Continued silence could pose serious risks of escalation in the conflict with Iran, a group of 30 congressmen has said<\/p>\n
A group of 30 Democrats in the US House of Representatives have demanded that the administration of President Donald Trump disclose information about Israel\u2019s nuclear arsenal and relevant policies. The lack of transparency threatens the entire Middle East, the lawmakers have argued.
\nWest Jerusalem has neither confirmed nor denied possessing nuclear weapons, nor has it publicly presented any doctrine outlining the potential use of such weapons or its possible \u201cred lines.\u201d The US, which has been aware of the Israeli nuclear program at least since the early 1960s, has remained silent on the issue.
\nWashington is fighting \u201cside by side with a country whose potential nuclear weapons program the United States government officially refuses to acknowledge,\u201d congressmen led by Democratic Representative Joaquin Castro said in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
\n\u201cThe risks of miscalculation, escalation, and nuclear use in this environment are not theoretical,\u201d the letter stated.<\/p>\n
READ MORE: How close is the Middle East to a nuclear catastrophe?<\/p>\n
The group has demanded that the US hold Israel to the same standard of transparency as other countries, adding that a \u201ccoherent nonproliferation policy for the Middle East,\u201d including on Iran\u2019s nuclear program and Saudi nuclear ambitions, would otherwise be impossible.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Israel gags famous nuclear whistleblower invited to speak at human rights conference<\/p>\n
How big is Israel\u2019s arsenal?
\nIsrael is believed to possess between 80 and 90 nuclear weapons, including around 30 bombs and some 50 ballistic missile warheads, according to estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).Photos from inside an Israeli nuclear facility leaked to the Sunday Times in 1986 suggested that West Jerusalem could have produced enough material for up to 200 nuclear bombs at the time. Mordechai Vanunu, the technician who leaked the photos, was subsequently kidnapped by Israel\u2019s Mossad intelligence agency and sentenced to nearly two decades in prison.<\/p>\n
When did Israel launch its nuclear program?
\nThe Jewish state allegedly pursued nuclear ambitions soon after it was founded in 1948. Ernst David Bergmann, the first head of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, established in 1952, spoke about a nuclear bomb as something that would ensure \u201cthat we shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter.\u201d<\/p>\n
READ MORE: Did you know the US and Israel helped create Iran\u2019s nuclear project? Here\u2019s the story<\/p>\n
The Negev Nuclear Research Center (NNRC) near the city of Dimona, built in the late 1950s, was allegedly designed to produce weapons-grade plutonium, according to a 1960 US intelligence report. According to SIPRI, Israel could have acquired its first nuclear weapons in the late 1960s from plutonium produced at the NNRC.<\/p>\n
What did the US know?
\nWashington was aware that the NNRC was weapons-related as early as December 1960, according to a Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee statement declassified in 2024. In 1967, Israeli soldiers informed the American embassy that Israel was \u201cweeks away\u201d from the bomb, according to other declassified documents.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Israel planned to use nuclear bomb during 1967 war, new testimonies show<\/p>\n
By 1973, Washington \u201cwas convinced Israel had nuclear weapons,\u201d according to the Federation of American Scientists. In 1979, an American satellite detected a double flash off the coast of South Africa. Former President Jimmy Carter\u2019s White House diaries, published in 2010, cited a \u201cgrowing belief\u201d that the flash was an Israeli nuclear test.Leonard Weiss, a Senate adviser briefed on the matter at the time, claimed that both the Carter and Reagan administrations attempted to gag him over the incident. \u201cI was told it would create a very serious foreign policy issue for the US if I said it was a test. Someone had let something off that the US didn\u2019t want anyone to know about,\u201d he told the Guardian in 2014.<\/p>\n
Why the silence?<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
Is the Middle East entering a nuclear arms race?<\/p>\n
Declassified CIA files suggest that the American intelligence agency informed President Lyndon Johnson that Israel had nuclear arms in 1968. The president ordered then-CIA Director Richard Helms to keep it secret even from then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. Washington allegedly feared that Arab states would refuse to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty if news of Israel\u2019s undeclared weapons came out.The policy of silence was then formalized at a 1969 meeting between US President Richard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, according to Avner Cohen, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and author of Israel and the Bomb.\u201cIsrael alone could not have maintained this policy over decades without the United States,\u201d he told the Washington Post on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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