The Israeli government has long been sensitive about its Dimona nuclear research center, where the country developed its unacknowledged nuclear arsenal. After technician Mordechai Vanunu revealed Israel's nuclear secrets to London's Sunday Times in 1986, he was kidnapped by Israeli agents and taken to Israel, where he was convicted of treason and espionage, and served 18 years in jail. He was released in 2004, with restrictions on his speech and movements.

But with Israel and Iran in a growing confrontation over Iran's own nuclear weapons program, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday visited the nuclear complex in Israel's southern Negev desert. A statement from Netanyahu's office quoted him as praising workers there for contributing to Israel's "strength and security," according to the Associated Press. The statement called the visit routine, but it seemed calculated to send a message to Iran, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has done his own white-gowned tours of Iran's nuke facilities.

This unprecedented photo was then released, but only to Israel's state-owned Channel 1, according to the Jerusalem Post newspaper.

Apparently a bit miffed, the J-Post, as the English-language daily is sometimes known, went in search of the photograph. An official in Netanyahu's office denied that the picture existed. No one else seemed to want to take responsibility for the picture either.

The paper's account, concluded, perhaps a bit conspiratorially: "All material relating to the Dimona nuclear reactor must go through military censorship. In the face of the PMO's (Prime Minister's Office) denial that the picture exists, the further question arises as to whether there was a security breach here, or whether there was a calculation behind the picture's appearance on state TV only."

(The Hebrew-language caption, according to the Post's website, reads: ‘The Prime Minister visits the Dimona nuclear reactor, receives briefing on the scientific programs undertaken there.')