Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif and Vanunu: Israel’s Nuclear Whistleblower

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On Saturday Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted at Western leaders of countries responsible for Israel’s nuclear program that, “Israel is expanding Dimona, the region’s only nuclear bomb factory…

By Eileen Fleming

Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif tweeted at President Biden and the heads of state of Britain, France and Germany regarding The Guardian’s, “Israel expands nuclear facility previously used for weapons material” which reported:

Israel is carrying out a major expansion of its Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, where it has historically made the fissile material for its nuclear arsenal.

Construction work is evident in new satellite images published on Thursday by the International Panel on Fissile Material (IPFM), an independent expert group…

Pavel Podvig, a researcher with the programme on science and global security at Princeton University, said: “It appears that the construction started quite early in 2019, or late 2018, so it’s been under way for about two years, but that’s all we can say at this point.”

Dimona’s role in Israel’s nuclear weapons programme was first disclosed by a former technician at the site, Mordechai Vanunu, who told his story to Britain’s Sunday Times in 1986. Before publication, he was lured from Britain to Italy by a female Israeli agent and abducted by Mossad. Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, 11 of them in solitary confinement, for revealing Dimona’s secrets.

What Vanunu told this American during her first of eight investigative journeys to both sides of Israel’s Wall in Palestine regarding USA, France and Germany:

“The French were responsible for the actual building of the Dimona. The Germans gave the money; they were feeling guilty for the Holocaust, and tried to pay their way out. Everything inside was written in French, when I was there, almost twenty years ago. Back then, the Dimona descended seven floors underground.

“In 1955, Perez and Guirion met with the French to agree they would get a nuclear reactor if they fought against Egypt to control the Sinai and Suez Canal. That was the war of 1956. Eisenhower demanded that Israel leave the Sinai, but the reactor plant deal continued on.

“Did you know that President Kennedy tried to stop Israel from building atomic weapons? In 1963, he forced Prime Minister Ben Guirion to admit the Dimona was not a textile plant, as the sign outside proclaimed, but a nuclear plant. The Prime Minister said, ‘The nuclear reactor is only for peace.’

“Kennedy insisted on an open internal inspection. He wrote letters demanding that Ben Guirion open up the Dimona for inspection.

“When Johnson became president, he made an agreement with Israel that two senators would come every year to inspect. Before the senators would visit, the Israelis would build a wall to block the underground elevators and stairways. From 1963 to ’69, the senators came, but they never knew about the wall that hid the rest of the Dimona from them.

“Nixon stopped the inspections and agreed to ignore the situation. As a result, Israel increased production. In 1986, there were over two hundred bombs. Today, they may have enough plutonium for ten bombs a year.”

What Vanunu said about state torture by solitary confinement:

What Vanunu said about “the real wailing wall; the apartheid wall”:

The questions this American asked Vanunu in 30 minutes with Vanunu are based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which Israel’s statehood was contingent upon upholding: