{"id":31908,"date":"2026-05-06T15:13:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T15:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=31908"},"modified":"2026-05-06T15:13:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T15:13:18","slug":"democrats-urge-rubio-to-acknowledge-israel-possesses-nuclear-weapons-amid-iran-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/?p=31908","title":{"rendered":"Democrats urge Rubio to acknowledge Israel possesses nuclear weapons amid Iran war"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Letter from House Democrats to Secretary of State calls for an end to ambiguity over Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons programs<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

House Democrats have asked the Secretary of State,\u00a0Marco Rubio<\/a>, to publicly announce that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, arguing that Washington must end decades of ambiguity over the issue amid the conflict with Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a letter sent on Monday, 30 Democrats wrote that it was unsustainable for Donald Trump to collaborate with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a>, on a military campaign against Iran \u2013 with the stated goal of preventing the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon \u2013 without publicly acknowledging the US ally\u2019s possession of the bomb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are, in the fullest sense, fighting this war side by side with a country whose potential nuclear weapons program the United States government officially refuses to acknowledge,\u201d reads the letter, which was led by the Texas Democrat Joaquin Castro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCongress 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\u2019s planning and contingencies for such scenarios. We do not believe we have received that information.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel has never acknowledged its nuclear weapons programs, and no US administration has publicly stated that it exists, despite considerable evidence that it does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program traces its origins<\/a> to the 1950s, with assistance from US allies including France and apartheid South Africa. Yet US presidents have for decades avoided discussing the subject, with Barack Obama responding to a reporter\u2019s question about it early in his presidency by saying he did not wish to \u201cspeculate\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Democrats\u2019 letter notes that other US government officials have essentially admitted its existence. In a 2006 confirmation hearing after George W Bush nominated him as Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates said of Iran: \u201cThey are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons \u2013 Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west, and us in the Persian Gulf.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lawmakers also noted that Israeli government officials had nodded towards their possession of the weapons, with the heritage minister, Amichai Eliyahu, saying in 2023 that using a nuclear bomb in Gaza was \u201cone of the possibilities\u201d after the 7 October attacks. In 2006, Ehud Olmert, then Israel\u2019s prime minister, told a German broadcaster that\u00a0Iran<\/a>\u00a0was \u201caspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, and Russia\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Democrats objected to the continued reticence by Trump administration officials to discuss the subject openly, noting that when Castro asked Thomas DiNanno, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, to detail Israel\u2019s nuclear capabilities at a congressional hearing in March, he responded that he could not answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe United States openly acknowledges the nuclear weapons programs of the United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, China, and North Korea. We ask that Israel be held to the same standard as any other foreign country, and that the United States government speaks candidly about its potential nuclear weapons capabilities, whatever they may be,\u201d the letter reads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lawmakers add that the continued ambiguity over Israel\u2019s possession of the weapons harms efforts to transparently address nuclear nonproliferation in the Middle East, noting that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has stated that his country would seek to add the bomb to their arsenal if Iran develops their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe ask that you hold Israel to the same standard of transparency that the United States expects from any other country that may be pursuing or retaining nuclear weapons capability,\u201d the lawmakers told Rubio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reference Link:- https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2026\/may\/05\/democrats-rubio-israel-nuclear-weapons-iran-war<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Letter from House Democrats to Secretary of State calls for an end to ambiguity over Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons programs House Democrats have asked the Secretary of State,\u00a0Marco Rubio, to publicly announce that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, arguing that Washington must end decades of ambiguity over the issue amid the conflict with Iran. In a letter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[512,25547,29051,1947,29050,1510,27107,1360,29049,17576,4935,1515],"class_list":["post-31908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sample-category","tag-america-2","tag-annexation","tag-democrats","tag-gaza-genocide-2","tag-iraeli-nukes","tag-israel-2","tag-marco-rubio-2","tag-middle-east-5","tag-nukes","tag-palestine-2","tag-war-crimes-2","tag-west-bank-2","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31910,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31908\/revisions\/31910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gsrra.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}