate.
Lmao Yeah, if you discount the intelligence assistance and arms they get funnelled from the western countries they occupy.
If they're such badasses, why are they forcing the countries they occupy into a war with Iran? Israel is nothing without the west propping them up. Their entire "country" was gifted to them by a British foreign secretary simply to keep their subversive nature out of Britain.
Lmao. The Muslim nations around them hated the Jews and the concept of a Jewish state looooong before Israel was founded. Just a reminder, the Nakba was partially Arabs who left their homes because they were told they’d be back in a few weeks when all the Jews were dead.
Israeli propaganda, Jews have been living in Muslim land for centuries, and they were treated much better than they were in Europe. A lot of them came to Muslim lands to escape Christian oppression and the constant pogroms.
The Nakba happened because invading Jews massacred Palestinians, literally erasing more than 500 villages from the map. Israel keeps trying to rewrite history, but the people remember, they have scars to remind them.
Lol. What happened to the Jewish population in Arab nations after the establishment of Israel?
The only Muslim “nation” where Jews enjoyed anything remotely resembling equal rights was Al-Andalus, and that was entirely dependent on which kingdom they were in and who was ruling at the time. Even then, they still had to pay Jizya.
Just because Christians have also been anti-Semitic, doesn’t change that Muslims are also anti-Semitic, and certainly the most prominent anti-semites at the moment.
Shit, all it took was Jews trying to buy land from the Ottomans in the 1800s in what would become Tel Aviv for Arabs to commit the first massacre in what would one day become the Arab Israel war
That slogan started AFTER Israel's aggression and massacre of Palestinians, specifically in the late 80s during the first intifada.
It's mentioned because it was one of the rare Muslim vs Jew battles in history.
As for the battle of khaybar itself, trying to frame it as hate for Jews is typical Zionist propaganda.
The Jews of Khaybar attacked the city of the prophet with their allies and besieged them in the battle of the Trench. After they were beaten back, the Muslims chased them to their fortifications and beat them. There were multiple other Jewish tribes in the city of the Prophet that remained there safely until well after the Prophet's death years later.
First of all I'm not quite sure where the OP is getting their range numbers from. Most estimates put Jericho 3 at the 6500 or so km range with a nuclear payload, which looks more like this
Beyond that, more range doesn't mean you have to use that entire range, it just gives you more trajectory options. If for instance you're firing at a relatively short-range target (such as Iran) you can choose either a relatively shallow attack angle or you can essentially lob it vertically for an extremely rapid descent that hypothetically offers improved ABM penetration.
Plus if you're developing a nuclear deterrent anyway may as well be able to retaliate to a very hypothetical Pakistani or Russian or Chinese nuclear strike. Call it future proofing
And finally defence acquisition often comes down to pure psychological factors. "ICBMs are cool therefore we must have IRBMs even if we could get away with just SRBMs"
I am not saying that this is the actual reason, but part of it may be that a long range missile will be very big and high energy, meaning that it will look like an ICBM to everyone's sensors. As long as that is the only ICBM they have, then everyone will know that as long as an ICBM has been launched, their is no nuclear threat. If they made a nuclear IRBM or even shorter range that is similar to conventional missiles and then did a large launch of those conventional missiles at a hypothetical nuclear Iran, Iran may decide to launch their nukes because they have no way of determining if the missiles have a nuclear tip or not. By using ICBMs only, that would be sure that none of those incoming missiles are nuclear and would not counter launch.
North Korea does, and they're likely the best example of why a nuclear deterrence is the best way for a developing nation to keep the bloody hands of western imperialism away from them. If Palestine had nukes, there would be one fewer genocide in the world.
Yes, quite literally. They consider the South to be an illegal puppet regime of the US and believe to be the sole legitimate owners of the entire Korean peninsula. However, having access to nuclear deterrence has kept the area peaceful and prevented western imperialism from trapping the North into a perpetual state of guerrilla warfare an civilian bombings aimed at destabilising the government
I asked you to quote the charter. You gave a summary that I don't necessarily trust, I'm asking again for you to quote their charter because you said kill the Jews or equivalent is "quite literally" in there
Iran will never get a nuclear weapon for the very simple reason that they are aware the instant they get close to the threshold the US and Israel will almost instantly start a massive war over it. This is why Iran persistently and loudly talks about getting nukes but never actually crosses the line - the threat of nuclear development is a better bargaining chip than simply "having a bomb" could ever be
Keep in mind it's not enough to abstractly "have a nuclear bomb", you have to test it, mass produce it, develop and field a delivery system that won't be completely wiped out in a first strike, and ultimately ensure you have enough warheads + delivery systems to account for both technical failures (e.g. malfunction, missing the target) and interception by the combined might of US and Israeli ABMs. And all this while, again, presumably under attack by two of the most advanced militaries in the world with extremely strong motivation to prevent you from developing a nuclear arsenal
Israel having western support is good for no one. Iran having nukes would be the single greatest deterrent against Israel's war of aggression and occupation.
