Science Quote by Mordechai Vanunu

Vanunu’s power move here is numerical, not moral. He takes the foggy, officially tolerated ambiguity around Israel’s nuclear arsenal and punctures it with a range so large it feels obscene. “No one could predict or know, including the CIA” isn’t just a flex; it’s an indictment of a whole ecosystem built to not-know. The phrasing implies that ignorance isn’t a failure of intelligence agencies, it’s the product of political agreement: allies avert their eyes, adversaries speculate, and the public is left with euphemisms.

The contrast between “10 or 15” and “150 to 200” is doing heavy rhetorical work. The small number flatters the audience’s desire to see Israel as a restrained, purely defensive exception. Vanunu’s number forces a different picture: not a last-resort deterrent, but a mature nuclear stockpile consistent with a state planning for long-term strategic dominance. Even the looseness of “between 150 to 200” matters. It signals he’s not performing courtroom precision; he’s performing whistleblowing, yanking the conversation out of deniability and into scale.

Context turns this from a mere estimate into an act of confrontation. Vanunu, a technician-turned-leaker, is speaking from the position of someone punished precisely because he could attach quantities to a secret everyone “knew” existed. The intent isn’t to win a numbers debate; it’s to collapse the comfortable middle ground where nuclear reality exists without public accountability.