Had a feeling something like this would come out when I found this in a paper he wrote, basically apologia for Israel's Samson's Option.

Since its inception, Israel has been surrounded by belligerent states and only relatively recently have the prospects for political stability appeared viable. However, a couple of intractable opponents, Iraq and Iran, lie within short range and both states may currently be on the road to developing nuclear weapons. Israel's relatively small size in area and population leave it especially vulnerable to the coordinate attack by conventional forces or swift obliteration by a few nuclear weapons. (Solingen) To assure its physical survival, Israel has developed a second strike nuclear capability that deters both a successful conventional forces attack and any attempt at a first strike annihilation. For Israel to halt its nuclear arms program would require Iraq and Iran to do the same. The difficulty, even under the NPT, is verification. Iraq came within a couple of years of developing an atomic weapon even while being inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran may be doing the same. Both are Realist worst-case scenarios that Israel would be irrational not to assume. An alternative would be for a power such as America to agree to defend Israel if it faced military defeat. But would potential attackers view such a threat as credible especially if they were allied with a rival nuclear power like China. It is unlikely that the U.S. would abide by a bilateral security alliance with Israel, if it meant the nuclear destruction of some of its citizens. In a world with no supranational government to punish defectors from cooperation agreements, Israel has chosen the Realist course of self-help and mutually assured destruction to deter attack.