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ID:
167789
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| Summary/Abstract |
At the time of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, top US policy makers did not believe that Israel had produced nuclear weapons. Since the discovery of the Dimona reactor complex in 1960, senior US officials and intelligence experts took it for granted that the Israelis sought a nuclear-weapon capability, but a wall of secrecy surrounded the reactor. Even inspection visits by US nuclear experts left important questions unanswered. A central problem was whether Israel had acquired or would acquire the reprocessing plant needed to produce plutonium. While the original plans for Dimona included an underground reprocessing plant, it was deeply secret. A few months before the war, State Department intelligence experts suspected that the Israelis had begun reprocessing and could even have stockpiled a few devices, but this perception was not shared at the top. The Lyndon B. Johnson administration would have been profoundly shocked if US intelligence had discovered the secret assembly of nuclear devices in May 1967. Strict secrecy in Israel may have averted a crisis in US–Israeli relations.
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| 2 |
ID:
167790
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| Summary/Abstract |
Did nuclear considerations play an important role in the outbreak of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War? This research article seeks to answer this question by examining Egyptian decisions and conduct during the crisis preceding the war. The article argues that, despite long-standing Egyptian concerns over Israeli nuclear ambitions, the issue played only a marginal role in Egypt’s path to war. Egypt’s slide into war was a result of miscalculation rather than a deliberate plan to destroy Dimona. During the pre-war crisis, the nuclear dimension played only a minor role in Egyptian military planning. While a contingency plan to target Dimona was studied, it was never implemented. The article predominantly draws on Arabic-language sources, including first-hand accounts of Egyptian decision making during the pre-war crisis.
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