On Monday, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price would not acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal, actually referring questions on the subject to the Israeli government itself. After the briefing, I received a written response to detailed questions regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal I submitted on Feb. 13, below.
The State Dept. is, as I charged, maintaining – actually escalating – a decades long cover-up in not acknowledging Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal. This is for the apparent purpose of not invoking the Glenn-Symington amendment to the Arms Export Act, which prohibits aid to nuclear proliferators. Archbishop Desmond Tutu admonished the Biden administration to end this cover-up in his last article, published by the Guardian a year before his death: “Joe Biden should end the US pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons: The cover-up has to stop – and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country with oppressive policies towards Palestinians.” Clearly, the administration is not heeding Tutu’s words.