EFTA01769065.pdf

From: Office of Terje Rod-Larsen Sent: Tuesday, June 5, 2012 4:24 Subject: June 5 update Articl= 2. <https://mail.google.com/mail/./0/html/compose/static_files/blank_quirks.html#b> Los Angeles Times <http://www.latimes.com/> Toppling Syria's Assad<=b> Max Boot Articl= 4. <https://mail.google.com/mailNO/html/compose/static_files/blank_quirks.htmIttd> Asia Times An unwelcome turn in the Arab Spri=g? Brian M Downing Ar=icle 1. SPIEGEL Operation Sam=on: Israel's Deployment of Nuclear Missiles on Subs from Germany By Ronen Bergman, E=ich Follath, Einat Keinan, Otfried Nassauer, JOrg Schmitt, Holger Stark,=Thomas Wiegold And Klaus Wiegrefe 06/04/2012 -- Many =ave wondered for years about the exact capabilities of the submarines Germ=ny exports to Israel. Now, experts in Germany and Israel have confirmed th=t nuclear-tipped missiles have been deployed on the vessels. And the German government has long known about it= By SPIEGEL The pride of the Is=aeli navy is rocking gently in the swells of the Mediterranean, with the s=lhouette of the Carmel mountain range reflected on the water's surface. To=reach the Tekumah, you have to walk across a wooden jetty at the pier in the port of Haifa, and then climb int= a tunnel shaft leading to the submarine's interior. The navy officer in c=arge EFTA_R1_00079414 EFTA01769065 of visitors, a brawny man in his 40s with his eyes hidden behind a pa=r of Ray-Ban sunglasses, bounces down the steps. When he reaches the lower deck, he turns around and says: =quot;Welcome on board the Tekumah. Welcome to my toy." He pushes back a bo=t and opens the refrigerator, revealing zucchini, a pallet of yoghurt cups=and a two-liter bottle of low-calorie cola. The Tekumah has just returned =rom a secret mission in the early morning hours. The navy officer, w=ose name the military censorship office wants to keep secret, leads the vi=itors past a pair of bunks and along a steel frame. The air smells stale, =ot unlike the air in the living room of an apartment occupied solely by men. At the middle of the ship, the cor=idor widens and merges into a command center, with work stations grouped a=ound a periscope. The officer stands still and points to a row of monitors= with signs bearing the names of German electronics giant Siemens and Atlas, a Bremen-based electronics com=any, screwed to the wall next to them. The "Combat In=ormation Center," as the Israelis call the command center, is the hea=t of the submarine, the place where all information comes together and all=the operations are led. The ship is controlled from two leather chairs. It looks as if it could be in the cockpit of a sm=ll aircraft. A display lit up in red shows that the vessel's keel is curre=tly located 7.15 meters (23.45 feet) below sea level. "This was all =uilt in Germany, according to Israeli specifications," the navy offic=r says, "and so were the weapons systems." The Tekuma, 57 meter= long and 7 meters wide, is a showpiece of precision engineering, painted in blue and made in Germany. To be more precise, it i= a piece of precision engineering made in Germany that is suitable for equ=pping with nuclear weapons. No Room for Doubt <=span> Deep in their inter=ors, on decks 2 and 3, the submarines contain a secret that even in Israel=is only known to a few insiders: nuclear warheads, small enough to be moun=ed on a cruise missile, but explosive enough to execute a nuclear strike that would cause devastating results. T=is secret is considered one of the best kept in modern military history. A=yone who speaks openly about it in Israel runs the risk of being sentenced=to a lengthy prison term. Research SPIEGEL ha= conducted in Germany, Israel and the United States, among current and pas= government ministers, military officials, defense engineers and intellige=ce agents, no longer leaves any room for doubt: With the help of German maritime technology, Israel has managed-to create for itself a floating nuclear weapon arsenal: submarines equippe= with nuclear capability. Foreign journalists=have never boarded one of the combat vessels before. In an unaccustomed di=play of openness, senior politicians and military officials with the Jew's= state were, however, now willing to talk about the importance of German-Israeli military cooperation and Germa=y's role, albeit usually under the condition of anonymity. "In the en=, it's very simple," says Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. "=ermany is helping to defend Israel's security. The Germans can be proud of the fact that they have secured the existence =f the State of Israel for many years to come." On the other hand, =ny research that did take place in Israel was subject to censorship. Quote= by Israelis, as well as the photographer's pictures, had to be submitted =o the military. Questions about Israel's nuclear capability, whether on land or on water, were taboo. And decks 2 a=d 3, where the weapons are kept, remained off-limits to the visitors. In Germany, the gov=rnment's military assistance for Israel's submarine program has been contr=versial for about 25 years, a topic of discussion for the media and the pa=liament. Chancellor Angela Merkel fears the kind of public debate that German Nobel literature laureate Gunter G=ass recently reignited with a poem critical of Israel. Merkel insists on s=crecy and doesn't want to the details of the deal to be made public. To th=s day, the German government is sticking to its position that it does not know anything about an Israeli nuclear we=pons program. 