It’s astonishing that in the breathless run-up to Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s appearance before a joint session of the U.S. Congress to warn of a nuclear-armed Iran, no one—politicians, editorial writers, media pundits—point out that there already is a nuclear power in the Middle East—Netanyahu’s Israel.
Estimates are that Israel has about 80 nukes, roughly the same number as Pakistan and India.
Although it has possessed nuclear weapons for more than half a century, Israel still refuses to own up to that fact, and the United States blandly continues to go along with that fiction. When asked in 2009 if he knew of any country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, Barack Obama avoided the trap by saying only that he did not wish to “speculate”.
The question is, whether you support Netanyahu’s policies or not, how can the U.S. and Israel and their allies block attempt to block Iran from acquiring the bomb, while pretending that Israel doesn’t already have one? How do you justify such a flagrant double standard?
How do you have a realistic assessment of a possible Iranian threat to Israel, without recognizing that any Iranian leader crazy enough to attack Israel, would have to act with the knowledge that Israel would retaliate with a nuclear arsenal that would obliterate not just Iran’s nuclear facilities, but all of Iran?