Some members of Congress are finally calling attention to Israel’s illegal nuclear weapons program:
A group of House Democrats is urging the Trump administration to publicly acknowledge Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons program, a move that would abandon decades of U.S. policy but confirm what has been an open secret among intelligence officials since the late 1960s.
In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio obtained by The Washington Post, more than two dozen lawmakers, led by Rep. Joaquin Castro (Texas), say Washington’s silence on the program is indefensible amid the war in Iran and the acute threat of military escalation.
It is appropriate and long overdue for our elected officials to speak openly about this issue. Israel never joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty and over the decades it has developed a significant nuclear arsenal. One fairly recent estimate from the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation puts the size of their arsenal at around 90 nuclear weapons with the material to build a hundred to two hundred more. Meanwhile, our government has chosen not to talk about it and pretends that Israel doesn’t have a rogue nuclear arsenal when all informed people know that they do.
Israel’s nuclear arsenal has always been the elephant in the room in the debate over Iran’s nuclear program. The Israeli government has been hyping the threat from Iran’s program for most of my life while they have been sitting on the only nuclear arsenal in the region. Their leaders have painted Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat when they have had their own nuclear deterrent to protect them all along.
Obsessing over the remote possibility that Iran might one day have a few nuclear weapons was the perfect distraction from Israel’s rogue nuclear weapons program. U.S. leaders have chosen to play along with this charade. That has horribly distorted America’s Iran policy for decades. The current war is the latest, most catastrophic result. The very least that our government can do now is acknowledge the reality that Israel is the only nuclear weapons state in the Middle East.
