Jerusalem: Friction is building up in the Middle East region over an alleged Israeli nuclear arsenal and US President Joe Biden’s new offer to Iran to resume talks about its nuclear program, complicating the situation further, according to Israeli sources. The new Biden offer to Iran was revealed in an article in Politico.

Experts and organisations tracking the global nuclear weapons proliferation have been claiming for years that Israel has a nuclear arsenal. According to a publication of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), Israel is widely understood to possess a sizeable nuclear arsenal, but maintains a policy of nuclear opacity. The organisation claims that Israel is believed to have manufactured around 840 kg of weapons-grade plutonium, enough for an estimated arsenal of 100 to 200 nuclear warheads.

Jerusalem is aware of the developing situation, but has not yet decided how to deal with it mainly because of the ongoing political chaos.

In a speech at the Munich Security conference in February, President Joe Biden referred to the risk of global proliferation of nuclear weapons as one of the central issues of his administration, and stressed the need for diplomacy and cooperation on this subject at the international level. The White House defines nuclear weapons as an existential threat that must be countered by renewed American leadership.

In this context, the administration faces two serious challenges – Iran and North Korea. Both will be discussed, along with issues relating to nuclear disarmament, at the fifteenth Review Conference (RevCon) of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which is scheduled for August 2021. In addition, the issue of a Middle East nuclear and weapons of mass destruction-free zone (WMDFZ) will presumably be raised for discussion, and thus ahead of the conference the administration will have to formulate its position on the issue.

So the alleged Israeli nuclear capability will also be put on the table and in Jerusalem the Israeli leaders will have to deal with the issue.

Eyal Propper and Shimon Stein, senior researchers of the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), say that the issue of establishing a WMDFZ in the Middle East could once again pit Israel against the United States, in view of the support of previous Democratic administrations for anti-Israel resolutions on the subject.

President Bill Clinton supported the final document of the NPT RevCon in 1995 with a resolution (presented by Egypt) for a nuclear and WMD-free zone in the Middle East – a proposal that since then has become a permanent fixture on the agenda of the conferences, held every five years. In 2000, the same administration agreed to an Arab League demand to single out Israel for inclusion in the resolution text. At the 2010 NPT RevCon, in view of the Arab demand for practical steps to promote the issue, President Barack Obama agreed to support the final document proposal calling for a conference in 2012 to discuss implementation of the resolution regarding the Middle East.

“In recent decades, Democratic administrations in the United States have tended to seek a compromise position on the nuclear issue in the Middle East, which would be acceptable to Arab states and maintain the consensus among NPT signatories. The most meaningful change in the current period is the resolution passed in 2018 to convene an annual conference in the UN. This resolution effectively changed the rules of the game, by creating a mechanism to allow long-term engagement with the issue of a regional weapons-free zone under the auspices of the UN. Will this be enough to remove the subject from the agenda of the NPT Review Conference? At this time it is not clear how Egypt and the Arab League intend to act at the next RevCon. Some believe that having obtained the mechanism to convene the Conference they will be comfortable with mention of the subject in the final document.”

The researchers say that Israel would do well to promote an intimate dialogue with the US administration on this issue, separate from the Iranian nuclear issue, in order to understand its policy and coordinate positions – while avoiding bilateral confrontation on each of these two sensitive issues. “Israel should encourage the new administration to adopt the official US position paper of 2018, whereby the United States must clarify that it does not intend to participate in the conference announced by the UN in 2018 contrary to its position and contrary to the parameters agreed by all countries in the region.”

The researchers say that after coordination with the US and later with the Gulf states as well, Israel should propose an initiative that includes a framework for direct regional dialogue on a broad range of security issues, which will be inclusive for all participants and comprehensive in terms of topics (conventional and unconventional weapons).

Israeli sources say that Jerusalem is worried by what it calls “the mistaken way” the new administration in Washington sees some major issues in the Middle-East and the Gulf.

The sources point to the Biden administration’s new initiative towards Iran and say that if negotiations begin, the alleged Israeli nuclear arsenal may be put on the table by Teheran.

As an example, they point to the fact that Washington has moved to delist Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a terrorist organization. After this resolution, Israeli sources say, the Houthis have stepped up their attacks on Saudi Arabia.

Last week, a fuel tank at an oil facility in Saudi Arabia was hit by a missile launched by the Houthis.

“The U.S decision cannot be explained when you look at the reality in the region,” one source said.

The sources also point to the fact that the Houthis have stepped up their efforts to acquire more long-range weapons.