ON June 13, 2025, Israel launched what it called a “preemptive strike” on Iran, targeting residential areas and civil nuclear facilities, and its military leaders and scientists. This attack was a long-time dream of Prime Minister Benjamin Netyanyahu who had been crying wolf for over three decades about the possibility of the Iranians developing a nuclear bomb. On June 13, Netanyahu claimed the intention behind the attack was to “roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival.” This is despite the fact that Iran’s clerical establishment has issued a fatwa against developing nuclear weapons and the IAEA has concluded that there are “no credible indications of an ongoing, undeclared structured nuclear programme.” Even US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, no friend of Iran, told the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 25, 2025 that their agencies “had assessed that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.”

Even by the standards of Israel, an apartheid state engaged in a genocidal attack on Gaza, the cynicism of Netanyahu’s statement was astonishing. After all, Iran has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty and its nuclear facilities have been inspected time and again by IAEA specialists who had every incentive to flag any development of weapons. On the other hand, Israel is the country in the region that has a completely unsupervised nuclear weapons programme and is outside the ambit of international regulatory mechanisms. In fact, Israel even refuses to acknowledge it has nuclear weapons, taking refuge under what it calls “nuclear ambiguity.”

The question of Israel’s nuclear weapons ought to be front and centre at a time when it is conducting a campaign of lies about Iran’s nuclear programme. This is all the more so as the details of Israel’s nuclear weapons programme were revealed as far back as 1986 by whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu in an interview with the British newspaper Sunday Times. For his efforts, Vanunu spent 18 years in prison in Israel, including over 11 years in solitary confinement. His agony and the vindictiveness of the Israeli State were captured in a 2003 BBC Correspondent documentary called Israel’s Secret Weapon, which is available on YouTube.  

THE TRIALS OF MORDECHAI VANUNU 

The documentary was released on March 9, 2003, 11 days before the US and its allies launched their illegal war against Iraq after a months-long campaign of lies about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction. In the preceding months, the journalists producing Israel’s Secret Weapon set about asking the obvious question – what about Israel’s nuclear weapons? The answer was the poignant story of Vanunu who had worked at the Dimona nuclear facility and had become deeply disillusioned with Israel’s policies in the region.

Shortly after he revealed the existence of Israel's nuclear weapons programme to the media, Vanunu was drugged and kidnapped from Rome, brought back to Israel, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Israel never officially took responsibility for the kidnapping as it was patently illegal and the only way the world found out that Vanunu had been kidnapped was because he managed to write “Hijacked in Rome, 30th September, 1986” on the palm of his hand which photographers were able to capture.

For years, Vanunu was kept in inhumane conditions in a small six-by-nine foot cell with no windows and even when he was allowed to exercise, there was a canvas around him. His lawyer points out in the documentary that Vanunu was treated this way out of revenge and as a way to deter others. His attempts to obtain parole were repeatedly rejected with prosecutors claiming that he would reveal more secrets – a common allegation used to suppress whistleblowers.

Israel’s Secret Weapon follows Nick and Mary Eoloff, US anti-war activists who adopted Mordechai Vanunu, as they attempt to meet him in prison in Israel and also try to mobilise opinion against George W. Bush’s illegal war on Iraq. It intersperses this story of solidarity and humanity with an account of how Israel covertly launched its nuclear weapons programme by speaking to those involved, including former Prime Minister Shimon Peres who was the father of this programme. Peres also authorised the kidnapping of Vanunu though he evades the question in the documentary by calling him a traitor. Vanunu was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize while in prison but did not receive it. Peres did win it and is today celebrated by western media as a dove only because the brutalities under his rule pale in comparison to what his successors, including Netanyahu, unleashed. In 2009, Vanunu wrote to the Nobel Prize committee requesting that his name be removed from the shortlist as he did not want to “belong to a list of laureates that also includes Shimon Peres, the man behind Israeli atomic policy”.

The documentary also follows up on former workers at the Dimona nuclear plant who claimed to have removed contaminated waste from a crater nearby ahead of a visit by Israel’s environment minister and the press, and fell ill subsequently. The minister’s field trip was meant to reassure reporters after rumours of a radioactive hotspot in the area. The documentary crew attempts to contact these workers and those who stood by them, including doctors and lawyers, only to be met with fear and silence. One of the workers says he had been silenced by the Secret Service and warned that he would end up like Vanunu.

The concluding part of the documentary is especially relevant today as the BBC journalists attempt to get US officials to talk about Israel’s nuclear weapons and Vanunu but are stonewalled. The US only wants to talk about Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Then as today, it is clear that the US and its allies have been Israel’s greatest enablers. In the documentary, George W. Bush can be heard saying, “The gravest danger facing America and the world is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.” He is referring to Iraq, of course, and not Israel and the speech came a few months after he used the term ‘Axis of Evil’ to refer to Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Today, after over 50,000 people have been killed in Gaza, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen calls “Iran the principal source of regional instability.”

Israel’s atrocities on the Palestinians briefly feature in the documentary in the context of its chemical weapons programme. There are references to a mysterious gas used on the people of Gaza in 2001 which hospitalises 180 people who suffer from severe convulsions. Not bound by chemical and biological weapons treaties, Israel refuses to clarify the nature of the gas.

If the documentary falters, it is in failing to recognise the centrality of the occupation of Palestine in any investigation into the Israeli state. It is revealing that in the documentary, reporter Olenka Frenkiel, puzzled after failing to talk to any of the former workers of the Dimona plant, looks at the camera and says, “But this is Israel. This is supposed to be a democracy.” In reality, democracy is merely a cover for what is a project of occupation and an imperialist base in resource-rich West Asia. It is not for nothing that former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig said, “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.” The same words were repeated by Benjamin Netanyahu just a few years ago.

Mordechai Vanunu was released in 2004 but continued to suffer the consequences of telling the truth. He faced absurd restrictions on travel and speech and was raided and detained on accusations of violating them. He was placed under house arrest on multiple occasions and also jailed for three months in 2010 on charges of meeting foreigners, which in this case seems to have been his Norwegian partner. His requests to leave the country were rejected by courts and the harsh restrictions on his movement and speech continue as of today, according to reports. 

The facts Vanunu released are in the public domain. They have been confirmed by multiple sources, including SIPRI’s latest report which puts the number of Israel’s nuclear weapons at 90. However, western media outlets and even many in the Global South merely speculate that Israel may have nuclear weapons, and hasten to point out that it has not confirmed or denied it. The failure to centre Israel’s rogue nuclear weapons programme and its persecution of Mordechai Vanunu has yet again brought us to another 2003 Iraq WMD moment.