Israel's nuclear posture and its position on arms control and disarmament

The chapter describes the development of and rationale for the undeclared Israeli nuclear posture. It analyzes the relevance and irrelevance of the nuclear component in Israel's overall deterrence posture and considers its contribution to Israel's security. While Israel is assumed to be a nuclear power, its ambiguous nuclear posture makes her a special case. Moreover, the ambiguous posture is important diplomatically and also as an arms control measure. Israel's position on nuclear arms control is presented and analyzed in this chapter. Israel supports the idea of a MEWMDFZ but insists that this could come about only after peace agreements are signed with all the regional states and a period of time elapses to assess the validity of these agreements. Beyond that, Israel is party to several other arms control agreements, which are described in this chapter.