{"id":98985,"date":"2026-05-05T15:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T15:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/98985\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T15:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T15:53:10","slug":"house-democrats-urge-us-state-dept-to-end-silence-about-israels-nuclear-weapons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/98985\/","title":{"rendered":"House Democrats Urge US State Dept to End Silence About Israel\u2019s Nuclear Weapons"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than two dozen Democratic lawmakers in the US House<\/a> of Representatives are urging the Trump administration<\/a> to break its official silence on Israel’s nuclear weapons<\/a> program, whose existence is almost universally acknowledged even as its origins and status remain shrouded in secrecy.<\/p>\n

In a letter<\/a> to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/a> on Monday, the group of House Democrats<\/a> led by Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas<\/a> wrote that “Congress has a constitutional responsibility to be fully informed about the nuclear balance in the Middle East, the risk of escalation by any party to this conflict, and the administration’s planning and contingencies for such scenarios,” particularly as it wages war on Iran in partnership with the Israeli government.<\/p>\n

“The risks of miscalculation, escalation, and nuclear use in this environment are not theoretical,” the lawmakers wrote. “A policy of official ambiguity about the nuclear capabilities of one party to this conflict makes coherent nonproliferation policy in the Middle East impossible, for Iran, for Saudi Arabia<\/a>, and for every other state in the region making decisions based on their perceptions of the capabilities of their neighbors.”<\/p>\n

The House Democrats pressed Rubio to provide detailed information the US possesses about Israel’s nuclear weapons program, including the country’s current fissile material capability, nuclear doctrine, and “any indications of Israel planning to use or deploy nuclear weapons during the recent Iran conflict or during other conflicts.”<\/p>\n

Israeli leaders have for decades maintained a posture of deliberate ambiguity regarding their country’s nuclear weapons capacity, even as some officials have at times tacitly acknowledged the nation’s nukes\u2014including by suggesting<\/a> they could be dropped on Gaza\u2014and falsely claimed that Iran was on the verge of creating a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n

Israel is believed to have begun producing nuclear weapons in the 1960s, helped in part by uranium that US intelligence agencies suspected<\/a> was obtained from a factory in the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Analysts estimate that Israel currently has between 90 and 300 nuclear warheads, according to<\/a> the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).<\/p>\n

“The United States\u2019 indulgence of Israeli nuclear weapons has not escaped international attention, and the evident hypocrisy has undermined US nonproliferation policy,” Victor Gilinsky, a former commissioner of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Leonard Weiss, a visiting scholar at Stanford University\u2019s Center for International Security and Cooperation, wrote<\/a> in a March op-ed for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.<\/p>\n

“The US government\u2019s public position continues to be that it does not know anything about Israeli nuclear weapons, and this will apparently continue until Israel releases the United States\u2019 gag,” Gilinsky and Weiss continued. “This policy is allegedly enforced by a secret federal bulletin<\/a> that threatens disciplinary actions<\/a> for any US official who publicly acknowledges Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons.”<\/p>\n

Experts and anti-war campaigners applauded the group of House Democrats for demanding an end to the US government’s official silence on Israel’s nuclear weapons program.<\/p>\n

“Washington\u2019s silence on the program is indefensible amid the war in Iran and the acute threat of military escalation, they argue. And they are right,” said<\/a> Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association.<\/p>\n

The advocacy group Win Without War thanked<\/a> Castro and his colleagues for “breaking DC\u2019s ‘taboo’ over the Israeli government’s nuclear weapons\u2014especially concerning as US and Israeli leaders wage a disastrous war of choice in the Middle East.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than two dozen Democratic lawmakers in the US House of Representatives are urging the Trump administration to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[6402,196,37,210,269],"class_list":{"0":"post-98985","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-democratic-party","9":"tag-iran-war","10":"tag-israel","11":"tag-marco-rubio","12":"tag-nuclear-weapons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116522778796227383","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}