How Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal endangers Us All

On September 24th, U.S. President Barack Obama will preside over a U.N. Security Council session on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. In March 2010, Moscow will host a Global Nuclear Summit that the U.S. has agreed to attend.

The next six months could prove hopeful or harmful—depending on the impact on Israel’s nuclear arsenal. With U.S. backing, Tel Aviv has thus far avoided compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—joining North Korea, India and Pakistan.

President John F. Kennedy tried to stop Israel from starting a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. In a June 1963 letter to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, he insisted on proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Israel was not developing nuclear weapons at its Dimona reactor facility. Though his letter was cabled to the U.S. embassy, Ben-Gurion resigned (citing undisclosed personal reasons) before the message could be physically delivered.

With Israel’s nuclear ambitions under attack by its key ally, that strategically well-timed resignation duped an inexperienced young president and denied him a diplomatic victory that might well have precluded the wars now being waged in the Middle East.

With Ben-Gurion’s resignation, JFK was left without an Israeli government with which he could negotiate. By the time a new government was formed, the Kennedy threat had been eliminated and Tel Aviv could start haggling from scratch with successor Lyndon Johnson who was far more sympathetic to the goals of the Zionist state.

That strategy resurfaced in the recent resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert just as the Road Map gained traction and the threat of peace loomed on the horizon. Olmert’s successor, Benjamin Netanyahu, then used the terms of the Road Map as a bargaining chip to start haggling—with an inexperienced young president—over sanctions against Iran.

Democrat Lyndon Johnson proved himself a reliably pliant pro-Israeli president as did his successor, Republican Richard Nixon. Described by Prime Minister Golda Meir as “the best friend Israel ever had,” Nixon agreed in 1969 to endorse “constructive ambiguity” as a means for Tel Aviv to obscure its nuclear arsenal. Meanwhile Colonial Zionists brandished the threat of that arsenal to seize land they sought for Greater Israel.

Israeli incursions provoked the reactions one would expect, enabling Tel Aviv to portray itself as a hapless victim in need of U.S. support in a hostile and anti-Semitic neighborhood. Four years after Kennedy wrote to Ben-Gurion, Israel mounted a massive six-day assault on neighboring nations, occupying lands that remain at the heart of the hostilities against which Tel Aviv insists it needs nuclear weapons to defend itself.

With the war in Iraq poised to expand to Iran, the next six months offer a rare opportunity to revisit not only Israel’s nuclear arsenal but also—in light of the consistency of its behavior over six decades—the legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise. More