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Synopsis

The Islamic Quest for Nuclear Weapons.

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 endeded up in Iran. Author Al J. Venter also points out that an essential part of what was to have been Nuammar Gaddafi's atom bomb program was constructed ina a factory near Johnnesburg.

Venter show that there are countries in the Islamic sphere that are eager to acquire the bomb, including Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and possibly Syria.

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.

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'll learn:

- The breakup of the Soviet Union led to huge stocks of unanium and plutonium being left in facilties 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 consquences.

- 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.

About the author

Al J. Venter is a British national who is a sometime resident of Chinook, Washington; Scotland's Isle of Bute; and London. The author of thirty books, he has been a military correspndent for forty years. He has been a specialist writer for a host of Jane's publications including Jane's International Defence Review (for which he is still Middle East and Africa correspondent), Jane's Affairs Analyst, Jane's Defence Weekly, and Jane's Intelligence Review.