Israel Revealed: Tel Aviv Offered Nuclear Weapons to South Africa

A former South African naval commander, Dieter Gerhardt, jailed in 1983 for spying for the Soviet Union, said following his release in 1992 that there was an agreement, "Chalet", in which Israel would arm eight Jericho missiles with "special warheads" for South Africa. Gerhardt said that these were atomic bombs.

Gerhardt's claims have finally been supported. During research for his newly published book, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Alliance with Apartheid South Africa, an American academic Sasha Polakow-Suransky found secret South African documents revealing Israel's offer of nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime,  the first published documentary evidence of West Jerusalem's possession of nuclear weapons.

Middle East Inside Line: Israel’s Settlements; Syria’s Defiance
Israel-Palestine Analysis: The 2nd Round of Proximity Talks (Yenidunya)

The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 reveal 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, with a clause that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.



The top secret minutes of the meeting record, "Minister Botha expressed interest in a limited number of units of Chalet subject to the correct payload being available." The document then states, "Minister Peres said the correct payload was available in three sizes. Minister Botha expressed his appreciation and said that he would ask for advice."

The "three sizes" are believed to refer to the conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons.