Does Israel have nukes? ‘Most of the world assesses they do,’ says Rubio

At congressional hearting, the US secretary of state dodged question about Washington’s position on Israel’s nuclear programme.

A Democratic lawmaker in the United States has grilled top diplomat Marco Rubio on whether Israel has nuclear weapons, but the secretary of state did not provide a clear answer.

“Most of the world assesses that they do,” Rubio told Congressman Joaquin Castro at a hearing on Wednesday, though he refused to share Washington’s own position on Israel’s nuclear weapons.

He then suggested instead that the issue should be discussed in a private setting.

The exchange underscored a decades-long taboo in US politics against publicly talking about Israel’s nuclear programme.

Rubio acknowledged that refraining from discussing Israel’s nuclear weapons is a “feature” of US foreign policy.

But Castro pressed on, emphasising that answering the question is necessary at a time when the US is in a joint war with Israel against Iran.

“If they, in fact, possess nuclear weapons — and you’re right, in open-source reporting, that has come across — we don’t know what their red lines are for using those nuclear weapons,” Castro said.

“And so, I guess I’m shocked that our government wouldn’t make an effort to know, to understand and then to give our oversight body the information that we need to make decisions about the war.”

Rubio said the question was “fair”, and he would be willing to answer it in a classified format.

“These things require delicate balancing acts between different equities, but I think you can get, probably, a more fulsome answer if we were to be able to respond to that inquiry in a different context,” he said.

Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crime charges in Gaza, is widely believed to possess a nuclear arsenal.

The US ally has been accused by leading rights groups and United Nations investigators of carrying out a genocide in Gaza. Yet it receives billions of dollars in military aid from Washington annually.

Israel is not a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

On February 28, the administration of US President Donald Trump joined Israel in attacking Iran with the stated objective of preventing the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon, which Tehran denies seeking.

Although Israel has never officially confirmed having nuclear weapons, some Israeli officials have floated deploying them.

In November 2023, for instance, the country’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu suggested that dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza was “an option”.

Several pro-Israel politicians in the US have also urged Israel to use nuclear weapons against Palestinians.

“We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender. That needs to be the same here,” US Congressman Randy Fine, a Trump ally, said last year.

In May, Congress member Castro penned a letter to the US Department of State signed by 30 lawmakers seeking clarifications about Israel’s nuclear programme — and the US policy of not talking about it.

“We cannot develop coherent nonproliferation policy for the Middle East, including with respect to Iran’s civil nuclear program and Saudi Arabia’s civil nuclear ambitions, while maintaining a policy of official silence about the nuclear weapons capabilities of one party central to the ongoing conflict in which the United States is a direct participant,” the letter read.