The Iran Deal And Other Nuclear Deals

P.W. Botha of South Africa

Shimon Peres of Israel

Document Signed By Botha and Peres
 

(The secret military agreement signed by Shimon Peres, now president of Israel, and P W Botha of South Africa. 

 Photograph: Guardian)

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This is about "Nuclear Armament" deals, both the public ones, such as that reached by the Obama Administration with Iran, and secret deals.

The Guardian:
Chris McGreal in Washington
Monday 24 May 2010 05.13 EDT
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-weapons

Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons.

The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes". The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.

The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor denying their existence.

The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa's post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky's request and the revelations will be an embarrassment, particularly as this week's nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York focus on the Middle East.

They will also undermine Israel's attempts to suggest that, if it has nuclear weapons, it is a "responsible" power that would not misuse them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted...

Interesting.
Let's remember this in the coming days.

I suppose that there is a difference in that South Africa having nuclear arms was not as large a threat as Iran, for South Africa was further away from Tel Aviv. However, South Africa's possession of such arms would constitute a threat to its immediate neighbors.

So...

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