VIENNA, Austria -- Israel continues to produce atomic weapons and already has hundreds of nuclear warheads, researchers said as the country released a man imprisoned for 18 years for leaking nuclear secrets.
Because Israel is not party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency has no power to look into its nuclear program.
The U.N. agency, however, is seeking contacts with Israel, and Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei repeatedly has called for talks on eliminating weapons of mass destruction from the Middle East.
Israeli authorities on Wednesday freed Mordechai Vanunu, jailed for leaking details and pictures of Israel's alleged nuclear weapons program.
Israel neither confirms nor denies it has nuclear weapons, and refuses to discuss such allegations.
Israel continues to make nuclear weapons, said Friedrich Steinhaeusler, a former IAEA nuclear safety expert who now is a physics professor at the University of Salzburg.
The best estimates put the size of the Israeli arsenal at 150 nuclear weapons, Steinhaeusler said. With air, sea and land-based launching systems, "they have the Middle East under control," he said.
But Avner Cohen, an expert on Israel and nuclear weapons at the Center for International and Security Studies in Maryland, said "there is a lot of uncertainty" about the number of weapons held by Israel.
"There are all kind of estimates, from the upper teens on the lower side to over 300 on the higher side," he said.
John Simpson, director of the Mountbatten Center of International Studies at Britain's University of Southampton, estimated the number of atomic weapons held by Israel at no more than 200.
He said his estimate was based on the presumed output of plutonium by a reactor in Dimona, and on the number of tunnels in cliffs from which the weapons could be deployed.
"What the Israelis might well have is the capability to test very rapidly," Simpson said. The country could quickly increase production after beginning testing, he said.
The lack of debate within Israel about the nuclear arsenal has created uncertainty, Simpson added.
"It is not clear that these issues have been thought through," he said. "If there was a crisis, actions could be taken almost at the spur of the moment, without a clear analysis of the consequences."
IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky declined to comment on Israel, saying his agency has no jurisdiction there.
But ElBaradei, in a lecture this month, condemned "this imbalance in the region (with) Israel sitting on nuclear weapons and everybody else trying to stick to the Nonproliferation Treaty."
However, he said Israel was unlikely to readily change its stance.
"Nuclear deterrence or nuclear weapons (are) deeply ingrained in the Israeli psychology," he said. "They think ... that as long as many people, individuals (and) groups continue to talk about the destruction of Israel, they just simply cannot afford to give up the nuclear option in the absence of a comprehensive peace accepted by the people of the region."