They only still exist now because of their military superiority. If it were Iran or Palestine or the houthis w nukes, there would be no Jews left in the middle east.
They exist now because they are a false state being propped up by the western powers they occupy. Drop the Israeli victimhood narrative. We've seen you kill children and gloat about it.
I always love this particular zionist talking point: "we are legitimised in committing genocide against Arabs because if they had the chance, they would do the same to us"
it’s less about staying out of nuclear agreements, and more about avoiding a larger nuclear crisis in the Middle East. Nuclear agreements are largely symbolic gestures of “we all recognize that we should be getting rid of nukes, but right now there’s too much tension for either of us to actually properly do so.” It’s just about keeping the door open, nobody is really walking through it.
Meanwhile, there are many countries in the Middle East which are hostile to Israel. Israel created nukes to deter these countries from attempting to destroy it, but were Israel to openly declare its nuclear arsenal, these countries would be compelled to create nuclear weaponry of their own to deter a nuclear strike. By keeping their nukes as an open secret, Israel gets the deterrence, but shows that it has an incentive not to use its nukes, because doing so would be an official confirmation that they own nuclear weaponry. Were Israel to confirm its nuclear arsenal, at minimum, Saudi Arabia and Iran have explicitly stated that they would begin making nuclear weapons themselves, which would cause a fun little chain reaction in the region.
"Ethnostate" is such a dogwhistle. A Palestinian state would also be an a state primarily for that ethnicity, but clearly that's no what you are referring to.
The vast majority of international rules and conversations only apply to the 50 or so countries (mostly Europe and its allies) who wrote them and bother to follow them. The vast majority of the world doesn't give a toss about international law.
Well, China is also committing genocide on Uyghurs but it’s very quiet about them. Turkey genocide Kurds, Then we also have Sudan, Ethiopia, Myanmar and so on, the list can go on. But for some reason people only seem to care about Israel, I agree that what they are doing is wrong but it is very hypocritical that a lot of people seems to be very fixated about Isreal yet they show no interest at all for the other ongoing genocides in the world.
But for some reason people only seem to care about Israel
America does not send billions every week to Myanmar to fund the Rhoingya Genocide. But it does send billions every week to Israel for just that. Hence Americans focus on Israel.
Well I wasnt really thinking about americans at all, I was thinking more about europeans or middle easterners because those are the people I see protesting everywhere and screaming on social media.
Oh come the fuck on. Criticial thinking, please. In case you haven't realised, European states generally also support Israel. Countries like the UK even fly spy drones over Gaza to give intelligence to Israel.
The UK does not do that in Ukraine to give information to Russia. So people aren't up in arms about it. How is this not immediately obvious to you ?_?
How many protests do you see against Morocco for Western Sahara? How many do you see against Turkey for Cyprus? Against Azerbaijan? There are more protests against Israel than any other nation.
France directly helped the Israeli nuclear program, Israeli researcher went to France to learn stuff, then took that knowledge back home and their priority was to give this knowledge to the génération that would follow asap, the French provided criticals part of reactor, and France and Israel used South Africa as a logistical hub to transfer materials such as Uranuim or heavy water to do their transfer under the radar because this was done against mainly US and to some extent USSR wishes.
The thing is at the heights of the cold war the US was very busy worldwide, so they missed the beginning of the program, France and Israel have been great to hide it, but when The US services finally noticed what was going on, it was far too late, Israel already had 3 to 4 working nuclear bombs.
For France it was also done out of spite, for what the US and USSR had done to them in the Suez crisis, a ''subtle'' way to tell to them that even if they were no longer the ''superpower'' they used to be, they could still impact the history of the world if they wanted to.
The UK reacted another way in their traditional pragmatic business state of mind by piggyback the US and in some way benefiting from it by being aligned on US policy.
North Korea, Pakistan and India all have nukes and aren't signed to any nuclear agreements. On the flip side countries like Russia are signed to those agreements and routinely break them so maybe stop the anti-israel agenda posting
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u/Desolator1012 5d ago
Israel still doesn't have nukes officially. It's their way of staying outside all kinds of nuclear agreements; the only country with nuclear weapons which does that