09/30/2026
Forty years ago today, September 30, 1986: Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was lured from London to Rome by a Mossad agent, where he was kidnapped, drugged, bound and put on a freighter to Israel. A secret court convicted him of espionage and treason.
The photos he took and later shared with British journalists at the Sunday Times gave the world its first photographic proof of Israel’s clandestine production of nuclear weapons at the remote Dimona factory where he had worked as a technician until 1985.
He served every day of his 18 year prison sentence (12 of those years in solitary confinement) for blowing the whistle on Israel’s then secret nuclear arsenal.
He is still not free - he continues to live in Israel under restrictions that were imposed upon his release on April 21, 2004, and are renewed annually. He is prohibited to speak with foreigners and is not allowed to leave the country.
Mordechai Vanunu is a hero for his courageous act of whistleblowing, not a traitor or a spy. Certainly Israel would view a potential Iranian nuclear whistle-blower in the same light.
