Explaining The Vela Incident

On the subject of South Africa there is an explanation for the Vela Incident that I cannot see has ever been presented.

In the late 1970s efforts were being made to limit the spread of nuclear weapons and testing. U.S. President Jimmy Carter promoted a treaty signed by many nations limiting nuclear testing. A system of satellites was put in orbit that could detect nuclear tests. The primary reason behind nuclear tests is not to verify that the weapons work but to miniaturize and improve them.

On September 22, 1979, a brilliant flash was detected in the southern ocean, about halfway between South Africa and Antarctica, that was consistent with a nuclear test. No nation had announced that it would be testing in that area and no one claimed responsibility for a test. The U.S. investigated but found a lack of the radioactivity that can usually be detected after a nuclear test.

There was actually a window of opportunity to conduct a test in this location when none of the VELA satellites would be able to detect it, and it seems clear that whichever power conducted the test knew this. But as it turned out there was an officially retired satellite that was still collecting data, and that was the one that detected the flash. (Source-Wikipedia)

It was a minor nuclear explosion, only a few kilotons. Most nuclear tests, by nations other than the superpowers, are done openly so that the world knows that this nation has the bomb. It soon became the presumption that this had been a joint nuclear test between South Africa and Israel, which were close allies at the time.

It is true that Israel has nowhere to safety conduct a nuclear test in it's own neighborhood, and keeping a nuclear detonation a secret there would be absolutely impossible. But Israel is widely believed to have possessed nuclear technology since the 1950s, why did it suddenly decide to conduct a test in 1979, and why was it so important to keep it a secret when non-superpower nuclear powers inevitably want everyone to know that they have the bomb?

1979 was, of course, when the Iranian Revolution happened. Israel had been in the 1967 Six-Day War with neighboring countries. Six years later, in 1973, there was the Yom Kippur War. In 1979 it was six years after that and it might have seemed about time for another war.

We read a lot about the hostility between Iran and Israel today, but that was not true at the time of this nuclear test. The Iranian Revolution was far from complete. That Ayatollah Khomeini would consolidate his power over Iran was by no means certain. There was other facets to the revolution such as the Communists. It was not even certain at the time that the exiled Shah wouldn't be able to return to power someday.

At the time of this nuclear test the world had a "wait-and-see" attitude toward the Iranian Revolution. No one knew exactly how it would turn out and the test took place six weeks before revolutionaries seized the staff of the U.S. Embassy as hostages. Israel had been in plenty of danger before without, as is known for certain, testing a nuclear bomb.

There has been a Jewish community in Iran ever since the Persian Empire conquered Babylon and freed the Jews that the Babylonians had taken captive. Ayatollah Khomeini actually met with members of the Jewish community and praised Moses. Israel clandestinely supported Iran in it's war with Iraq during the 1980s. Iranian hostility against Jews and Israel would come later, but that would be well after the time of this nuclear test. 

If Israel conducted such a test today we might presume that it was in preparation for a conflict with Hezbollah, which is an Iranian ally that has engaged in a lot of conflict with Israel. But this was years before Hezbollah was formed.

It thus makes no sense that the Iranian Revolution was the reason for this nuclear test.

Another major event occurred in 1979, although it got a lot less attention than the Iranian Revolution. It took place closer to Israel. What happened is that Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq. Although he had already been the real power in the country for several years he officially took power on July 16.

Iraq had been in three wars with Israel, in 1948, 1967 and, 1973. It had a minor role in the 1967 war but a much larger role in 1973.

Upon taking uncontested power in Iraq Saddam Hussein immediately showed how radical he was. Saddam presided over a purge of his own political party, in which dozens were executed. Iraq maintained a large army with many Soviet-made tanks.

There was a Syrian and an Iraqi branch of Saddam's Baath Party. The purge was against those who favored a union between the two countries, as Saddam split from the Syrian branch. The father of the present embattled president of Syria, Bashar Assad, was an arch-rival of Saddam Hussein, and supported Iran in it's war with Iraq. This alliance continued thirty years later when Hezbollah, Iran's ally in Lebanon, helped Bashar Assad during Syria's civil war.

This purge took place in July of 1979, the nuclear test came on September 22.

Due to the apparent low yield of the nuclear test, and the lack of radioactivity detected afterward, it has been suggested that it was a test of a neutron bomb. A neutron bomb was a tactical, rather than a strategic, nuclear weapon that was designed for use on the battlefield, rather than against a city. 

As the name implies a neutron bomb strikes by unleashing a deadly burst of neutrons, rather than by the force of an explosion. This was believed to be especially useful against tanks, since neutrons can penetrate thick armor.

Just as neutrons hold the nucleus of an atom together, against the mutual repulsion of the positively-charged protons, so a neutron must also be held together by being part of a nucleus. A neutron by itself will break down into a proton and an electron, in an average of about fifteen minutes. But neutrons, propelled at high speed, last long enough to do their damage in neutron bombs, or to bring about nuclear fission.

Saddam Hussein would turn his aggressive designs to the east, against neighbor Iran. Seeing Iraq's traditional rival cut off from it's major ally, the U.S., and certainly worried that Iran's revolution would incite his own majority Shiite population, Saddam launched a military offensive against Iran, after months of sporadic border clashes and apparently hoping that Iran's oil-rich and Arab-majority Khuzestan province would rise up and join him.

Consider the tank force that Saddam Hussein sent against Iran in 1980. This is what the Israeli defense establishment was thinking about having to confront, after Saddam officially became president of Iraq, and the reason for the neutron bomb test because neutron bombs were developed for use against tanks.

In 1981, while Iraq and Iran were at war, Israel surprised the world by launching an air raid that destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. In 1990, during the First Gulf War, Iraq rained Scud missiles on Israel, hoping to provoke Israel to enter the conflict.

(Note-We have seen this Israeli air raid on Osirak in the compound posting, "Investigations" December 2018, in section 2) THE REAL STORY OF OSIRAK. My belief is that the raid was also a warning to Iran, although Israel certainly considered Iraq as the greater threat. Iran had earlier bombed this Iraqi reactor but had not succeeded in seriously damaging it. Iran had pulled off one of the most brilliant aerial operations in history, ironically using American planes, in an attack on airfields far on the other side of Iraq, known as H3, but that showed Iran to certainly be capable of striking Israel).

Look how closely similar the reaction times are. It was 64 days from when Iran conducted the aerial mission against H3 to when Israel conducted their aerial mission against Osirak. It had been 68 days from when Saddam Hussein officially took power in Iraq to this nuclear test in the southern ocean.

Ironically Saddam's tank offensive that was the beginning of full-scale war between Iraq and Iran began on September 22, 1980, exactly one year after the nuclear test.

One good thing to emerge from the satellite program to detect nuclear testing is that it discovered the Gamma Ray Bursts that were taking place in space. Gamma Ray Bursts are the most powerful explosions known, far more powerful than a supernova. An average of about one Gamma Ray Burst per day seems to take place somewhere in the universe. My cosmology theory explains Gamma Ray Bursts but I won't get into it here.