Israeli President Shimon Peres said on Tuesday that Israel's longstanding refusal to confirm or deny reports that it has a nuclear arsenal is itself an effective deterrent. "Israel has 'real or assumed' capabilities that are sufficient for deterrence," Peres's office quoted him as telling a closed-door annual meeting of Israel's envoys abroad.
"None of us know what there really is in Dimona," he said. "But I must say that the imagination and suspicion of countries in the Middle East regarding what is there are beneficial to Israeli deterrence, and Israel was wise enough throughout the years to keep the ambiguity policy."
Israel has two nuclear reactors, one at Dimona, in the Negev desert, and the other at its nuclear research facility at Nahal Sorek, west of Jerusalem. Israel is widely believed to have around 200 nuclear warheads, but has a policy of neither confirming nor denying that, a stance which it calls "nuclear ambiguity."
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