Flipper wouldn't approve
Reports that Israel has fitted German submarines with nuclear warheads have not just left the government in Berlin high and dry. They also signal an ominous sea-change in the Middle East's balance of military power, writes Dominic Coldwell
"This is all nonsense! ... You don't know anything about military affairs!" thundered Rudolf Scharping, Germany's otherwise sedate former defence minister, on a visit to Cairo in December 2000. Scharping had just been asked whether the three Dolphin submarines that Germany transferred to Israel could be fitted with nuclear missiles.
Last week, however, two unnamed American bureaucrats and an anonymous Israeli official told The Los Angeles Times that Tel Aviv has reconfigured American Harpoon cruise missiles to deliver nuclear warheads. Meanwhile, under the supervision of Israeli engineers, German technicians at the Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft in Kiel were said to have redesigned the Dolphins to serve as mobile launch pads for the Harpoons, the sources contended.
Daniel Seaman, a spokesman for the Israeli government, confirmed that the submarines have been fitted with Harpoons. In keeping with Tel Aviv's deliberate opacity regarding its nuclear weapons capabilities, however, Seaman declined to specify which type of warheads the missiles had been armed with.
Suspicions over the potential use of the Dolphins first surfaced in September 1999, when Jane's International Defence Review announced that Tel Aviv was redesigning the submarines for nuclear use, based on information disclosed by German engineers in Kiel.
When two deputies of the traditionally pacifist Green Party, the junior partner in Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's coalition government, subsequently questioned Israeli intentions at a parliamentary hearing, Scharping shrugged his shoulders. While "the federal government, ultimately, cannot rule out the placement" of Harpoons in the Dolphins, the reasons for such an installation were "not known to the federal government", he claimed.
According to Ottfried Nassauer, the head of Berlin's prestigious Information Centre for Trans-Atlantic Security, Schroder's cabinet deliberately looked the other way when the first reports of Israel's true aims bubbled up in 1999. "They behaved according to the motto: That which I do not know cannot irritate me," Nassauer maintains.
Nor was it supposed to irritate German taxpayers, who footed the 560 million euro bill for the first two submarines, which Germany supplied to Israel free-of-charge.
Feigning ignorance, however, became increasingly difficult when London's Sunday Times revealed that Israel conducted a missile test with the Dolphins off the coast of Sri Lanka in June 2000. America's Carnegie Foundation similarly noted the nuclear capacity of Israel's German submarines in June 2002.
If these reports prove true, the implications for military security throughout the Middle East are profound. As early as October 2000, defence analysts at Stratfor argued that the aim of fitting the submarines with atomic arms was to turn Israel into the first regional power to acquire a sea-based "second-strike" nuclear capability.
Dolphin submarines can travel 15,000 kilometres and remain submerged for up to four weeks. Defence experts believe that Israel reprogrammed the Harpoons' navigation system -- normally intended for naval strikes -- in order to enable land strikes.
Although Tel Aviv has ratcheted up military pressure on Syria in recent weeks, the Dolphins are more likely to threaten Iran. Since Tehran positioned long-range missiles facing west in the early 1990s, Tel Aviv has tried to ensure its atomic arsenal is out of the reach of Iranian rockets.
Tellingly enough, both countries have traded increasingly irate insults in recent weeks, with Israel vowing to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities in Bushehr in the same manner as it pulverised Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981.
While Tehran has consistently denied ambitions to develop nuclear weapons, Western defence experts suspect the existence of three further, as yet unidentified, nuclear facilities inside the country. It is against potential threats such as these that Tel Aviv's nuclear submarines are designed to serve either as a means of second-strike retaliation or as a credible deterrent.
For the time being, Israeli plots to bomb Bushehr remain a more likely scenario. Germany's prestigious weekly Der Spiegel recently reported that a special unit of Israel's Mossad intelligence service received orders to prepare for such an attack two months ago, with F-16 bombers envisioned as part of an operation to destroy half-a-dozen targets "simultaneously and completely".
It is against the backdrop of such strike plans that Tel Aviv has requested another two Dolphin submarines from Berlin in recent weeks. Critics argue that Germany would contribute to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction if it fills Israel's order.
"In the light of our awareness that Israel has turned the first three submarines into nuclear launch pads, the federal government may only respond with a firm no," argued Nassauer, pointing to Germany's obligations under international law.
Both German and EU legislation expressly forbids the shipment of weapons material to areas of armed conflict of the kind that exists in the occupied territories. It also requires that, prior to any arms contract, the German government must assure that the recipient of arms shipments respects human rights.
Even so, Der Spiegel predicts that Berlin is not likely to turn down Israel's requests. During the 1950s, the Federal Republic became one of Israel's most generous arms suppliers in the hope of atoning for the Holocaust. Since then, successive German governments, ironically, have spread further death by channelling countless weapons to Tel Aviv. German arms played a decisive role in cementing Israel's military supremacy in the 1967 War.
Nor did legal constraints matter much to former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who first promised to supply Israel with the Dolphins in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, despite Israel's amply-documented violation of human rights during the first Intifada. According to Nassauer, Kohl was trying to make amends with Tel Aviv amid speculation over German complicity in the armament of Iraq.
Moreover, German support for Israel remains strong at the level of official public discourse. When Jorgen Mullemann, the former vice-chairman of Germany's Liberal Party (FDP) and former director of the German-Arab Society, criticised Israel's repeated incursions into the occupied territories last year, Michel Friedman, the former vice-president of the influential Central Council of Jews in Germany, branded him an anti-Semite (see "Muzzling Mullemann", Al-Ahram Weekly, 26/09/2002).
In a veritable witch-hunt, Mullemann was eventually forced to resign from public office. Earlier this year, he committed suicide by separating himself from a parachute mid-air during one of his routine sporting jumps.
His nemesis, meanwhile, has enjoyed a cushioned landing. Less than a week after Mullemann's untimely death, it transpired that the sanctimoniously moralising Friedman repeatedly engaged in lavish sexual orgies, prodding Russian prostitutes to consume cocaine.
Although the latter is a criminal offence under German law, the media roundly exonerated the high-flying Friedman when he issued a public apology to his girlfriend, a well-known talk-show host. Anything less would have been unmistakable evidence of anti-Semitism, of course.