'Purposes of Nuclea= Capability' 2 EFTA_R1_00079415 EFTA01769066 But now, former top=German officials have admitted to the nuclear dimension for the first time= "I assumed from the very beginning that the submarines were supposed=to be nuclear-capable," says Hans R0hle, the head of the planning staff at the German Defense Ministry in the late =980s. Lothar ROI, a former state secretary in the Defense Ministry, say= that he never doubted that "Israel stationed nuclear weapons on the =hips." And Wolfgang Ruppelt, the director of arms procurement at the Defense Ministry during the key phase, admits t=at it was immediately clear to him that the Israelis wanted the ships &quo=;as carriers for weapons of the sort that a small country like Israel cann=t station on land." Top German officials speaking under the protection of anonymity were even more forthcoming. &qu=t;From the beginning, the boats were primarily used for the purposes of nu=lear capability," says one ministry official with knowledge of the ma=ter. Insiders say that t=e Israeli defense technology company Rafael built the missiles for the nuc=ear weapons option. Apparently it involves a further development of cruise=missiles of the Popeye Turbo SLCM type, which are supposed to have a range of around 1,500 kilometers (940 miles) irnd which could reach Iran with a warhead weighing up to 200 kilograms (440=pounds). The nuclear payload comes from the Negev Desert, where Israel has=operated a reactor and an underground plutonium separation plant in Dimona since the 1960s. The question of how =eveloped the Israeli cruise missiles are is a matter of debate. Their deve=opment is a complex project, and the missiles' only public manifestation w=s a single test that the Israelis conducted off the coast of Sri Lanka. The submarines are =he military response to the threat in a region "where there is no mer=y for the weak," Defense Minister Ehud Barak says. They are an insura=ce policy against the Israelis' fundamental fear that "the Arabs could slaughter us tomorrow," as David Ben-Gurio=, the founder of the State of Israel, once said. "We shall never agai= be led as lambs to the slaughter," was the lesson Ben-Gurion and oth=rs drew from Auschwitz. Armed with nuclear =eapons, the submarines are a signal to any enemy that the Jewish state its=lf would not be totally defenseless in the event of a nuclear attack, but =ould strike back with the ultimate weapon of retaliation. The submarines are "a way of guaranteeing that=the enemy will not be tempted to strike pre-emptively with non- conventiona= weapons and get away scot-free," as Israeli Admiral Avraham Botzer p=ts it. Questions of Global=Political Responsibility In this version of =it-for-tat, known as nuclear second-strike capability, hundreds of thousan=s of dead are avenged with an equally large number of casualties. It is a =trategy the United States and Russia practiced during the Cold War by constantly keeping part of its nuclear ar=enal ready on submarines. For Israel, a country about the size of the Germ=n state of Hesse, which could be wiped out with a nuclear strike, safeguar=ing this threat potential is vital to its very existence. At the same time, the nuclear arsenal causes countr=es like Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia to regard Israel's nuclear capacity w=th fear and envy and consider building their own nuclear weapons.</=> This makes the ques=ion of its global political responsibility all the more relevant for Germa=y. Should Germany, the country of the perpetrators, be allowed to assist l=rael, the land of the victims, in the development of a nuclear weapons arsenal capable of extinguishing hundreds=of thousands of human lives? Is Berlin recklessl= promoting an arms race in the Middle East? Or should Germany, as its hist=ric obligation stemming from the crimes of the Nazis, assume a responsibil=ty that has become "part of Germany's reason of state," as Chancellor Merkel said in a speech to the Israel= parliament, the Knesset, in March 2008? "It means that for me, as a =erman chancellor, Israel's security is never negotiable," Merkel told=the lawmakers. The perils of such =nconditional solidarity were addressed by Germany's new president, Joachim=Gauck, during his first official visit to Jerusalem last Tuesday: "I =on't want to imagine every scenario that could get the chancellor in tremendous trouble, when it comes to political=y implementing her statement that Israel's security is part of Germany's r=ason of state." 3 EFTA_R1_00079416 EFTA01769067 The German governme=t has always pursued an unwritten rule on its Israel policy, which has alr=ady lasted half a century and survived all changes of administrations, and=that former Chancellor Gerhard Schroder summarized in 2002 when he said: "I want to be very clear: Israel rec=ives what it needs to maintain its security." Franz-Josef Strauss=and the Beginnings of Illegal Arms Cooperation Those who subscribe=to this logic are often prepared to violate Germany's arms export laws. Ev=r since the era of Konrad Adenauer, the country's first postwar leader, Ge=man chancellors have pushed through various military deals with Israel without parliamentary approval, kept th= Federal Security Council in the dark or, as then Defense Minister Franz-J=sef Strauss, a member of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), di=, personally dropped off explosive equipment. That was what happened in an incident in the early 1960s, when =trauss drove up to the Israeli mission in Cologne in a sedan car and hande= an object wrapped in a coat to a Mossad liaison officer, saying it was &q=ot;for the boys in Tel Aviv." It was a new model of an armor-piercing grenade. Arms cooperation wa= a delicate issue under every chancellor. During the Cold War, Bonn feared=that it could lose the Arab world to East Germany if it openly aligned its=lf with Israel. Later on, Germany was consumed by fears over Arab oil, the lubricant of the German economic mira=le. Cooperating with Ge=many also had the potential to be politically explosive for the various Is=aeli administrations. Whether and