Israel deploying nuclear missiles on German submarines: report
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
Berlin, June 3, IRNA -- The Hamburg-based news magazine Der Spiegel reported Sunday that Israel is secretly equipping German-built submarines with nuclear missiles.
According to the paper, Germany is helping the Zionist regime to develop its military nuclear capabilities.
Based on extensive research conducted by Der Spiegel, Israel is equipping Dolphin-class submarines that were built in the northern German city of Kiel and largely paid for by German tax payers with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.
The magazine quoted former high-ranking German defense officials as saying they had always assumed Israel would modify the submarines with nuclear weapons.
It also uncovered German Foreign Ministry's documents which showed Berlin had known about Israel's nuclear weapons programme since 1961.
The last high-level talks for which there is evidence took place in 1977, when then-chancellor Helmut Schmidt discussed the issue with then-Israeli foreign minister Moshe Dayan.
The German government has always maintained the position that it is unaware of nuclear weapons being deployed on the submarines.
Three submarines have already been delivered to Israel, and three more will be delivered by 2017.
In addition, the illegal Jewish state is considering ordering its seventh, eighth and ninth submarines from Germany.
Der Spiegel said Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to finance one-third of the cost of the sixth submarine - around 135 million euros (168 million US dollars) - and to allow Israel to defer payment until 2015.
Merkel had linked the delivery of the sixth submarine to a number of conditions, among them demanding that Israel halt its expansionist settlement policy and allow the completion of a sewage treatment plant in the Gaza Strip, which is partially financed with German money.
So far, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to meet any of Merkel's terms.
A die-hard political ally of the Zionist regime, Germany has been pursuing a long-running policy of providing the illegal Jewish regime with heavily subsidized weapons systems as part of a 1953 reparations agreement linked to the Nazi-era genocide of Jews.
Berlin donated the first two Dolphins to the Israeli navy in the late 1990s.
It paid half the 700 million US dollar cost of the third of the diesel-electric boats, heavily modified versions of the Type-209 submarines developed by the Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG shipyard in the northern German city of Kiel.
Germany has reportedly played a key role in arming the Israeli navy over the past 12 years.
The German government has kept mum on the its military deals with the Zionist regime, refusing to reveal any details of the contracts.
Berlin has become a major arms supplier of Israel despite a constitutional ban to send weapons to crisis regions.
There are no official statistics available on the sale of German weapons to Israel as almost all arms exports to that country are shrouded in utmost secrecy.
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Islamic Republic News Agency/IRNA NewsCode: 80166248
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