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Business Standard
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Business Standard
What is Samson Option, Israel's nuclear threat that's no longer a theory?
Tensions between Israel and Iran have escalated sharply after 'Operation Rising Lion' — Israel's largest strike on Iranian nuclear sites since the 1981 Osirak raid. Iran has responded with missile and drone attacks, straining Israeli defence systems and prompting fears of wider conflict. With Hezbollah mobilising in the north, Houthi threats rising in the Red Sea, and the possibility of a multi-front war looming, Israeli security doctrine is under renewed global scrutiny. At the centre of that attention is the Samson Option, Israel's undeclared but long-assumed nuclear last-resort policy. Once regarded as a Cold War-era relic, the Samson Option has re-emerged as a global worry with serious implications for global security, defence markets, and diplomatic stability. What is the Samson Option? The Samson Option is widely understood as Israel's nuclear last-resort strategy: threat of massive retaliation if the country's survival is at stake. The name is derived from a reference of the biblical figure Samson, who brought down a Philistine temple upon himself and his enemies, an allegory for apocalyptic deterrence. Though Israel has never confirmed possessing nuclear weapons, its policy of 'Amimut' (Israel's policy of neither confirming nor denying the possession of nuclear weapons), or deliberate ambiguity, has kept adversaries guessing. However, foreign assessments suggest Israel has 80 to 400 nuclear warheads, with delivery systems spanning land-based missiles, submarines, and aircraft. The doctrine entered public discourse in the 1990s via US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who, in his book The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, explored Israel's nuclear journey and its relation with the United States. Since then, Israel hardened its 'strategic ambiguity' concept over the possession of a nuclear arsenal. How did Israel build its nuclear arsenal? Israel's nuclear journey began in the 1950s, with the then Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion envisioning a survival insurance policy for the newly-formed Jewish nation. With covert help from France and Norway, Israel established the Dimona nuclear facility, presented publicly as a research centre. By the time of the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel is believed to have constructed its first nuclear weapon. Who is Samson, and why is Israel's nuclear policy named after him? The doctrine's name draws from the Book of Judges, where Samson, betrayed, blinded, and imprisoned, sacrifices himself to destroy his enemies. This story, ingrained in Israeli strategic thinking, underlines the nation's message: if its destruction is imminent, it will not go quietly. Yet unlike the doomed biblical hero, modern Israel is a technologically advanced military power. The Samson Option, therefore, is not desperation, but a calculated deterrent, designed to force potential adversaries to think twice. What nuclear weapons does Israel have? Although never confirmed, Israel is among the nine nuclear-armed nations alongside the United States, Russia, China, the UK, France, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Estimates suggest Israel possesses about 90 warheads, with enough plutonium to build up to 200 more, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Its arsenal is believed to include: > Aircraft: Modified F-15, F-16, and F-35 jets capable of carrying nuclear payloads. > Submarines: Six Dolphin-class submarines, reportedly capable of launching nuclear cruise missiles. > Ballistic missiles: The land-based Jericho missile family, with a range of up to 4,000 km. Around 24 of these missiles are believed to be nuclear-capable. What was the Vela incident? Israel is the only nuclear power which has not openly conducted a nuclear test. The closest indication came in September 1979, when US satellites detected a double flash over the South Atlantic, an event known as the 'Vela Incident'. At the time, US President Jimmy Carter reportedly believed Israel had conducted a nuclear test in collaboration with apartheid-era South Africa. 'We have a growing belief among our scientists that the Israelis did indeed conduct a nuclear test,' Carter later wrote in his diaries, which were made public in 2010. Despite speculation, Israel has never confirmed its involvement in the incident. How was Israel's nuclear arsenal revealed to the world? In October 1986, former nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu exposed Israel's nuclear programme in an explosive interview with the Sunday Times. Having worked at the Dimona plant for nearly a decade, Vanunu revealed that Israel was capable of producing 1.2 kg of plutonium per week, enough for 12 warheads annually. He also disclosed how Israeli officials had deceived US inspectors during visits in the 1960s with false walls and concealed elevators, hiding entire underground levels of the facility. Vanunu was later abducted by Mossad in Rome, tried in Israel, and sentenced to 18 years in prison, spending over half that time in solitary confinement. Even after his release in 2004, he remains under strict surveillance, barred from foreign travel and media engagement. With West Asia at the edge of a potential multi-front war, Israel's Samson Option has moved from the realm of whispered deterrence to an option in real-world decision-making. Its existence, unconfirmed but globally acknowledged, adds a nuclear dimension to an already combustible region.
