Media Analysis

Israel has 90 nukes– but our leaders won’t say so because U.S. would have to cut off aid

Any realistic discussion of Iran's nuclear program ought to include the glaring fact that Israel has 90 nukes. But acknowledging as much would trigger US laws against giving foreign aid to a country with unauthorized weapons.

It is really hard to believe, but: The United States has a keen interest in getting the Iran nuclear deal back in place, and it can’t do so because one small country doesn’t want us to. Our dear friend Israel says Iran is an “existential” threat, and our leaders listen to their leaders, who urge us to take military action against Iran over its nuclear program.

And meantime everyone in the American establishment hides the fact that Israel has nukes. At least 90 of them, according to experts.

Any realistic discussion of Iran’s nuclear program ought to include that glaring fact: Israel has 90 nukes. That statement ought to be boilerplate in any article. But our officials and media always leave Israel’s nukes out.

Here’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan going along with the lie Tuesday in Jerusalem:

Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program poses a grave threat to the region and to international peace and security.  

Ian Lustick has just published an excellent piece at Smerconish.com about Israel’s falsehoods about Iranian nukes. He says the lie that Israel has no nukes is important because if the truth were told, all aid to Israel would be at risk. The disclosure, Lustick says,

would trigger the application of U.S. laws against giving foreign aid to Israel as a country with unauthorized nuclear weapons.  In domestic political terms, it is difficult to imagine any foreign policy move more costly than that. 

I.e., the Israel lobby exists to secure endless aid to Israel, and that includes liberal Zionist groups like J Street that have a big footprint in the Democratic Party. And AIPAC, which is about to spend a ton of money in political contests to “shore up the Washington consensus on Israel.” So the Democratic establishment is invested in the lie.

And Biden’s top aide, Jake Sullivan, is in Jerusalem, making nice to the rightwing Israeli Prime Minister, even as the P.M. destroys our blessed two-state solution and bullyrags us about Iran.

Grant Smith made this same point last summer. “Multiple US government agencies” have documented Israel’s nukes, but there is a gag order on their publicly acknowledging the truth because doing so would undermine foreign aid. But the result is a farce:

Israel and its surrogates have continued to feed Americans a rich banquet of justifications for attacking Iran on the pretext that it is on the verge of introducing the very weapons to the Middle East that Israel deployed long ago.

Another lie — Lustick says Israel doesn’t “genuinely” fear an Iranian nuclear attack. Israel is just trying to maintain regional “hegemony.”

Regardless of what many ordinary Israelis have been encouraged to feel about their country as a “one-bomb state,” neither Israeli security nor political elites have ever thought that if Iran has the bomb it will drop it on Israel.  Israel’s nuclear arsenal includes at least 90 warheads, enough plutonium for 100 more, and multiple advanced delivery systems. 

So, what really perturbs Gantz, Bennet, Netanyahu, and so many other Israelis who speak about Iran in such apocalyptic in frenzied terms?  Simply put, they fear the loss of Israeli hegemony.   An Iranian state capable of perhaps using a nuclear weapon would end Israel’s status as the confidently preponderant military power in the region..

Another lie is the oft-repeated line that Israel will take matters into its own hands if the world does nothing. “This is a charade.” But a charade with a purpose — to manipulate the United States, Lustick says.

Israel is not actually practicing for a war that none of its serious military experts think it could win. .. By pretending otherwise, Israel triggers fears in Washington that its uncontrollable ally will act in utterly destructive and dangerous ways.  The intention is to push the United States beyond whatever limits it has set on its willingness to pressure Iran toward regime change. And even if these scare tactics do not produce an American military solution to the Iranian problem, they can lead American negotiators to maximize demands on Iran, thereby minimizing chances for renewing the JCPOA [Iran deal]…

Ian Lustick (Photo: University of Pennsylvania)

The U.S. is a willing pawn in this game because “politics is all” — meaning “the power of the Israeli lobby in domestic American politics.” Lustick says it is time to clear away the hypocrisy here because it is so dangerous.

