Washington was ‘aware’ of Israel’s nuclear weapons production since 1960s: Declassified doc.

A series of new declassified documents have revealed that the United States was aware that the Israeli regime was capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium at Dimona military nuclear site.

The newly released Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee (JAEIC) report from December 1960, published by the National Security Archive on Tuesday, is the first and only known US intelligence report to explicitly and unequivocally state that Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility would include a reprocessing plant for plutonium production and was weapons related.

Subsequent US intelligence products treated the reprocessing issue as unsettled until the late 1960s, when Israel reached the threshold of a nuclear weapons capability and the United States and Israel reached a secret agreement to accommodate its status as an undeclared nuclear power.

Tel Aviv expands the Dimona nuclear weapons facility

Israel, known to have around 400 nuclear warheads, which poses tremendous risk to the region, together with its allies accuse Iran of having a covert nuclear program with the intention of producing nuclear bombs.

Declassified US intelligence analysis also revealed that several Israeli sources had informed the US embassy in February 1967 that Israel “either has or is about to complete” a reprocessing plant at Dimona, and that “the Dimona reactor has been operated at full capacity.” The bottom line was that Israel was “6-8 weeks” from the bomb.

The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research's (INR) evaluated some of the statements as “plausible” and urged the next inspection team in April 1967 to explore them.

This is the first known document that treated the possibility that Israel was systematically deceiving the United States about Dimona as a factual claim.

Report: American technicians now in control of Israeli nuclear facilities

American experts have reportedly taken charge of the management of Israel’s nuclear facilities amid fears that Gaza-based resistance forces could launch retaliatory strikes against the sites.

The newly released intelligence report is the latest in a series of declassified documents concerning US policy toward the Israeli nuclear weapons program.

Israel, which pursues a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its nuclear weapons, is estimated to possess 200 to 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenal, making it the sole possessor of non-conventional arms in West Asia.

It has, however, refused to either allow inspections of its military nuclear facilities or sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) with the invariable support of Washington.

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