Tel Aviv – Israel is equipping German-built submarines with nuclear missiles, news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Sunday.
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The magazine gave no source for its online report but said the information was based on “extensive research.”
The Israeli Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv declined to comment, saying it was checking the report.
Israel has never confirmed or denied it has nuclear weapons.
A German shipyard in the city of Kiel has already built three Dolphin-class submarines for Israel. Three more are planned.
The submarines were sold to Israel at a discount price, with the German government paying some of the cost.
Der Spiegel quoted former high-ranking German defence officials as saying they had always assumed Israel would fit the submarines with nuclear weapons.
It also said that German Foreign Ministry documents showed Berlin had known about Israel‘s nuclear weapons programme since 1961.
Der Spiegel said Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to finance one-third of the cost of the sixth submarine – around 135 million euros (168 million US dollars) – and to allow Israel to defer payment until 2015. The submarine will be delivered in 2017, it said.
German novelist Guenter Grass in April criticized the German government in a poem for agreeing to supply Israel with submarines, which he said were capable of sending “all-destroying warheads to a place, where the existence of not even a single atom bomb has been proved,” referring to Iran.
The controversial poem also accused Israel of seeking to “wipe out the Iranian people” and of being a greater danger to world peace than a nuclear-armed Iran. dpa ok jln Author: Ofira Koopmans.
You know, without a valid source, you can say anything you like.
I have it from an unreliable, undocumented, unknown source that the Israelis are building an antimatter bomb which they plan to teleport to the basement of Ahmadinnerjacket’s house.
Every once in a while, we see a manifestation of “Kain yovdu kal oivecha Yisrael”
I wonder if those submarines can also handle nukulur weapons or only nuclear ones.
A big discount, seller financing and payment deferred to 2015…top that, Priceline Negotiator (alav hashalom).
For some time it has been an “open secret” that Israel intended to establish a second-strike capability with these submarines, basing them in waters near Iran. From a strategic point of view, the Dolphin’s capability is no different from British, French, American, Russian, and Chinese ballistic missile submarines. None of these vessels are intended for use in a first strike. Rather, they exist to deter a first strike by Iran that would be intended to wipe out Israel’s air force and land-based missiles. Israel, of course, neither admits nor denies the rumors. Golda Meir put it this way, generally: “Israel will not be the first nation to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East; nor will Israel be the second.”