Oddbean

Their no-denial-no-confirm policy comes from the 60's, before Iran was the enemy. When was the leak? Also, the US did an interesting experiment: they paid (well) two physics professors, competent but with no nuclear physics experience, to stop whatever they were doing and design a A-bomb using only public info. In two years, they had a functional design on paper, missing only workable engineering details. So, if Israel is unable to build A-bombs, it must be due to lack of will, $, or industrial capacity, and not lack of knowledge. And keeping subs on the sea with no nuclear missiles would be an expensive way to bluff. But who knows?

Stoping the proliferation of nuclear weapons is of strategic interest to all countries with active nuclear weapons programs irrespective of whether or not Iran was a threat in the 60s or if Israel had a specific target for it's nukes. I'm not saying Israel doesn't have the ability to build nukes, of course they do, as does Iran. I'm saying they voluntarily stopped and took a deal from the US to not continue in exchange for a secret defense agreement.... but they didn't shut down the program, they just froze it, so they could continue if that deal somehow ever fell apart and as leverage to force the US to keep defending them. But it's just a hypothesis. Everybody in all political camps seems to think Israel has nuclear weapons, so it is a minority hypothesis. This last week's intelligence leak gave it a bit more credibility though which is why I mention it now.

even if not true, your hypothesis has the merit of rethinking 'estabilished facts'. It is clear that lack of knowledge is not the problem. Also, although Israel never had the hability of run something on the original Manhattan Project scale, the industrial effort of building an A-Bomb become much smaller with tech advances and experience. Building a bomb in the 60's must have been much easier than in the 40's, and quite more difficult than today. So, the most relevant issue to answer "could Israel build A-bombs' in the 60's" is: given 60's tech, how much industrial effort, $ and U ore would be needed to build a few dozens of bombs? Would that be achievable or it looks like a bluff? I do not know enough to answer. Today Iran has all the drama with centrifugues, cyber attacks and so on. It is not THAT easy. Iran is relatively competent. Do you know it is on top 30 countries in robotics papers? https://www.researchgate.net/figure/RESEARCH-OUTPUT-BY-COUNTRIES-ON-ROBOTIC-TECHNOLOGY_tbl2_324829090

yeah an atom bomb is the most primitive nuclear device - simpler than a nuclear reactor and simpler than a hydrogen bomb if USSR could build a hydrogen bomb WAY back in the day and Florida can run nuclear reactors then i am sure Israel could easily build an atom bomb considering they have a history of stealing US military secrets and some of the most advanced Tech corporations like Intel have offices in Israel ... it's possible that they don't have nukes but like you said they could easily get them if they wanted