As Washington grapples with declassifying what it knows about nuclear weapons that Russia may deploy in space, there is another significant nuclear deployment that the Executive refuses to discuss at all — Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons. Washington has sat on this “worst kept secret” now for nearly six decades using a classified regulation —“DOE Classification Bulletin WPN-136 on Foreign Nuclear Capabilities” — to keep U.S. employees from publicly talking about Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal.
This makes no sense. As Richard Lawless, a former CIA operative and Pentagon deputy undersecretary of defense, William Burr of the National Security Archive, and I write in the attached Washington Post op-ed, “Why the U.S. should start telling the whole truth about Israeli nukes,” continuing this policy is increasingly harmful.
Most recently, two elected Israeli officials — a government minister and a member of parliament — not only publicly referenced Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, but suggested that they be detonated over Gaza. American efforts to keep Israel’s nuclear weapons program secret originally reflected a desire to keep the Soviets from using revelations regarding Israel’s arsenal as a pretext to help Egypt or Syria get the bomb. That concern, however, has passed: The Soviet Union collapsed more than three decades ago and Israelis are now all too open about their nuclear secrets.
A growing and real concern today is that Iran might get the bomb (it’s now only weeks away). Its nuclear and missile facilities are also increasingly invulnerable to attack. If Israel was desperate and isolated, might it conclude it has no alternative but to use its nuclear arms to counter Iran? The short answer is we don’t know. There’s reason, however, to be concerned.
In December, NPEC ran a three-move nuclear war game (see “Gaming Israeli Nuclear Use: Pandora Unleashed”) in which Israel launched two nuclear strikes against Iranian nuclear and missile sites (with 51 nuclear weapons) and Iran responded with a nuclear of its own. These attacks killed an unspecified number of Israelis, Iranians, as well as Russian and American military personnel.
How successful were these strikes in destroying nuclear and air offensive forces? Would Israel or Iran feel compelled yet to conduct further military nuclear operations? Might Israel target Tehran or Iran Tel Aviv? Would Russia or the United States be drawn into the war? None of the game participants could answer these and many other questions.
This led to one of the war game’s key takeaways: The U.S. and Israeli security experts and officials would do well to jointly game the most likely nuclear scenarios. Unfortunately, the Executive Branch’s classification regulations regarding Israel’s nuclear program make this awkward at best.
As is explained in the attached piece, Israeli officials effectively have ended their silence about their nuclear weapons. For this reason and many others, it’s time we did the same.
February 19, 2024
Authors: William Burr, Richard Lawless, and Henry Sokolski
With the
Israel-Hamas war, a nuclear Rubicon of sorts has been crossed: Two elected Israeli officials — a
government minister and a
member of parliament — not only publicly referenced Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons but suggested that they be detonated over Gaza. This was a disturbing first. Meanwhile, in Washington, a long-standing secret executive order has prohibited American officials from even acknowledging that Israel has nuclear arms. Given the increasing risks of nuclear weapons proliferation — and, worse, use — continuing such self-censorship about Israel’s nuclear arsenal is not just bizarre; it’s harmful.
One of us directs a
national security research center, which last month conducted an unclassified Israel-Iran nuclear
war game. Israel fired nuclear weapons against Iran twice (using a total of 51 weapons) and Iran replied with a nuclear strike of its own. Surprisingly, the strategic uncertainties following the exchange were greater than those that preceded it.
The questions we were gaming were: How much damage might Israeli nuclear strikes inflict against Iran’s nuclear and missile sites, infrastructure and population? Would Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities be incapacitated, or are they buried so deep they would survive? Would the region’s economies be “knocked out” by such a nuclear exchange or just “jolted?” Would Washington, Moscow or Beijing be drawn into the conflict? In what way?
None of the participants in the war game was confident they could answer any of these questions. One of the best ways to clarify these matters is for American and Israeli experts and officials to peek into the future by gaming different nuclear war scenarios.
Yet U.S. policy makes this impossible. Why? Because a course of action adopted half a century ago prohibits cleared U.S. employees from openly admitting Israel has nuclear arms. In the late 1960s and 1970s, this might have made sense: The last thing Washington or Tel Aviv wanted was to goad the Soviets into sharing nuclear weapons or technology with Egypt or Syria to “balance” whatever nuclear weapons Israel had.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, though, Washington doubled down on this know-nothing stance in part due to Israeli pressure. Tel Aviv demanded President Bill Clinton and every subsequent American president
commit to a secret agreement that the United States will not press the Jewish state to give up its nuclear weapons so long as it continues to face existential threats.
When this practice began, the White House also promulgated a regulation — described in an
Energy Department classification bulletin — that threatens present and past government employees with disciplinary action, including firing, if they publicly acknowledge Israel has nuclear weapons. So far, the regulation has been withheld from public release.
With Israeli officials’ recent public outbursts on using nuclear weapons in Gaza, though, whatever possible benefit this policy might have had has evaporated. Maintaining it will only make matters worse.
One of us was a CIA officer who helped stop South Korea from getting nuclear weapons and just published a book, “
Hunting Nukes,” detailing this and related nonproliferation efforts. After the CIA’s review board approved the book’s publication, though, the Pentagon demanded that references to Israel’s nuclear program be deleted.
Another of us has initiated the declassification of many archival documents on Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Yet the Pentagon recently redacted all references to Israel’s nuclear program from a
60-year-old memorandum that U.S. diplomats had written on the need for regional Middle Eastern denuclearization talks, even before Israel had produced a weapon.
What is the Pentagon protecting? Does it really think keeping Israel’s nuclear program classified is in our national security interest? If we pretend we don’t know Israel’s nuclear status, doesn’t it only make it easier for Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, South Korea, Japan and others to proceed with nuclear weapons programs of their own?
Worse, doesn’t it provide policymakers cover to finesse dealing honestly with proliferation challenges they would prefer to ignore, such as in North Korea? Here, also for diplomatic reasons, U.S. officials stubbornly declare they will never accept Pyongyang as a nuclear weapons state despite its repeated nuclear tests and growing arsenal.
Also, with increasing prospects of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and of Israel and Iran attacking one another, what is to be gained by preventing open official discussion of what might unfold? Shouldn’t our government instead be encouraging talks on how to promote greater nuclear restraint by both parties and in the Middle East more generally?
For us, these questions are all rhetorical. Effectively, Israel is no longer silent about its nuclear program. Our government’s forced silence should end as well.
To read the full op-ed, click here.
