Thread by @5149jamesli

Trump wants to make a historic nuclear deal with China and Russia. Great!

But there’s one nuclear-armed country that never gets mentioned — because officially… it “doesn’t exist.”

Here’s the untold story of the world’s worst-kept nuclear secret. 🧵1/

2/ Israel’s nuclear program began in the 1950s with help from France and later, stolen U.S. materials.

A now-declassified State Department memo from 1960 warned that Israel was building and hiding a weapons program under the guise of a “peaceful reactor” at Dimona.

3/ In the summer 1963, President Kennedy sent a series of increasingly urgent letters to Israeli PM David Ben-Gurion (and later Levi Eshkol) demanding full inspections of Dimona — including threatening to cut off U.S. aid if Israel refused.

A few months later, JFK was dead. 🤨

4/ After JFK’s assassination, U.S. inspections of Dimona became a joke — Israel controlled the visits and staged inspections.

In 1969, Nixon struck a secret deal with Israeli PM Golda Meir:
❌ The U.S. would stop asking questions
❌ Israel would never test or declare its nukes

5/ Why would Nixon let Israel off the hook?

A few key reasons:
📌 Pro-Israel lobbying — already a powerful force in DC
📌 Cold War politics — Israel was a key ally against Soviet-backed Arab states
📌 Blackmail? — some believe Israel had kompromat on Nixon before Watergate

6/ Every U.S. president since Nixon — Republican & Democrat — has maintained silence on Israel’s “nuclear ambiguity”, meaning they never admit to having nukes.

Israel has also never had to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — which Iran is constantly pressured over.

7/ In 1986, an Israeli nuclear technician named Mordechai Vanunu leaked photos of Israel’s nuclear weapons to The Sunday Times, confirming what many had suspected — Israel had an advanced nuclear arsenal, possibly hundreds of warheads.

8/ Mossad wasn’t about to let Vanunu’s leak slide.

They used a honeytrap — a female agent posing as a romantic interest — to lure him to Italy. Once in Rome, he was drugged, kidnapped, and flown back to Israel.

Tried in secret, he was sentenced to 18 years, mostly in solitary.

9/ Despite being an open secret, Israel’s nukes are rarely discussed in Western media. Why?

Since Clinton, every U.S. president has signed a secret letter agreeing not to interfere with Israel’s nukes.

Journalists who raise the issue risk being labeled antisemitic or censored.

10/ Today, it is estimated that Israel has 80 - 400 nukes — more than Pakistan, India, the UK, and France.

Yet, U.S. taxpayers still send $3B in aid every year.

If Trump is serious about "de-nuking", he should start with the country still pretending its nukes don’t exist.