Figure 1 – Map of nuclear reactors and weapons in the Middle East (Source: DiaNuke.org)
Last week’s blog ended with the following short paragraph:
A ceasefire was declared on the day before posting. Next week’s blog will focus on some of the war consequences and on the question of whether this constitutes the beginning of the first nuclear war following the bombardment of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
The top figure in this blog is taken from an end-of-2017 article that shows the resurgence of nuclear power in the Middle East and asks if this resurgence is aimed at the development of nuclear weapons.
I asked AI (through Microsoft CoPilot) whether the recent Israeli-Iran war can be considered a nuclear war. Below is the answer that I got:
Despite the intense focus on nuclear facilities during the recent Israel-Iran conflict, it cannot be classified as a nuclear war—at least not in the traditional sense.
A nuclear war typically involves the use or detonation of nuclear weapons, which did not occur in this case. What did happen was a series of precision strikes by Israel and the U.S. on Iranian nuclear infrastructure, including sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. These attacks were aimed at crippling Iran’s nuclear capabilities, not unleashing nuclear devastation.
Iran retaliated with ballistic missile strikes on Israeli cities, and while the conflict was destructive—with hundreds of casualties—it remained conventional in terms of weaponry. There was no reported nuclear fallout, and the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed no increase in off-site radiation levels.
That said, some analysts are calling this a “threshold war”—a chilling new category where a nuclear-armed state (Israel) uses conventional force to prevent another state (Iran) from crossing the nuclear threshold. It’s a dangerous precedent, but still distinct from an actual nuclear exchange.
My following question was: Can I count with positive numbers only? This was the answer:
If you’re doing something like accounting, physics, or data science though, negative numbers are useful for showing things like loss, direction, or comparison.
Israel’s nuclear capacity plays an important role in the balance of power of the Middle East. At the beginning of the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli situation didn’t look good. A story is still circulating that Golda Meir, in her meetings with Henry Kissinger, threatened to retaliate with nuclear weapons. Here is what AI (through Google) “thinks” about it:
While Golda Meir and Henry Kissinger had many meetings, sources suggest that discussions about Israel’s nuclear program and the use of nuclear weapons were primarily held in a highly secretive manner, particularly between Golda Meir and President Nixon, with Kissinger being involved in the policy review and implementation.
Here’s what the search results suggest about their involvement:
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- 1969 Nuclear Understanding: In a private meeting with Golda Meir in September 1969, President Nixon and Meir reportedly reached a “nuclear understanding” where Israel agreed to keep its nuclear weapons under wraps, and the U.S. would not press the issue or ask further questions about it. Kissinger was involved in developing the policy options for Nixon regarding Israel’s nuclear program and recommended discussing the issue with Meir.
- Kissinger’s Memo to Nixon: A memo from Kissinger to Nixon in July 1969 outlines the U.S. goals regarding the Israeli nuclear program, which included preventing Israel from visibly introducing nuclear weapons and getting them to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Kissinger also notes that a secret Israeli nuclear arsenal is dangerous, but public knowledge of it is also dangerous due to potential international repercussions.
- The Nixon-Meir Deal: A memo from Kissinger indicates that Nixon emphasized to Meir during their private discussion that the U.S.’s primary concern was that the Israelis make no visible introduction of nuclear weapons or undertake a nuclear test program. This agreement was likely the basis for the U.S.’s continued silence on Israel’s nuclear program.
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This AI summary is focused on 1969, during the Israeli War of Attrition, from 1967-1970, which almost immediately followed the Six Day War. The Yom Kippur War started on October 6, 1973.
About the threat of using nuclear weapons, AI (through Google) added the following:
There’s no confirmed evidence that Golda Meir ever directly threatened to use nuclear weapons. However, the concept of the “Samson Option,” a deterrence strategy involving massive retaliation with nuclear weapons as a last resort, is associated with Israeli military doctrine and has been discussed in the context of Israel’s security concerns. While Meir’s government was involved in developing Israel’s nuclear capabilities, there’s no public record of her explicitly threatening to use them.
Figure 2 describes the global distribution of nuclear power plants. We can see that the sunny Middle East (grouped here with Africa) has way fewer nuclear power plants than anywhere else in the world. However, the Israel-Iran war is reminding all of us that in many countries nuclear power plants are a first step toward developing nuclear weapons.
Figure 2 – Distribution of nuclear power plants (Source: World Finance)
Table 1 shows where Iran and Israel stand in agreements and treaties regarding multilateral weapons of global mass destruction.
Table 1 – Major Multilateral Weapons of Mass Destruction Agreements and Treaties (Source: EUIdeas)
NPT – Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty
Wassenaar Arrangement – Multilateral export control regime focused on promoting transparency and responsibility in the international transfer of conventional and dual-use goods and technologies.
Future blogs will focus on the prospect that the Middle East might be the testing ground for a nuclear confrontation that not only aims to limit membership to the “nuclear club” but also experiments with actual use of the weapons.