Gaza war: Israel upgraded its Dimona nuclear facility in recent months, says SIPRI report

Israel has beenreportedly working to modernise its nuclear weapons systems in recent months and has also upgraded its production facilities in southern Israel amid raging war in Gaza which began after October 7 Hamas attack last year, an event Israel widely described as the biggest existential threat to Jewish people since World War II.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Israel is believed to have around 90 nuclear weapons in its arsenal. The SIPRI annual report assessed the state of global armament and security to examine developments throughout 2023 and until January 2024.

Additionally, SIPRI examined the nuclear arsenals of the eight other states – the US, UK, Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea.

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As of January 2024, there are an estimated 12,121 nuclear warheads held worldwide, of which some 9,585 are kept in military stockpiles for potential use.

The United States and Russia possess a combined 90 per cent of all nuclear weapons.

SIPRI claimed that there was evidence Israel was in the process of upgrading its nuclear reactor in the southern town of Dimona.

"Israel which does not publicly acknowledge possessing nuclear weapons — is also believed to be modernising its nuclear arsenal and appears to be upgrading its plutonium production reactor site at Dimona," the report added.

The SIPRI report suggests that any work done between the US and Iran to de-escalate tensions was undone by Israel-Hamas war and the subsequent proxy attacks on US targets by Iran-backed proxy forces in Iraq and Syria.

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The SIPRI report coincided with a new report from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) that found that in 2023 alone, nuclear weapons spending globally increased by $10.8 billion from a year earlier. The United States accounts for 80 per cent of entire spending.

The US share of total spending, $51.5 billion, “is more than all the other nuclear-armed countries put together,” said ICAN. The next biggest spender was China, at $11.8 billion, followed by Russia, spending $8.3 billion.