Now facing a genuinely unprecedented configuration of existential threats, Israel's leaders must decide whether to continue their deliberate nuclear ambiguity policy (the "bomb in the basement") as they consider such urgent and overlapping survival issues as regional nuclear proliferation, Jihadist terror-group intersections with enemy states, rationality or irrationality of state and sub-state adversaries, assassination or "targeted killing," preemption, and the probable effects of a "Cold War II" between Russia and the United States. Israel must develop a strategic posture that will involve a suitably coherent and refined nuclear strategy. This book critically examines Israel's rapidly evolving nuclear strategy in light of these issues and explains how it underscores the overarching complexity of strategic interactions in the Middle East.

The enormous potential for destruction that lies latent in nuclear technology inevitably gives rise to the possibility of nuclear terrorism-the use of nuclear explosives or radioactivity by insurgent groups. Professor Beres considers the factors that might foster such terrorism, the forms it might take, and the probable consequences of each form. He then identifies a coherent strategy of counternuclear terrorism, one that embraces both technological and behavioral measures, that suggests policies for deterrence and situation management on both national and international levels, and that points toward a major refashioning of world order.

Now facing a genuinely unprecedented configuration of existential threats, Israel's leaders must decide whether to continue their deliberate nuclear ambiguity policy (the "bomb in the basement") as they consider such urgent and overlapping survival issues as regional nuclear proliferation, Jihadist terror-group intersections with enemy states, rationality or irrationality of state and sub-state adversaries, assassination or "targeted killing," preemption, and the probable effects of a "Cold War II" between Russia and the United States. Israel must develop a strategic posture that will involve a suitably coherent and refined nuclear strategy. This book critically examines Israel's rapidly evolving nuclear strategy in light of these issues and explains how it underscores the overarching complexity of strategic interactions in the Middle East.

The enormous potential for destruction that lies latent in nuclear technology inevitably gives rise to the possibility of nuclear terrorism-the use of nuclear explosives or radioactivity by insurgent groups. Professor Beres considers the factors that might foster such terrorism, the forms it might take, and the probable consequences of each form. He then identifies a coherent strategy of counternuclear terrorism, one that embraces both technological and behavioral measures, that suggests policies for deterrence and situation management on both national and international levels, and that points toward a major refashioning of world order.