1.9 KiB
| tags | category | summary | start | end | location | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Foreign Government | The South African Defense Force (SADF) was the apartheid-era South African military that entered into a formal cooperation agreement with the Israel Defense Forces known as the SADF-IDF Mutual Wartime Agreement (SIMWA). | 1957 | 1994 | Pretoria, South Africa |
The South African Defense Force (SADF) was the military of South Africa. It entered into a military cooperation agreement with the Israel (IDF) known as SIMWA (SADF-IDF Mutual Wartime Agreement).1
Under SIMWA, if either country faced a shortage of matériel during war or military operations, the other country would provide supplies from its own stockpiles. The South African Defense Force also agreed to invest in Israel nuclear program and provide testing grounds in the Indian Ocean for Israel nuclear tests.1
A memorandum dated March 21, 1975, from the Chief of the Defence Staff, Lt. Gen. R. F. Armstrong, to the Chief of the South African Defence Force, Admiral H. H. Biermann, concerned Jericho I. It argued that a significant nuclear threat to South Africa had emerged and concluded: "the possession of such a system will greatly add to our ability to negotiate from a position of strength." The Department of Defence declassified the memorandum in September 2003.2
Footnotes
-
Ben-Menashe, Ari. Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015). ↩︎
-
South African History Archive, "Declassified documents on apartheid South Africa-Israel talks on nuclear weapons," May 25, 2010, SAHA Collection AL2878, item A3.1.1. https://www.saha.org.za/news/2010/May/declassified_documents_on_apartheid_south_africa_israel_talks_on_nuclear_weapons.htm ↩︎