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   From: cap@philhendrie.con   
      
   American politicians often warn that if Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, it will   
   spark a nuclear stampede across the Middle East. Allowing Tehran to get the   
   bomb, Senator Robert Menendez, the current chairman of the Senate Foreign   
   Relations Committee, predicted in March 2020, could “set off a dangerous arms   
   race in the region.” In an interview in December, President-elect Joe Biden   
   cautioned that if Iran went nuclear, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt might too,   
   “and the last goddamn thing we need in that part of the world is a buildup of   
   nuclear capability.”   
      
   Such statements are so familiar that it’s easy to overlook their artifice. In   
   warning that Iran could turn the Middle East nuclear, American politicians   
   imply   
   that the region is nuclear-free now. But it’s not. Israel already has nuclear   
   weapons. You’d just never know it from America’s leaders, who have spent   
   the   
   last half-century feigning ignorance. This deceit undercuts America’s   
   supposed   
   commitment to nuclear nonproliferation, and it distorts the American debate   
   over   
   Iran. It’s time for the Biden administration to tell the truth.   
      
   American officials began hiding the truth about Israeli nuclear weapons after   
   Israeli leaders hid the truth from them. In the early 1960s, writes Avner Cohen   
   in his book “The Worst Kept Secret,” Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion   
   repeatedly   
   told President John F. Kennedy that the reactor Israel was building in the   
   desert town of Dimona “was for peaceful purposes only.” When the United   
   States   
   sent inspectors to the site, the Israelis concocted an elaborate ruse, which   
   included building fake walls to conceal the elevators that led to an   
   underground   
   reprocessing plant. By decade’s end, the die was cast. The C.I.A. concluded   
   that   
   Israel already possessed nuclear warheads.   
      
   So Richard Nixon and Prime Minister Golda Meir hatched a deal. Neither Israel   
   nor the United States would acknowledge that Israel had nuclear weapons, and   
   Washington would not pressure Israel to submit them to international oversight.   
   For 50 years now, American presidents have abided by the bargain. Scholars   
   believe that when Israel tested a nuclear weapon in the Indian Ocean in 1979,   
   the Carter administration covered it up. In 2009, when a journalist asked   
   Barack   
   Obama if he knew of “any country in the Middle East that has nuclear   
   weapons?”   
   Mr. Obama responded, “I don’t want to speculate.”   
      
   Feigning ignorance about Israeli nuclear weapons makes a mockery of America’s   
   efforts at nonproliferation. Mr. Obama vowed to pursue a nuclear-free world.   
   Yet   
   to prevent public discussion of Israel’s arsenal, his administration helped   
   squelch a United Nations conference on a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.   
   The Biden administration continues to impose punishing sanctions on Iran in an   
   attempt to force its government to accept inspections more stringent than those   
   required by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Meanwhile, Israel, which has   
   never signed the N.P.T., permits no inspections at all.   
      
   https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/opinion/biden-israel-nuclear-   
   rogram.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage   
      
   The U.S. needs to cut Israel off at the knees.   
      
   --   
   If you're not reading the New York Times, you're not following the news.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)