Nasser’s Plan for a Nuclear War Against Israel Reported by Germans

Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser is preparing, with the help of 500 German scientists and electronics experts, a “deadly” set of plans to use atomic warfare against Israel and, unless the Soviet Union and the United States give joint guarantees against aggression to Egypt and Israel, the “new kind of arms race in the Middle East will menace the people of the entire world,” the Guardian of Manchester warned today.

The newspaper revealed Nasser’s entire atomic program in a special article from Frankfurt, Germany, reporting that “thanks to the help of German scientists, there are indications that Nasser has already achieved a breakthrough” toward making Egypt a “minor nuclear power.” The information, said the newspaper, came from persons who have been connected with the work in Egypt. “They have convinced me of the authenticity of their information,” the Frankfurt correspondent stressed.

Knowledge of Nasser’s nuclear program has been top secret, restricted to a handful of German scientists and Nasser’s personal advisers, the correspondent declared, but Israel has now been informed of the details of the Nasser program, while the Governments of Britain, France and the United States “are aware at least of the general outlines of the program.”

PLAN PROVIDES FOR NUCLEAR BOMBS AND RADIOACTIVE MISSILES

Nasser’s nuclear program aimed at Israel consists of three main features, all designed to annihilate Israel, the report stated. The first feature is “Operation Cleopatra,” which involves production of nuclear bombs of the type used by the United States in its atomic attack on Hiroshima in 1945. While the Hiroshima bomb is now considered “out of date” by big power standards, it was pointed out that such a bomb is sufficient for the destruction of Israel’s highly-concentrated centers of population.

This project has been delayed somewhat by the inability of the German scientists, thus far, to make an easily transportable bomb or nuclear war head, light enough to be fitted onto a rocket. But the project, according to the report, has probably not been abandoned. One of Nasser’s plans, discussed with his closest advisers, said the report, was to try to obtain some of the Hiroshima-type A-bombs by bribing Royal Air Force officers to bring three or four of them to Egypt stealthily. The bribes would have amounted to $8,000,000 per bomb.

The second feature of the Nasser program is called “Operation Ibis,” and involves the making of small missiles with “limited radioactive fallout.” These could be used as bombs dropped by planes, or as warheads for rockets, or as shells fired by artillery. The German informants told the Guardian correspondent they believed that this type of missile has already been produced by the German scientists in Egypt, and in being stockpiled in Egypt.

The third phase of the Nasser program, called “Operation Strontium-90,” has been reportedly given serious consideration by Nasser for causing heavy civilian losses among the Israelis when small packages of Strontium-90 are dropped over Israel. The key figure in “Operation Strontium-90” was reportedly Prof. Wolfgang von Piltz, a German rocket specialist. Later, the report stated, some electronic experts, also Germans, were brought into this project, and some Egyptian scientists and nuclear experts were added.

The report said that there has been a definite breakthrough by Egypt in “the field of light and easily transportable missiles, containing limited quantities of radioactive material. The exploding of such missiles would not produce the heat or blast effects of a hydrogen bomb, but their secondary radiation effects would cause countless deaths through radioactive fallout,” the report stated.