Report: Israel Conducted Nuclear Experiment in 1979
The Foreign Policy magazine reports that Israel conducted a nuclear experiment 40 years ago over the Atlantic Ocean.
On September 22, 1979, an American reconnaissance satellite recorded a double flash over the South Atlantic. US military analysts at the Patrick Air Force Base in Florida quickly concluded the flashes were a nuclear detonation, and promptly notified the military chain of command. President Jimmy Carter was briefed on the apparent nuclear test that same day, and convened top advisers and national security officials in the White House Situation Room the following morning.
“Now, 40 years later, there is a scientific and historical consensus that it was a nuclear test and that it had to be Israeli,” said Avner Cohen, a professor and senior fellow at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and a global fellow at the Wilson Center.
Researchers have concluded that the Carter administration, which worked on the peace agreement that was signed several months earlier between Israel and Egypt, tried to cover up what now clearly appears to be a nuclear experiment.
The report quotes Carter’s own diary, which contained this entry from the day of the initial detection: “There was indication of a nuclear explosion in the region of South Africa — either South Africa, Israel using a ship at sea, or nothing.”
