On Tuesday, May 5th, The Washington Post reported that twenty-nine House Democrats had sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio advocating that Washington changes its’s policy in relation to Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons program. They were requesting that the Trump administration officially recognize the program’s existence. This move would reverse what has been American policy since the Nixon administration.
This marks a notable shift in how the topic of Israel is discussed. If we think back to even just years ago, the idea of a lawmaker (never mind twenty-nine) inquiring into the secret nuclear activities of Israel would have been unthinkable. This goes against what has been an unwritten rule of politics in D.C. for decades: don’t question any aspect of our special relationship with the State of Israel.
The Secret Nuclear Program
It has long been the unofficial understanding for many within the U.S. intelligence world that Israel has a secret nuclear weapons program. In September of 1969, President Richard Nixon met with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in Washington to discuss this. According to Israeli-American historian Avner Cohen, the United States agreed to neither confirm nor deny the existence of this program, and in turn Israel agreed to keep it a secret in order to prevent nuclear proliferation from spreading across the Middle East.
The stakes were raised in 1973, during the Yom Kippur War. Israel was facing the very real risk of being overtaken by Syrian and Egyptian forces after a surprise attack, and desperation was setting in. Assistance from the United States was stalling due to debate within the Nixon administration.
Nixon eventually agreed to assist Israel, but this wasn’t without controversy as to why they agreed to do so. With Israel facing the threat of destruction, Golda Meir considered drastic measures. Seymour Hersh, in his book, “The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal & American Foreign Policy,” explains that Meir had ordered nuclear weapons to be prepared for use. According to Hersh, this was done for two reasons. One reason was to signal to the Soviets, who were assisting the Egyptians and Syrians, that they should tell the Arab nations to show some restraint, or risk nuclear obliteration.
The second reason behind this, according to Hersh, was to get the United States to increase their support for Israel in the conflict by causing Nixon to fear that Israel may use nuclear weapons. Essentially, Meir sought to blackmail the United States into aiding Israel in the war effort.
It is widely reported that Moshe Dayan, the Israeli defense minister, floated the nuclear option with Golda Meir. Meir rejected Dayan’s idea.
Ronen Bergman, Israeli journalist and author of “Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations,” wrote a very interesting piece in the Israeli outlet Ynet about this situation,
“They decide to send Washington an extremely urgent and classified cable, likely one of the most dramatic ever sent from Israel, if not the most dramatic. The cable is addressed to ‘Naphtali,’ the code name for Kissinger, and even today, 50 years later, extensive sections of the discussion that preceded the sending of the cable and the precise wording of what was written in the document itself remain classified.
For some reason, the cable has completely disappeared from the State Archives. Foreign reports have claimed that Israel raised the nuclear option in the cable. One thing is certain: after it was sent, the U.S. changed course, began sending arms to Israel, and the tide of the war finally turned in Israel’s favor.”
We may never know for certain exactly what threats were or were not made that day by the Israelis. What we do know, however, is the role Israel’s nuclear weapons program plays in the modern dynamics of the Middle East.
Israel’s Goals in the Region
Israel is on a quest for regional hegemony. Led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they have successfully lobbied the United States to launch wars against most of their regional enemies, from Iraq, to Syria, to Libya, to Yemen, and now Iran. The neoconservatives in the United States have sought to reshape the Middle East in order to help Israel to expand their borders into Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and the Golan Heights with as much ease as possible.
What separates Israel from the rest of their regional rivals is their nuclear arsenal, researched and developed at the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona. If they were to ever be in a situation where they were at risk of destruction as a nation, they have a last resort option in the form of an estimated ninety nuclear warheads. This illegal nuclear program, coupled with the endless support given to them from the United States, has allowed them the freedom to act with impunity as they slaughter the populations surrounding them.
The Israeli nuclear program also played a role in setting the stage for this current conflict in Iran.
The United States and Israel launched a joint military campaign against Iran on February 28th. This war of choice was explained using many phony justifications, but the one that has spanned across multiple decades is the notion that Iran was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon of their own. This of course would make it seem as if Iran had set out to develop a bomb and was just about to reach a breakthrough until the United States and Israel swooped in to save the day. This narrative misses key details.
For decades now, nuclear-armed Israel has explicitly stated their intention to see the Iranian regime overthrown. This is because the Israelis see them as the final enemy that needs to be eliminated in order for the “Clean Break” strategy to be fulfilled, and for Israel to expand their borders free from retaliation. Many politicians in the United States have also made this case. For this reason, as well as the fact that Israel is a nuclear-armed country, Iran developed what is known as a latent nuclear deterrent, also referred to as a nuclear hedge. This is when a country sits at nuclear threshold status, essentially saying, “you don’t attack us, and we won’t develop a nuke.” This is similar to the status of Germany and Japan’s nuclear programs. This creates a balance of power in the Middle East which makes it harder for Israel to become the sole power in the region.
This was a strategy to deter attacks from the United States and Israel. In the United States intelligence community’s 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, it is stated clearly that the United States does not have evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, counter to the Israeli narrative:
“We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so.”
Just months after this report, the United States contradicted themselves, and attacked Iran’s nuclear energy facilities at Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan, on the basis that there was an “imminent” nuclear risk. There was no evidence to support this claim.
These facts obviously force an impossible contradiction to justify: how can we be at war over illegal nuclear weapons (which don’t exist), when our “greatest ally” has an illegal nuclear weapons program? It’s just too ridiculous.
Legal Questions
One hundred ninety-one countries around the world are party to what is known as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). This treaty seeks to restrict the proliferation of nuclear weapons globally by restricting non-nuclear nations from acquiring them, as well as barring nuclear nations from assisting non-nuclear nations in acquiring this technology. Countries such as the United States, Russia, and China are part of this treaty and have officially declared their nuclear weapons programs. Iran is also a signatory to the NPT and has maintained that their nuclear energy program is peaceful.
Israel, on the other hand, does not follow such guidelines. They, along with India, Pakistan, North Korea, and South Sudan, are not signed on to the NPT. They have had an active, unofficial nuclear program since the 1950s. It is estimated that they built their first nuclear weapon in 1967.
This has been a heated topic of legal debate for decades. Due to Israel having an undeclared nuclear weapons program and not being a party to the NPT, this raises the question of whether or not the U.S. government is legally allowed to sell Israel weapons.
Legal scholars have argued that it is illegal for the U.S. government to continue selling weapons to Israel due to the fact that they are classified as a non-nuclear country under the NPT yet have nuclear weapons. The Symington Amendment, adopted as U.S. law in 1976, largely prohibits the United States from assisting countries which deliver or receive nuclear enrichment technology outside of international safeguards. This is why the strategic ambiguity is so crucial. If the United States never officially recognizes that this weapons program exists, then we won’t have to face a legal question that may jeopardize the relationship as it stands today.
A Shift in the Discourse
Twenty-nine Democrats requesting that the United States change its policy in relation to the Israeli nuclear program is a major shift in Washington. There is now a willingness to ask tough questions about this foreign relationship, and people are poking holes in the narrative surrounding a once-taboo topic.
Rubio surely won’t take them up on this request, but that isn’t even the point. What matters is that more people are slowly waking up to the reality about our “alliance” with Israel, and the peril it puts us in. It will take time to return to a sane foreign policy, but this letter signifies a promising shift in the discourse which should give us a glimmer of hope.
Nolan Denaro is a paleolibertarian political commentator and host of “The Quest For Clarity” podcast, which can be found on YouTube and Spotify. He writes on Substack, and his work can be found at nolandenaro.substack.com. He can be reached for correspondence by email at nolansdenaro@icloud.com.
