The US government blows the lid off Israel’s nuclear weapons program by declassifying a top secret document, a report says.

Last month the United States released documentation from its 1987 assessment of Israel’s nuclear weapons capabilities, following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the Jerusalem Post reported on Saturday.

The 386-page document, formally titled Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations, was commissioned by the Department of Defense and complied by Leading Technologies Incorporated.

According to the report, the document gives a detailed breakdown of Israel’s nuclear weapons development in the 1970s and 1980s.

Israel is “developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level,” reads the declassified document.

It goes on to say that in the 1980s Israel was “reaching the ability to create bombs considered a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs.”

It also parallels Israel’s nuclear research laboratories to US nuclear facilities known to carry out weapons research.

Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant, pictured in 2004 (Getty Images)

The Soreq and Dimona nuclear facilities “are the equivalent of our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories,” it reads.

“The Soreq center runs the full nuclear gamut of activities from engineering, administration, and non-destructive testing to electro-optics, pulsed power, process engineering and chemistry and nuclear research and safety,” the paper goes on to say. “This is the technology base required for nuclear weapons design and fabrication.”

The Dimona Nuclear Research Center as viewed from satellite (Photographed by American reconnaissance satellite KH-4 CORONA, from Wikipedia)

In accordance to FOIA regulations, the United States informs the relevant partner giving them the option of formal objection.

The Jerusalem Post quoted US Army Col. Steven Warren, the director of Pentagon press operations, as saying that Israel was informed of “our planned release of the documents and they did not object.”

The release of the document is thought to be the first time the United States has publicly acknowledged Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons.

The Israeli regime, widely believed to possess between 200 to 400 nuclear warheads in its arsenals, refuses to either allow inspections of its nuclear facilities or join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

SRK/HSN/AS