in what form the Jewish state should acc=pt Germany's help was a matter of controversy for the Israeli public. The later Prime Minister Menachem Begin, for examp=e, who had lost much of his family in the Holocaust, could only see German= as the "land of the murderers." To this day, financial assistance for Israel is in most cases referred to as "reparations." Cooperation on defe=se matters was all the more problematic. It began during the era of Franz-=osef Strauss, who recognized early on that aid for Israel wasn't just a mo=al imperative, but was also the result of pragmatic political necessity. No one could help the new Germany acquir= international respect more effectively than the survivors of the Holocaus=. In December 1957, S=rauss met with a small Israeli delegation for a discussion at his home nea= Rosenheim in Bavaria. The most prominent member of the Israeli group was =he man who, in the following decades, would become the key figure in Israel's arms deals with Germany, as well a= the father of the Israeli atomic bomb: Shimon Peres, who would later beco=e Israel's prime minister and is the current Israeli president today, at t=e age of 88. No Clear Basis It is now known tha= the arms shipments began by no later than 1958. The German defense minist=r even had arms and equipment secretly removed from Germany military stock=iles and then reported to the police as stolen. Many of the shipmen=s reached Israel via indirect routes and were declared as "loans.&quo=; The equipment included Sikorsky helicopters, Noratlas transport aircraft= rebuilt M-48 tanks, anti-aircraft guns, howitzers and anti-tank guided missiles. There was "no =tear legal or budgetary basis" for the shipments," a German offi=ial admitted in an internal document at the time. But Adenauer backed his =efense minister, and in 1967 it became clear how correct he was in making this assessment, when Israel preempted an attack by its n=ighbors and achieved a brilliant victory in the Six-Day War. From then on,=Strauss's friend Peres consistently reminded his fellow Israelis not to fo=get "what helped us achieve that victory." The fact that the G=rman security guarantee was not a question of partisan politics became evi=ent six years later, when Social Democrat Willy Brandt headed the governme=t in Bonn -- and Israel was on the verge of defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Although Germany was officiall= uninvolved in the war, the chancellor personally approved arms shipments 4 EFTA_R1_00079417 EFTA01769068 =o Israel, as Brandt biographer Peter Merseburger reported. As those involv=d recall today, Brandt's decision was a "violation of the law" that Brandt's speechwriter, Klaus H=rpprecht, sought to justify by attributing the chancellor's actions to a s=-called emergency beyond law. The chancellor apparently saw it as an "=overriding obligation of the head of the German government" to rescue the country created by survivors of the Holocau=t. DID THE GERMAN GOVE=NMENT FINANCE THE ISRAELI NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM? In the 1960s, Israe='s interests had moved past conventional arms. Ben-Gurion had entrusted Pe=es with a highly sensitive project: Operation Samson, named after the Bibl=cal figure who is supposed to have lived at the time when the Israelites were being oppressed by the Philisti=es. Samson was believed to be invincible, but he was also seen as a destru=tive figure. The goal of the operation was to build an atomic bomb. The Is=aelis told their allies that they needed cheap nuclear energy for seawater desalination, and that they plann=d to use the water to make the Negev Desert fertile. The German governme=t was also left in the dark at first -- with Strauss being the likely exce=tion. The CSU politician was apparently brought into the loop in 1961. Thi= is suggested by a memo dated June 12, 1961, classified as "top secret," which Strauss dictated aft=r a meeting in Paris with Peres and Ben-Gurion, in which he wrote: "B=n-Gurion spoke about the production of nuclear weapons." One can speculate o= the reasons that Ben-Gurion, a Polish-born Israeli social democrat, chose=to include the Bavarian conservative Strauss in his plans. There are indic=tions that the Israeli government hoped to receive financial assistance for Operation Samson. Israel was cash-str=pped at the time, with the construction of the bomb consuming enormous sum= of money. This led Ben-Gurion to negotiate in great secrecy with Adenauer=over a loan worth billions. According to the German negotiation records, which the federal government has now re=eased in response to a request by SPIEGEL, Ben-Gurion wanted to use the lo=n for an infrastructure project in the Negev Desert. There was also talk o= a "sea water desalination plant." No Reason for Conce=n Plants for a civili=n desalination plant operated with nuclear power did in fact exist, and th= development of the Negev was also one of the largest projects in Israel's=brief history. When Rainer Barzel, the conservatives' parliamentary floor leader, inquired about the project =n Jerusalem, the Israelis explained that obtaining water through desalinat=on was an "epochal task." An official who accompanied Barzel not=d that the Israelis had said that "the necessary nuclear power would be monitored internationally and could not be used for=military purposes, and that we had no reason to be concerned."