[It is] all the more important for those of us not in positions of political or policy authority to make clear what really is and really is not at stake in the Israeli-Iranian confrontation.   We have had enough wars launched on false pretenses and for unattainable goals—Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.  We don’t need another one in Iran.

Yes the stakes are huge. Israel is nudging us toward war, and it really is like the emperor’s new clothes, no one can say what is plain as your face, Israel is laden with nukes.

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It’s now well-known that President Kennedy was trying to block Israel from developing nuclear weapons. (And he was trying to require the Zionist Organization of America to register as an agent of a foreign government, thus eliminating its money from American politics}. It’s unfortunate he didn’t succeed.

Israel’s “do as I say, not as I do” attitude, has always been obvious. Israel cannot be trusted when it comes to nuclear weapons, which the entire world knows they have. Unlike Iran, Israel has consistently been attacking its neighbors while whining they are being picked on, and unlike Iran it is known that Israel tried to sell nuclear warheads to Apartheid South Africa. Israel also has not signed the NPT like Iran has. Right now it is highly possible that Israel is in the process of helping rogue nations like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others, also get access to nuclear weapons. Nations that are also known to attack and kill unarmed civilians. No one should be surprised. History shows Israel can be very deceptive and devious, and to trust them would be a huge mistake.

“Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state’s possession of nuclear weapons.
The “top secret” minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa’s defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel’s defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them “in three sizes”. The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that “the very existence of this agreement” was to remain secret.
The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of “ambiguity” in neither confirming nor denying their existence.”

Apartheid countries.

according to unnamed experts = glaring fact

The glaring ‘tell’ is this charade of a poker game, is that you won’t find a single pundit, lacky, politician, or media outlet calling for a “nuclear free Middle East”. Their slight of hand is however very good. In their ruthless targeting of Iran, like Iraq before it, they “imply” that their aim is for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction, but stop short of openly suggesting or making laws in this regard, because of the inconvenient truth. This is that two of the worst and most dangerous actors in the Middle East just happen to be Israel and Pakistan (not to mention the good ol’ US) who have ACTUAL nuclear weapons and ACTUAL weapons of mass destruction.

The Catch 22 is that our media and politicians are not just complicit in the cover-up of Israel’s undisclosed nuclear arsenal, but that their very same coverup and routine threats of attack, regime change, and destabilization make Iran even more justified in any attempt to arm themselves with some form of nuclear deterrent.

The basis of this article is that if Israel was declared to have nukes it would lose US aid. I mean, I would have expected someone at Mondoweiss to understand that were Israel declared to have nukes ways would be found to maintain US aid. And this is just the start of the silliness.

Israeli nukes have no significance here on the issue of Iranian nukes. Iran having nuclear weapons is a problem because Iranian governing ideology consists of: Death to America. Death to Israel. Notice that first part. Iran is a self-declared enemy of the United States and has acted repeatedly to attack the US and its interests. It is ruled by an absolute leader who believes in an extremist theology which sees itself in a total and permanent state of war against the “West”. The possession of nukes by such a regime is a danger to the region and the West. That much should be obvious.

The ideology/theology of the state in itself increases the risk of the irrational use of nuclear weapons.

The next claim is that somehow MAD prevents the use of nuclear weapons. This is not even true if both sides were indeed rational. As history has demonstrated there have been several instances where relatively rational states have gone to the brink of nuclear war due to errors and miscalculations. So that claim is pretty nonsensical. MAD decreases the risk of nuclear war, but it doesn’t actually eliminate it. Not even close.

Given the animosity of Iran to Israel and the transparent Iranian intent to dominate the region, military escalation up to and including the use of nuclear weapons can’t even remotely be ruled out. And Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons actually makes a conflict with Israel significantly more likely because it would use its nuclear umbrella to expand its influence in the region. As it is Iran is already sitting at Israel’s gates on the northern border.