Hamas Rocket Struck Base Linked To Israel's (Not So Secret) Nuclear Missile Program

 It's such an open secret and so much of a 'given' assumption that it can just be casually written straight into the New York Times headline at this point...

Nuclear missile program you say? (What nuclear program—nothing to see here... or the country's worst kept secret.) Militant Rocket Hit Base Linked to Israeli Nuclear Missile Program...

"A rocket most likely fired by Hamas militants during their Oct. 7 attack on Israel struck an Israeli military base where, experts say, many of the country’s nuclear-capable missiles are based, according to a visual analysis of the attack’s aftermath by The New York Times."

The report details the highly dangerous episode, noting that while no missiles or warheads were directly hit, a large fire was sparked and nearly spread to storage facilities that contained "sensitive weaponry" at the Sdot Micha military base in central Israel.

One weapons expert was cited as saying there may be up to 25 to 50 nuclear-capable Jericho missiles at the base where the fire raged. However, the nuclear warheads themselves are likely stored at a separate base, according to the analyst. But clearly the base in central Israel was directly targeted by Hamas, or also possibly Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) - which worked in concert.

The Times concludes that what happened on Oct.7 was even scarier in terms of the potential for a bigger catastrophic event than previously believed:

"But the targeting of one of the most sensitive military locations in Israel shows that the scope of the Oct. 7 attacks may have been even greater than previously known — and that rockets can penetrate the airspace around Israel’s closely guarded strategic weapons."

Illustrative image via Times of Israel/Flickr

This strongly suggests that on Oct.7 there was an ultra-risky moment that Israel's strategic nuclear arsenal came under direct fire (again, the arsenal that's not supposed to exist). 

The dangerous near-miss seems akin to the highly volatile and long-running standoff between Russian and Ukraine forces at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

But in the case of Hamas, it's a ragtag low-tech group of Islamists that apparently came very close to devastating a highly sensitive facility.

Below: the visual investigation compiled by the Times showing a large scorched area in the aftermath of the missile strike...

The fresh Monday report noted, "The Times first identified the fire caused by the attack on Sdot Micha using public NASA satellite imagery for detecting wildfires. There has not been a fire — from any cause — of similar magnitude at the base since at least 2004."

Now, about two months out from the devastating Hamas terror raids of Oct.7, more and more shocking details from that day have been revealed which increasingly confirms the significant planning and sophistication of the multi-pronged attack. More and more pressure and public outrage has been directed at the Netanyahu government and military establishment for the unprecedented intelligence failures.

This has also included that revelation that "Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show," as a separate NYT report detailed. "But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out."

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/hamas-missile-struck-base-linked-israels-not-so-secret-nuclear-missile-program