=/p> But a desalination =lant operated with nuclear power was never built, and it remains unclear w=at exactly happened with the total of 630 million deutsche marks that Germ=ny gave the Israelis in the period until 1965. The payments were processed by the Frankfurt-based Kreditansta=t fur Wiederaufbau (Reconstruction Credit Institute). The head of the or=anization said in internal discussions that the use of the funds was "=never audited." "Everything seems to suggest that the Israeli bomb was financed also with German money," says Avne= Cohen, an Israeli historian at the Monterey Institute of International St=dies in California who studies nuclear weapons. Finally, in 1967, l=rael had probably built its first nuclear weapon. The Israeli government d=smissed questions about its nuclear arsenal with a standard response that =terns from Peres: "We will not introduce nuclear weapons to the region, and certainly we will not be the first.&quo=; This deliberately vague statement is still the Israeli government's offi=ial position today. When dealing with t=eir German allies, however, Israeli politicians used language that hardly =oncealed the truth. When the legendary former Defense Minister Moshe Dayan=visited Bonn in the fall of 1977, he told then Chancellor Helmut 5 EFTA_R1_00079418 EFTA01769069 Schmidt about neighboring Egypt's fear "t=at Israel might use nuclear weapons." Dayan said that he understood t=e Egyptians' worries, and pointed out that in his opinion the use of the b=mb against the Aswan dam would have "devastating consequences." He didn't even deny the existence of a nuclear weapon.=/span> First Submarines Ar= Secretly Assembled in England A country that has =he bomb is also likely to search for a safe place to store it and a safe l=unching platform -- a submarine, for example. In the 1970s, Brand= and Schmidt were the first German chancellors to be confronted with the l=raelis' determination to obtain submarines. Three vessels were to be built=in Great Britain, using plans drawn up by the German company Industriekontor Lubeck (IKL). But an export permi= was needed to send the documents out of the country. To get around this, =KL agreed with the German Defense Ministry that the drawings would be comp=eted on the letterhead of a British shipyard and flown on a British plane to the British town of Barrow-in-Fur=ess, where the submarines were assembled. Assuring Israel's s=curity was no longer the only objective of the German-Israeli arms coopera=ion, which had since become a lucrative business for West German industry.=ln 1977, the last of the first three submarines arrived in Haifa. At the time, nobody was thinking about nuclear second-strike capability. It was not until the early 1980s, when more and=more Israeli officers were returning from US military academies and raving=about American submarines, that a discussion began about modernizing the Israeli navy -- and about the nuc=ear option. A power struggle wa= raging in the Israeli military at the time. Two planning teams were devel=ping different strategies for the country's navy. One group advocated new,=larger Sa'ar 4 missile boats, while the other group wanted Israel to buy submarines instead. Israel was "= small island, where 97 percent of all goods arrive via water," said =mi Ayalon, the deputy commander of the navy at the time, who would later b=come head of the Israeli domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet. Strategic Depth Even then it was be=oming apparent, according to Ayalon, "that in the Middle East things =ere heading toward nuclear weapons," especially in Iraq. The fact tha= the Arab states were seriously interested in building the bomb changed Israel's defense doctrine, he says. "A subm=rine can be used as a tactical weapon for various missions, but at the cen=er of our discussions in the 1980s was the question of whether the navy war to receive an additional task known as strategic depth," says Ayalon. "Purchasing the submarines was=the country's most important strategic decision." Strategic depth. Inrother words, nuclear second-strike capability. At the end of the d=bate, the navy specified as its requirement nine corvettes and three subma=ines. It was "a megalomaniacal demand," as Ayalon, who would lat=r rise to become commander-in-chief of the navy, admits today. But the navy's strategists had hopes of a budgetary miracle.=/span> Alternatively, they=were hoping for a rich beneficiary who would be willing to give Israel a f=w submarines. KOHL AND RABIN TURN=ISRAEL INTO A MODERN SUBMARINE POWER The two men who fin=lly catapulted Israel into the circle of modern submarine powers were Helm=t Kohl and Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin's father had fought in World War II as a v=lunteer in the Jewish Legion of the British army, and Rabin himself led the Israeli army to victory, as its ch=ef of staff, in the 1967 Six-Day War. In 1984, having served one term as p=ime minister in the mid-1960s, he moved to the cabinet, becoming the defen=e minister. 6 EFTA_R1_00079419 EFTA01769070 Rabin knew that the=German government in Bonn had introduced new "political principles&qu=t; for arms exports in 1982. According to the new policy, arms shipments c=uld "not contribute to an increase in existing tensions." This malleable wording made possible the delivery of subma=ines to Israel, especially in combination with a famous remark once made b= former Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher: "Anything that float= is OK" -- because governments generally do not use boats to oppress demonstrators or opposition forces. After World War ll,=the Allies had initially forbidden Germany from building large submarines.