With South Africa’s status as a pariah state, its nuclear program was a thorny problem for a series of U.S. presidents. In August 1977, the Carter administration, working with the Soviet Union, lodged protests against South Africa’s apparent preparations for a nuclear test, forcing a shut-down of the Kalahari test site if not the entire nuclear program itself. Indeed the CIA’s analysis of South Africa’s innovative “aerodynamic” uranium enrichment plant at Valindaba brought it to the conclusion that South Africa would be able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium “to make several nuclear devices per year.”

CIA report summaries new information on Israel-South African nuclear cooperation. According to the report, South Africa formerly launched its weapons program in 1973, and paused it in 1979 following the international discovery of the Kalahari nuclear test site. Military cooperation between South Africa and Israel is believed to be extensive, with continual contact between personnel and the large-scale sale of arms. Aside from the South African sale of depleted uranium to Israel in the mid-1970s, the CIA had no hard evidence of nuclear cooperation between the two.