Admiral stirs questions on Israel's "nuclear" subs

An apparently innocuous note from an official history of Israeli submarines has offered a glimpse into the murky depths of the country's nuclear secrecy.

Contributing a preface and summation chapter for the recently published "Israeli Vessels in the Fourth Dimension", former admiral Shaul Chorev writes that the five major powers -- the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain -- have deployed submarines with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles.

With India planning to match them by decade's end, Chorev writes, it would be "the sixth country in the world to have a sea-based strategic deterrence capability" -- implying, by default, that Israel's submarines carry conventional arms only.

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