=As a result, the chief supplier to the German navy, Howaldtswerke-Deutsche=Werft AG (HDW), located in the northern port city of Kiel, had shifted its focus to small, maneuverable boats that=could also operate in the Baltic and North Seas. The Israelis were interes=ed in ships that could navigate in similarly shallow waters, such as those=along the Lebanese coast, where they have to be able to lie at periscope depth, listen in on radio communi=ations and compare the sounds of ship's propellers with an onboard databas=. The Israelis obtained bids from the United States, Great Britain and the=Netherlands, but "the German boats were the best," says an Israeli who was involved in the decision. A few weeks after t=e fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the German government, practically unno=iced by the general public, gave the green light for the construction of t=o "Dolphin"-class submarines, with an option for a third vessel. But the strategic d=al of the century almost fell through. Although the Germans had agreed to =ay part of the costs, this explicitly excluded the weapons systems -- the =mericans were supposed to also pay a share. But in the meantime, the Israelis had voted a new government into=office that was bitterly divided over the investments. 'An Inconceivable S=enario' In particular Moshe=Arens, who was appointed defense minister in 1990, fought to stop the agre=ment -- with success. On Nov. 30, 1990, the Israelis notified the shipyard=in Kiel that it wished to withdraw from the contract. Was the dream of nu=lear second-strike capability lost? By no means. In January 1991, th= US air force attacked Iraq, and then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein reacte= by firing modified Scud missiles at Tel Aviv and Haifa. The bombardment l=sted almost six weeks. Gas masks, some of which came from Germany, were distributed to households. "It was a= inconceivable scenario," recalls Ehud Barak, the current Israeli def=nse minister. During those days, Jewish immigrants from Russia arrived, &q=ot;and we had to hand them gas masks at the airport to protect them against rockets that the Iraqis had built with the help of=the Russians and the Germans." A few days after th= Scud missile bombardment began, a German military official requested a me=ting at the Chancellery, presented a secret report and emptied the content= of a bag onto a table. He spread out dozens of electronic parts, components of a control system and the percuss=on fuse of the modified Scud missiles. They had one thing in common: They =ere made in Germany. Without German technology there would have been no Sc=ds, and without Scuds no dead Israelis. Once again, Germany=bore some of the responsibility, and that was also the message that Hanan =Ion, a senior Israeli Defense Ministry official, brought to Kohl during a =isit to Bonn shortly after the war began. "It would be unpleasant if it came out, through the media, tha= Germany helped Iraq to make poison gas, and then supplied us with the equ=pment against it, Mr. Chancellor," Alon said. According to Israeli of=icials, Alon also issued an open threat, saying: "You are certainly aware that the words gas and Germany don't=sound very good together." The Shipyards of Ki=l The Germans got the=message. "Israel-Germany-gas" would sound like a "horrible =riad" in the rest of the world, then Foreign Minister Genscher warned=in an internal memo. 7 EFTA_R1_00079420 EFTA01769071 On Jan. 30, 1991, t=o weeks after the beginning of the Gulf War, the German government agreed =o supply Israel with armaments worth 1.2 billion deutsche marks. This incl=ded the complete financing of two submarines with 880 million deutsche marks. The budgetary miracle had come to pass. l=rael had found its benefactor. According to milita=y wisdom, a country that buys one or two submarines will also buy a third =ne. One submarine is usually in dock, while the other two take turns being=deployed during operations. "After we had ordered the first two boats, it was clear that we had entered into = deal which would involve repeat orders," says an individual who was = member of the Israeli cabinet at the time. On a winter's day i= 1994, at about 6 p.m., an Israeli Air Force plane landed in the military =rea of Cologne-Bonn Airport. Its passengers wanted to discuss the future o= Israel and the Middle East. On board were the then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, his national security adviser =nd then Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit. The small delegation was driven to th= chancellor's residence, where Kohl was waiting with his foreign policy adviser, Joachim Bitterlich, and his intelligence coordinator, Bernd Schmidbauer. Wheat Beer for Isra=l On that evening, Ko=I and Rabin discussed the path to peace in the Middle East. Rabin and Pale=tinian leader Yasser Arafat had been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize=the year before, together with Peres. For the first time in a long time, conciliation seemed possible between th= Jews and the Palestinians, with Germany serving as a middleman. In Bonn, Rabin spok= at length about the German-Israeli relationship, which was still difficul=. At dinner, Kohl surprised his visitors by serving wheat beer. The Israel=s were delighted. "The beer tastes great," Rabin said. The ice had been broken. On that evening, th= Israeli premier asked the Germans for a third submarine, and Kohl spontan=ously agreed. At around midnight, Schmidbauer took Rabin back to airport. =ohl, who was virtually unsurpassed in the art of male bonding in politics, sent a case of wheat beer to Israe= for Christmas in 1994. A few months after =he secret meeting in Bonn, in February 1995, the contract for the third su=marine, the Tekumah, was signed. The German share of the costs totaled 220=million deutsche marks. THE WELL-PROTECTED =ECRETS OF THE SHIPYARD IN KIEL Since then, one of =he most secretive arms projects in the Western world has been underway in =iel, where a special form of bonding between the German and the Israeli pe=ple developed. Around half a dozen Israelis work at the shipyard today on a long-term basis. Friendships, som= of them close, have formed between HDW engineers and their families and t=e Israeli families, and special occasions are celebrated together. But des=ite these friendships, the Israelis