Express Tribune
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
The Bin Laden manhunt on Netflix
Listen to article Many movies, shows and books exist about the circumstances surrounding the Bin Laden killing in Abbottabad, Pakistan. As with any other major story, this one is not conspiracy theory resistant either. Seymour Hersh, a leading and very credible journalist, has his own account of how it all happened but not much discussion ever happened on that one. The US mainstream media as well as Hollywood have always been in the habit of repeating the official account of any story so many times that it somehow becomes the established truth even when it is not. This latest and almost widely watched Netflix show on the manhunt of America's most wanted enemy has repeated the same official narrative about how Bin Laden was tracked through his trusted courier. In this show, Netflix brought in front of cameras and lights the members of the notorious Alec Station of the CIA. There was one such tight group of girls who very obediently followed the directions of their boss and mentor Martin Schmidt. They were infamously quipped as the Manson's family. Some of those girls talk in the show. One of the Navy Seals, who was a member of the team that went to the house in Abbottabad, was also interviewed who shared some stark details. Actually, this one was exactly the soldier who actually came face to face with Bin Laden and actually shot and killed him. The most interesting part about this entire film is not the revelations or the entertainment aspect of it but rather the stuff it doesn't touch upon at all. The show depicts the dehumanised mindset of the American intelligence and military communities. They enjoy reliving the circumstances and the night when they killed Bin Laden. They brag about how the hunt was executed, how young occupants of the house, where Bin Laden was, were shot and killed. Most disturbingly, they sanitise their version of the acts of terror in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in their pursuit of Bin Laden. Minute after minute while watching the show one cannot help but ask the simple question: how do your violent actions make you any different than Bin Laden? Why is it terrorism when Bin Laden did it but not terrorism when you killed more than 10 times more people just while looking for this one man? The arguments presented are that Bin Laden was the enemy of the American people who had declared war on America and for America to go after him and invade lands and unleash bombs on foreign soil was somehow kosher from the international laws standpoint. Well, Bin Laden would agree with that rationale because that is the same rationale he had used as well while justifying his terrorist attacks against the innocent American people who perished on September 11, 2001. To him, the American people were the enemies and in destroying the American symbols of economic and military pride, killing innocent civilians was alright. Do an experiment; try listening to English only translations of the arguments of both sides and you would probably not be able to tell one side from the other. No remorse is felt for the loss of innocent lives. No realisation occurs where one can see that the actions of their side were illegal, immoral, the sheer force employed unnecessary, that those targeted and killed had nothing to do with what this war was all about. America supporting Israel doesn't justify an attack against America where innocent lives are lost just as much as an attack on American soil by Al-Qaeda doesn't justify invading Afghanistan and Iraq. The Taliban at the time were hosting Bin Laden. America accused Bin Laden of 9/11 attacks. The Taliban asked to provide proof of Bin Laden's involvement in order for them to hand him over to the Americans. That was quite a reasonable demand. Isn't that what the Americans would ask for if tables were turned? Instead, Bush announced the decision to invade Afghanistan. The rest is history. The clean shaven white barbarism is somehow treated differently than the one committed by the brown skinned bearded barbarians.
The Hindu
01-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hindu
Eye-openers: from Vietnam to Gaza, ways to hold power to account
On April 30, Vietnam celebrated 50 years of the reunification of the North and South after the decades-long Vietnam War ended with the government of Saigon surrendering to the North Vietnamese forces in 1975. The American entanglement in the South East Asian country began in November 1955, with the U.S. fearing a communist takeover of the South by North Vietnam. After U.S. Army troops landed in South Vietnam in 1965, it dragged on for 10 more years. By the mid and late 1960s, however, there was growing disenchantment with the war effort and the rising numbers of the dead. Stories were emanating about atrocities committed by the U.S. troops in Vietnam and anti-war protests began to grow across campuses and in cities including in the capital Washington D.C. In 1969, journalist Seymour Hersh's attention was drawn to a small news item that a certain Lieutenant William Calley had been charged with the 'murder of 102 'Oriental human beings'' in the hamlet of My Lai in Vietnam. Journalists get to work Hersh tracked Calley and other members of the 'Charlie Company' who had led the assault on March 16, 1968, and reconstructed the story of the atrocity. His book, My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and its Aftermath, is a chilling read about over-reach, and how the killing began without warning, with even women and babies not being spared. The purpose of American troops to be at My Lai that day — to stop the Vietcong troops in their tracks — wasn't served either. Hersh, like Daniel Ellsberg later with The Pentagon Papers leak, was going against the grain of what most journalists were covering on the Vietnam war. Most of them supported the 'noble cause'. The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War, by Neil Sheehan and others, first appeared as a series of articles in The New York Times in 1971, on the study, revealing in detail, 'and in the government's own words', how several U.S. administrations had blundered through a disastrous war. The study had been commissioned in 1967 by then Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, who had created a unit in the Pentagon to 'collect as many internal documents as possible on the Vietnam War.' There were 47 volumes in all, covering all aspects of the U.S. involvement in Indochina for decades. Sheehan, a celebrated Vietnam reporter, had got wind of the study and pursued Ellsberg, a senior member of the government-funded Rand Corporation who was privy to it, to share them with him. The war finally ended in 1975, with the Pentagon Papers playing a crucial role in its closure. Bearing witness In the face of fierce opposition in the late 1960s, philosopher and writer Bertrand Russell, then in his nineties, brought together prominent cultural and political personalities to 'bear witness to unrestrained American military action' in Vietnam. In his book, Vietdamned, Clive Webb brings to light the peace activism of Russell and other luminaries of the literary world including Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Peter Weiss to end the war. They were derided for their activism but Webb sees the tribunal as a cautionary tale and writes about it as a reminder of the 'ruthlessness with which politicians and the press attempted to discredit their evidence, and the lessons to be learned about our continued need to hold to account those in power.' That's what journalist Omar El Akkad does in his recent book, One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This. He wonders aloud why the U.S. and the West have been largely immune to the unimaginable suffering of civilians in Gaza unleashed by Israel since the October 7 Hamas attack. In chapters with titles including Departure, Witness, Fear, Resistance, Language, Arrival, Akkad tries to make sense of the happenings in Gaza; why, for instance, was an 18-month-old found with a bullet wound to the forehead. The Egyptian-Canadian journalist and writer watched the Gulf War on CNN — 'Baghdad cityscapes detonating sporadically in balls of pale white light' — and was soon surprised that there was no reaction at all. 'It was just what happened to certain places, to certain people: they became balls of pale white light. What mattered was, it wasn't us.' As a journalist, Akkad has travelled to several countries in West Asia and also to Afghanistan, and his view on political malice is fierce: 'Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.' The Gaza tragedy Things came crashing down after October 2023, he writes, when Israel with the support of a vast majority of the Western world's political power centres enacted a 'campaign of active genocide' against the Palestinian people, documented for posterity. More than 50,000 people have died, thousands injured and millions displaced. Death by disease and famine stalks a population wilfully denied aid and medical help. 'Over and over, residents were ordered from their neighbourhoods into 'safe zones', and then wiped out.' Akkad is scathing when he writes that 'once far enough removed, everyone will be properly aghast that any of this was allowed to happen. But for now, it's so much safer to look away.' The antidote, of course, is to 'slip the leash' as Wilfred Burchett put it when he fled from the embedded journalists with Allied forces in Japan in 1945 and set out for Hiroshima. He then went on to record the annihilation he witnessed after the atomic bombing and despatched his piece with the words: 'I write this as a warning to the world' (Tell Me No Lies/Ed. John Pilger).
