THE SAMSON OPTION, by Seymour M. Hersh, Random House, 354 pages, $23.

To award-winning author Seymour Hersh, the question isn’t “Does Israel have the bomb?” it’s “How many nuclear bombs does Israel have?”

In “The Samson Option” Hersh cuts through the usual Israeli response that Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the region and examines how the Jewish state developed its nuclear weapons program and how the program fits into the country’s military strategy.

Under the Bush administration it is clear the U.S. goal is to reduce the number of nuclear weapons around the world. Still, most politicians avoid the nuclear question when discussing Israel. And that position has been U.S. policy since the Eisenhower administration when Israel began its quest to join the elite nuclear club.

Many Israeli officials believed it was up to them to ensure the existence of the Jewish state. World War II taught them a powerful lesson about relying on other nations for assistance. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was a strong supporter of holding a nuclear card. Without it, he believed, there would be no peace or recognition.

Once Israel had an operational nuclear weapon, the country quickly learned how to play the nuclear card without revealing its hand. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War Israel played its trump card by going on nuclear alert; a threat the Nixon administration took seriously. The United States responded by airlifting essential military supplies to the Israelis.

Israel also went on nuclear alert during the Gulf War in 1991, Hersh reports. This time America responded by sending Patriot missiles to Israel and promising to make Iraqi scud missile launchers a priority target.

“The Samson Option” also examines the two scandals that sent shock waves through U.S.-Israeli relations during the 1980s — the Mordecai Vanunu affair and the Jonathan Jay Pollard spy case.

Vanunu was a technician at the Dimona nuclear plant and in 1986 his tell-all story about Israel’s secret nuclear facility appeared in the Sunday Times of London. The case immediately caused an international uproar and Israeli agents wasted no time in capturing Vanunu.

Although both the Vanunu affair and the Pollard spy scandal were damaging to Israel, the Pollard episode proved beneficial to Israel until he was arrested in 1985. The American spy gave Israel an estimated 500,000 pages of documents before his arrest. Pollard provided the Israelis with top-secret U.S. intelligence on the location of Soviet military targets and data from U.S. satellites. Hersh says that Yitzhak Shamir provided sanitized versions of U.S. intelligence to the Soviet Union as a way of improving ties with the Soviets.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the revelation that the Israelis used U.S. intelligence to target their nuclear weapons against cities in the Soviet Union.

The Israelis warned the Soviet Union through intelligence channels that their cities were the primary targets of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Israeli leaders believed that if the Soviets knew Israel was targeting their cities the Evil Empire would think twice before supporting its client states in a Middle East war.

Now that the Soviet Union no longer exists and Israel’s enemies have lost a major supporter, Israel’s nuclear strategy most likely will change.

Richard Nixon said on ABC’s “Nightline” last week that since Israel was the only nuclear power in the Middle East, it was in Israel’s best interest to reach a peaceful settlement with its neighbors. Nixon said that Israel’s negotiating position was strong now, but warned that once a less responsible regime acquired nuclear weapons in the region the situation would become more complex.

People looking for a fresh examination of U.S.-Israeli relations will benefit from reading “The Samson Option.” The book exposes another piece of the nuclear puzzle and how it influences foreign policy throughout the world.

Jim Emple is an assistant design editor on the NEWS display desk.