always make sure that no outsiders are allowed near the submarines. Even m=nagers from Thyssen-Krupp, which bought HDW in 2005, are denied access. &q=ot;The main goal of everyone involved was to ensure that there would be no=public debate about the project, neither in Israel nor in Germany," says former Israeli navy chief Ayalon. Thi= explains why everything related to the equipment on the ships remains hid=en behind a veil of secrecy. One of the special =eatures is the equipment used in the Dolphin class, which is named after t=e first ship. Unlike conventional submarines, the Dolphins don't just have=torpedo tubes with a 533-millimeter diameter in the steel bow. In response to a special Israeli request, the H=W engineers designed four additional tubes that are 650 millimeters in dia=eter -- a special design not found in any other submarine in the Western w=rld. What is the purpose=of the large tubes? In a classified 2006 memo, the German government argue= that the tubes are an "option for the transfer of special forces and=the pressure-free stowage of their equipment" -- combat swimmers, for example --, who can be released through the narrow=shaft for secret operations. The same explanation is given by the Israelis= 8 EFTA_R1_00079421 EFTA01769072 Keeping Options Ope= In the United State=, however, it has long been speculated that the wider shafts could be inte=ded for ballistic missiles armed with nuclear warheads. This suspicion was=fueled by an Israeli request for US Tomahawk cruise missiles in 2000. The missiles have a range of over 600 ki=ometers, while nuclear versions can even fly about 2,500 kilometers. But W=shington rejected the request twice. This is why the Israelis still rely o= ballistic missiles of their own design today, such as Popeye Turbo. Their use as nuclea= carrier missiles is readily possible in the Dolphins. Contrary to officia= assumptions, HDW equipped the Israeli submarines with a newly developed h=draulic ejection system instead of a compressed air ejection system. In this process, water is compressed wit= the help of a hydraulic ram. The resulting pressure is then used to catap=lt the weapon out of the shaft. The resulting momen=um is limited, however, and it isn't enough to eject a three to five-ton m=drange missile out of the ship, at least according to insiders. This is no= the case with lighter-weight missiles weighing up to 1.5 tons -- like the Popeye Turbo or the American Tomahawk,=which weighs just that, nuclear warhead included. There are indicatio=s that, with the expanded tubes, the Israelis wanted to keep open the opti=n of future, more voluminous developments. The Germans and the=Atomic Question: No Questions, No Problems The Germans don't w=nt to know anything about that. "It was clear to each of us, without =nything being said, that the ships had been tailored to the needs of the I=raelis, and that that could also include nuclear capabilities," says a senior German official involved during =he Kohl era. "But in politics there are questions that it's better no= to ask, because the answer would be a problem." To this day, former=German Foreign Minister Genscher and former Defense Minister Volker Ruhe s=y they do not believe that Israel has equipped the submarines with nuclear=weapons. For their part, exp=rts with the German military, the Bundeswehr, do not doubt the nuclear cap=bility of the submarines, but they do doubt whether cruise missiles could =e developed on the basis of the Popeye Turbo that could fly 1,500 kilometers. Some military exper=s suggest, therefore, that the Israeli government is bluffing, in a bid to=make Iran believe that the Jewish state already has a sea-based second-str=ke capability. That alone would be enough to force Tehran to commit considerable resources to defending itsel=.The first person to publicly voice suspicions that the German government =as supporting Israel in its nuclear weapons program was Norbert Gansel, an=SPD politician from Kiel. Speaking in the German parliament, the Bundestag, he stated that the SPD opposed th= shipment of "submarines suitable for nuclear missions" to Israe=. Clearly Squirming c=span> The German governme=t did make at least one stab at clearing up the nuclear issue. It was in 1=88, when Defense Ministry State Secretary Lother Ruhl, during a visit to=lsrael, asked then Deputy Chief of General Staff Ehud Barak what the "operational and strategic purpose of the s=ips" was. "We need them to clear maritime maneuvering areas,&quo=; Barak replied. The Israeli mentioned the Egyptian naval blockage of the =ulf of Aqaba ahead of the Six-Day War. The Israelis wanted to be armed against such a step, he said. It sounded plausible, but=RUhl didn't believe it. Every German admini=tration has been keenly aware of how explosive the issue is. When the Germ=n Finance Ministry had to report the funds for the financing of submarines=4 and 5 in 2006, the ministry officials were clearly squirming. 