As Washington grapples with declassifying what it knows about nuclear weapons that Russia may deploy in space, there is another significant nuclear deployment that the Executive refuses to discuss at all — Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons. Washington has sat on this “worst kept secret” now for nearly six decades using a classified regulation — “DOE Classification Bulletin WPN-136 on Foreign Nuclear Capabilities” — to keep U.S. employees from publicly talking about Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal.
This makes no sense. As Richard Lawless, a former CIA operative and Pentagon deputy undersecretary of defense, William Burr of the National Security Archive, and I write in a recent Washington Post op-ed, “Why the U.S. should start telling the whole truth about Israeli nukes,” continuing this policy is increasingly harmful.
Most recently, two elected Israeli officials — a government minister and a member of parliament — not only publicly referenced Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, but suggested that they be detonated over Gaza. American efforts to keep Israel’s nuclear weapons program secret originally reflected a desire to keep the Soviets from using revelations regarding Israel’s arsenal as a pretext to help Egypt or Syria get the bomb. That concern, however, has passed: The Soviet Union collapsed more than three decades ago and Israelis are now all too open about their nuclear secrets.
A growing and real concern today is that Iran might get the bomb (it’s now only weeks away). Its nuclear and missile facilities are also increasingly invulnerable to attack. If Israel was desperate and isolated, might it conclude it has no alternative but to use its nuclear arms to counter Iran? The short answer is we don’t know. There’s reason, however, to be concerned.
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