{"id":9837,"date":"2015-07-08T08:19:44","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T13:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9837"},"modified":"2015-07-08T08:19:44","modified_gmt":"2015-07-08T13:19:44","slug":"us-still-wont-confirm-israeli-nukes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9837","title":{"rendered":"US Still Won\u2019t Confirm Israeli Nukes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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US Still Won\u2019t Confirm Israeli Nukes<\/a><\/h3>\n

Among the more absurd aspects of U.S. foreign policy is the persistent refusal to confirm that Israel has a nuclear arsenal, even as U.S. officials threaten and even attack other countries for allegedly harboring the intent to build a single bomb, hypocrisy that Sam Husseini dissects.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n

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<\/span>Retired Gen. (and former CIA Director) David Petraeus \u2014 who\u00a0despite recent scandals<\/u><\/a>\u00a0is (according to\u00a0CNN<\/u><\/a>) still advising the White House \u2014 was asked at a recent Aspen Institute event about Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons arsenal and\u00a0replied<\/u><\/a>\u00a0\u201cI can\u2019t comment.\u201d<\/p>\n

This seems to be part of long-standing U.S. and Israeli government policy not to confirm the existence of Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons arsenal.\u00a0This policy has apparently taken the form of official gag orders on the issue, as Grant F. Smith, director of the Washington, D.C.-based\u00a0Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy<\/u><\/a>, has\u00a0noted<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s particularly absurd that someone like Petraeus, who presumes to engage in tough straight talk and allegedly shows bravery, is incapable of saying that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal.<\/p>\n

Similarly,\u00a0Philip Gordon, former special White House assistant on the Middle East and now at the Council on Foreign Relations, was recently asked on C-Span if it \u201cisn\u2019t time for the U.S. to stop officially pretending that it doesn\u2019t know whether Israel has nuclear weapons?\u201d<\/p>\n

Gordon\u00a0replied<\/u><\/a>\u00a0that there\u2019s not a lot of doubt about the \u201cthe existence of a nuclear weapons capability in Israel,\u201d but that a U.S. acknowledgement of that fact would be irrelevant. For instance, he argued that \u201cIranian nuclear aspiration is driven significantly by their insecurity\u201d resulting from U.S. actions in the region, not Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons. (Transcript below)<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Still Won\u2019t Confirm Israeli Nukes Among the more absurd aspects of U.S. foreign policy is the persistent refusal to confirm that Israel has a nuclear arsenal, even as U.S. officials threaten and even attack other countries for allegedly harboring the intent to build a single bomb, hypocrisy that Sam Husseini dissects. Retired Gen. (and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6963,441,1049,2583,7109,827,834,1174],"class_list":["post-9837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-consortium-news","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-sam-husseini","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-us-foreign-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9837"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9838,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9837\/revisions\/9838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}