9 EFTA_R1_00079422 EFTA01769073 The planned weapons system is "not suitable f=r the use of missiles equipped with nuclear warheads. The submarines are t=erefore not being constructed and equipped for launching nuclear weapons,&=uot; reads a classified document from Finance Ministry State Secretary Karl Diller to the Bundestag budget committee dat=d Aug. 29, 2006. In other words, the=government was saying that Germany delivered a conventional submarine -- w=at the Israelis did with it afterwards was their own business. In 1999, th= then State Secretary Brigitte Schulte wrote that the German government could not "rule out any armament for=which the operating navy has capability, following the appropriate retrofi=ting." THE WAR OVER THE BO=B: THE CONFLICT BETWEEN ISRAEL AND IRAN The conflict betwee= Israel and Iran has intensified steadily since 2006. War is a real danger= For months now, Israel has been preparing governments around the world, a= well as the international public, for a bombing of the nuclear facilities at Natanz, Fordu and Isfahan using=cutting-edge conventional, bunker-busting weapons. Prime Minister Benjamin=Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Ehud Barak are convinced that the "=window" is closing in which such an attack would be effective, as Iran is in the process of moving most of its=nuclear enrichment activities deep below ground. In his recent contr=versial poem "What Must Be Said," ainter Grass describes the s=bmarines, "whose speciality consists in (their) ability / to direct n=clear warheads toward / an area in which not a single atom bomb / has yet been proved to exist," as the potentially decisiv= step towards a nuclear disaster in the Iran conflict. The poem met with i=ternational protests. Comparing Israel and Iran was "not brilliant, b=t absurd," said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. Netanyahu spoke of an "absolute scandal" and his in=erior minister banned Grass from entering Israel. But some people agr=ed with the author. Gansel, the SPD politician, says that Grass has trigge=ed an important debate, because Netanyahu's "ranting about preventive=war" touches on a difficult aspect of international law. In reality, it is unlikely that Israel will use the submarines in a w=r with Iran as long as Tehran does not have nuclear missiles -- even thoug= the Israeli government has considered using the "Samson" option=on at least two occasions in the past. The country's milit=ry situation following the Egyptian and Syrian surprise attack during the =973 Yom Kippur holiday was so desperate that Prime Minister Golda Meir =s intelligence service reports have now revealed -- ordered her Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to prepare severa= nuclear bombs for combat and deliver them to air force units. Then, just =efore the warheads were to be armed, the tide turned. Israel's forces gain=d the upper hand on the battlefield, and the bombs made their way back to their underground bunkers. Unwillingness to Co=promise And in the first ho=rs of the 1991Gulf War, an American satellite registered that Israel had =esponded to the bombardment by Iraqi Scud missiles by mobilizing its nucle=r force. Israeli analysts had mistakenly assumed that the Scuds would be armed with poison gas. It remains unclear =ow Israel would have acted if a Scud missile tipped with nerve gas had hit=a residential area. Only Netanyahu and =ran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, probably know how close the =orld stands today to a new war. The Israeli prime minister and Khamenei ha=e "one thing in common," says Walther StUtzle, a former state secretary in Germany's Federal Defense Ministry:="They enjoy conflict. If Israel attacks, Iran slips out of the aggres=or role and into that of victim." The UN won't provide the mandate th=t would legitimize such an attack, which means Israel would be breaking the law, argues StUtzle, who is now at the Germ=n Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), a Berlin-based t=ink tank. "True friendship," he believes, "requires the Ger=an chancellor to stay Netanyahu's arm and prevent him from resorting to an armed attack. Germany's obligation to protect Isr=el includes protecting the country from embarking on suicidal adventures.&=uot; 10 EFTA_R1_00079423 EFTA01769074 Helmut Schmidt went=even further, long before Grass. "Hardly anyone dares to criticize Is=ael here, out of fear of being accused of anti-Semitism," the former =hancellor told Jewish American historian Fritz Stern. Yet Israel is a country, Schmidt suggests, that "makes a peace=ul solution practically impossible, through its policies of settlement in =he West Bank and, for far longer, in the Gaza Strip." He also condemn= the current chancellor for, in his view, allowing herself to be essentially taken hostage by Israel. Schmidt says, =quot;I wonder whether it was a feeling of closeness with American policies= or nebulous moral motives, that led Chancellor Merkel to publicly state i= 2008 that Germany bears responsibility for the security of the State of Israel. From my point of view, this is a =erious exaggeration, one that sounds very nearly like the type of obligati=n that exists within an alliance." Schmidt considers i= plain that Berlin has no business participating in adventurous policies, =nd he draws clear boundaries: "Germany has a particular responsibilit= to make sure that a crime such as the Holocaust never again occurs. Germany does not have a responsibility for Israel.&quo=; From the start, Mer=el viewed the matter differently from her predecessor Schrader, who appr=ved the delivery of submarines number 4 and Son his last working day in o=fice in 2005. For Chancellor Merkel, on the other hand, there was never any doubt that she would do what Israel=asked, even at the cost of violating Germany's own arms export guidelines.