Israel Hosts Joint Workshop with US on Preventing Nuclear Terror

In a 2-day workshop with the US in Haifa this week and attended by officials from multiple ministries and agencies from both sides, Israel shared its vast knowledge on how to prevent nuclear terror. 

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosted a successful two-day US Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) workshop in Haifa this week.

The workshop, a cooperation with the US State Department, was attended by officials from multiple ministries and agencies from both sides and featured a facilitated, interdiction scenario-based table top exercise (TTX) on courses of action for inspecting, identifying, and seizing shipments of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) proliferation concern pursuant to US and Israeli commitments to the PSI Statement of Interdiction Principles.

The scenarios focused on relevant proliferation threats from nuclear, ballistic missiles and terror elements. The tabletop exercise included a maritime component executed by Israeli and US navy ships.

“The workshop was a very productive way to strengthen our respective governments’ national capacities and to improve our bilateral cooperation to deal with WMD-related interdictions,” the ministry stated.

Launched in Krakow, Poland in 2003, the current 105 PSI-endorsing states have committed to undertake measures, on a voluntary basis and consistent with their national authorities and resources and international legal frameworks, to interdict transfers of WMD- and missile-related items to and from state and non-state actors of proliferation concern, to exchange relevant information, and to strengthen legal authorities to conduct interdictions.  PSI endorsers regularly conduct exercises, workshops, and other activities to improve their capacities to fulfill their PSI commitments.

World leaders have recently addressed the concern of Islamic terror groups acquiring WMDs and using them against Western civilian targets and causing mass casualties.

“Israel is one of the countries most prepared for scenarios of nuclear terrorism,” Minister of Energy Yuval Steinitz said at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC last week. “On the whole we can sleep soundly, relatively speaking, definitely when compared to other nations,” he said.

Israel has developed means to prevent the smuggling of radioactive material and has a rapid response unit prepared to confront radioactive terror. In addition, Israel has held multiple drills, including some in consultation with international officials, for various doomsday scenarios.

By: Max Gelber, United with Israel

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