Allah's Bomb: The Islamic Quest for Nuclear Weapons - Hardcover

It is called the "Club of Nine," the exclusive group of nations that have detonated nuclear weapons. Apart from the major powers, its membership also includes, India, Pakistan, and Israel. More recently, its membership was blighted by North Korea.
Based on intelligence from international sources and the author's own forty years of international reporting, Allah's Bomb covers both al-Qaeda's growing interest in acquiring nuclear parity and how South Africa built six atom bombs. South African technology and many of its missile scientists ended up in Iran. Author Al J. Venter also points out that an essential part of what was to have been Muammar Gaddafi's atom bomb program was constructed in a factory near Johannesburg.
Venter shows that there are counties in the Islamic sphere that are eager to acquire the bomb, including Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and possibly Syria.
A.Q. Khan, the disgraced Pakistani scientist who created the world's biggest international nuclear smuggling network, gets his share of attention, as do some of the people who worked for him, including a former major in the Israeli Defense Force who smuggled tightly restricted, triggered spark gaps from the United States to Pakistan.
Venter reveals that Tehran's weapons-of-mass-destruction programs are much further ahead than most authorities believe.
Venter details the close links between Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea and how the technology linked to an intercontinental missile is now shared by all three countries, which brings all of Israel into range of Iran, a country that almost daily threatens to obliterate it.
Also covered are the money and communications tied to today's sophisticated brand of international terrorism. As Venter explains, countering terror has a specific link to tracing the money that funds it.
The author also exposes a huge communication gap that has emerged in the Persian Gulf, which is being vigorously exploited by al-Qaeda.
That Israel has the bomb is no longer a secret, either. That fact was made public in December 2006 by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in a television interview in Germany. It was Olmert who added the rider that were his people again threatened with annihilation, they'd use these weapons too.

In 2006, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad jubilantly announced that Iran had acquired nuclear power. In the same breath he predicted that Britain, Israel, and the United States will eventually disappear from the world like the Egyptian pharaohs. Iran leads another half dozen Islamic countries known to be seeking nuclear parity. The implications are enormous and profound. Allah's Bomb is a chilling investigative look by a leading expert at the race involving Islamic countries to acquire nuclear weapons. Here are some of the things you will learn: The breakup of the Soviet Union led to huge stocks of uranium and plutonium being left in facilities that were insecure and often unguarded. Iran's agents immediately moved in and a massive nuclear smuggling cartel evolved, often with the collusion of Russia's mafiya. Al-Qaeda has been vigorous in fostering nuclear links, to the extent that two Pakistani nuclear scientists visited Osama bin Laden at his Afghan mountain hideout. A series of Internet lectures on "Building the Bomb" has been one of the consequences. Rogue Pakistani scientist Dr. A. Q. Khan's nuclear smuggling empire straddled the globe, with factories and distribution facilities producing nuclear weapons in several countries. South Africa built an almost-complete uranium enrichment plant intended for the Libyan nuclear bomb program. It was about to be shipped to the Middle East through Mozambique when the eleven containers were seized. In October 2006, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, disclosed that apart from thirty countries interested in acquiring nuclear parity, half a dozen of them were Islamic and included Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Algeria.