=The rules, amended in 2000 by the SPD-Green coalition government, do allow=weapons to be supplied to countries that are not part of the EU or NATO in the case of "special foreign o= security policy interests." But there is a clear regulation for cris=s regions: The rules state that supplying weapons "is not authorized =n countries that are involved in armed conflicts or where there is a threat of one." There is no question that that ru=e would include Israel. But that did not stop the chancellor from making a=deal for the delivery of submarine number 6 -- just as she was not deterre= by Netanyahu's unwillingness to make compromises. Broken Promises and=the Deal for Submarine Number Six In August 2009, Net=nyahu, who had recently been re-elected as prime minister as head of the c=nservative Likud party, came to Berlin. Netanyahu explained to Merkel how =mportant the submarines were for Israel; that wherever an Israeli looks, to the north, south, or east, there is no =trategic hinterland to work with, and only airspace and sea to serve as bu=fer zones. "We need this sixth boat," participants in the meetin= say Netanyahu told Merkel during his Berlin visit, coupling the statement with a request that Germany donate this subm=rine, as it had the previous ones. Merkel's response i=cluded three specific requests in exchange. First, Israel should halt its =olicy of settlement expansion, and second, the government should release t=x assets it had frozen, which belong to the Palestinian National Authority. Third, Israel must allow constructi=n of a sewage treatment plant in the Gaza Strip, funded by Germany, to con=inue. The critical factor, the chancellor added, was absolute discretion. =f details leaked out, the deal would be off, because resistance from the Bundestag would be too much to o=ercome. The two leaders agreed that German diplomat Christoph Heusgen and =etanyahu's security advisor Uzi Arad would work out the details. Arad is known as an=impulsive and hotheaded individual who has no problem with verbally attack=ng the Germans. When Merkel criticized Israel's settlement policy in a Jul= 2009 address to the Bundestag, Arad called the Chancellery and fired off a volley of angry complaints at Heusg=n. Arad ended the call with the demand that Merkel should not only apologi=e, but also retract her statements. Asking for Help The fact that Arad =as supposed to be leading the negotiations delayed the talks over the sixt= submarine once again. In the end, Netanyahu asked Yoram Ben-Zeev, Israels= ambassador to Germany, to help out. Ben-Zeev returned t= Israel when his term as ambassador ended on November 28, 2011. He was sta=ding outside his house in Tzahala, a suburb of Tel Aviv, when his cell pho=e rang. It was Jaakov Amidror, Netanyahu's new security adviser. 11 EFTA_R1_00079424 EFTA01769075 "Are you sitti=g down?" Amidror asked. "I'm standing =n my neglected garden," Ben-Zeev replied. "Netanyahu has=one more request," Amidror told him. "Germany is ready to sign t=e submarine deal. You need to get on the next flight to Berlin." Ultimately, Ben-Zee= and Heusgen agreed on the final details over the phone, and the contract =as signed on March 20, 2012, at the Israeli ambassador's residence in Berl=n. Defense Minister Barak flew in especially for the meeting and RUcliger Wolf, a state secretary in the Federal Defen=e Ministry, signed on behalf of the German government. Since the Israeli g=vernment had financial problems once again, Germany made further concessio=s, agreeing to pay €135 million ($170 million), a third of the submarine's cost, and to allow Israel to defer pa=ment of its part until 2015. Netanyahu dutifully expressed his thanks with=a hand-written letter. Still, disappointme=t within the Chancellery is running high, as Netanyahu has simply ignored =erkel's requests. Israel's policy of settlement continues unabated and no =urther progress has been made on the sewage treatment plant. The Israeli government only released the Palestini=n tax money. Merkel has apparently reached the conclusion that there's no =oint in saying anything further to Netanyahu, since he's sure not to liste= in any case. Missed an Opportuni=y But should the Germ=n government take this as cause to halt submarine production? That would s=nd Israel a signal that German support comes with certain stipulations -- =ut it would also amount to showing less solidarity, and that's something Merkel doesn't want. The chancellor has =issed an opportunity to use one of the few sources of leverage the German =overnment has at its disposal to exercise influence on the Israeli governm=nt, which behaves like an occupying power on Palestinian territory. The fourth submarine, known as Tannin, was=first launched in early May and its delivery is set for early 2013. Submar=ne number five will follow in 2014 and number six by 2017. These latest submar=nes are especially important for Israel, because they come equipped with a=technological revolution: fuel cell propulsion that allows the ships to wo=k even more quietly and for longer periods of time. Earlier Dolphin class submarines had to surface every cou=le days to start up the diesel engine and power their batteries for contin=ed underwater travel. The new propulsion system, which doesn't require the=e surface breaks, vastly improves the submarines' possible applications. They will be able to travel underwa=er at least four times as long as the previous Dolphins, their fuel cells =flowing them to stay below the surface at least 18 days at a time. The Per=ian Gulf off the coast of Iran is no longer out of the operating range of the Israeli fleet, all thanks t= quality engineering from Germany. In the Haifa harbor= the Tekumah's diesel engines growl loudly enough that conversation is jus= barely possible. Out at sea, though, when the submarine is in true operat=on and all systems are functioning cleanly, "you can barely hear the motors at all," says the naval=officer in charge of the boat. The Tekumah can plow through the water at s=eeds of 20 knots and above, a sleek and powerful predator. But the real sk=ll, says the officer, comes in the low-speed operations carried out near enemy coasts, places where the Israeli Navy wo=ks covertly, where the Tekumah and the other submarines have to approach t=eir targets with great care, moving as if on tiptoe. 'Everything Possibl.' The naval officer s=es his submarine as "one of the places where Israel is being defended=quot; and his determined tone leaves no doubt he will take whatever action=necessary if he considers his homeland to be under attack. "The Israeli Navy needed this boat," he says. 12 EFTA_R1_00079425