Israel's Not-So-Secret Nukes

Everybody knows and doesn't say that Israel has dozens of nuclear warheads, everybody except their new prime minister, that is.
Greg Myre reports, in today's New York Times,

In an interview with the N24 cable news channel in Germany, Mr. Olmert was asked about Iran’s nuclear program. He gave a lengthy response, saying that the United States, France, Britain and Russia had nuclear weapons, and were “civilized countries that do not threaten the foundations of the world.”

Mr. Olmert then added: “Iran openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons as America, France, Israel, Russia?”

Everyone picked up on it, too.

Dan Williams of the Washington Post reports that, in Israel, a lot of people are angry.

Leading opposition lawmakers accused Olmert, whose popularity was already hard-hit by the recent Lebanon war, of incompetence and of undermining Israel's campaign for Western nations to curb the atomic ambitions of its arch-foe, Iran.

Olmert's aides denied it was a slip--an admission. But that doesn't explain what Robert Gates said at last week's Senate confirmation hearings. According to Myre, Gates referred to Israel's nuclear weapons when he included Israel in a group of nuclear-armed states surrounding Iran: the US (in Iraq), Israel, Russia and Pakistan.

So, in case anyone is wondering why Kofi Anan kept reiterating Truman's references to the supremacy of international law yesterday, in comments like this:

The US has given the world an example of a democracy in which everyone, including the most powerful, is subject to legal restraint. Its current moment of world supremacy gives it a priceless opportunity to entrench the same principles at the global level. As Harry Truman said, "We all have to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please."

and this:

First, we are all responsible for each other's security.

Second, we can and must give everyone the chance to benefit from global prosperity.

Third, both security and prosperity depend on human rights and the rule of law.

Fourth, states must be accountable to each other, and to a broad range of non-state actors, in their international conduct.

My fifth and final lesson derives inescapably from those other four. We can only do all these things by working together through a multilateral system, and by making the best possible use of the unique instrument bequeathed to us by Harry Truman and his contemporaries, namely the United Nations.

- In fact, it is only through multilateral institutions that states can hold each other to account. And that makes it very important to organize those institutions in a fair and democratic way, giving the poor and the weak some influence over the actions of the rich and the strong.

and this:

You Americans did so much, in the last century, to build an effective multilateral system, with the United Nations at its heart. Do you need it less today, and does it need you less, than 60 years ago?

Surely not. More than ever today Americans, like the rest of humanity, need a functioning global system through which the world's peoples can face global challenges together. And in order to function more effectively, the system still cries out for far-sighted American leadership, in the Truman tradition

It strikes me that the growing threat of conflict between Israel and her Sunni and Shiite neighbors is more dangerous than ever for the rest of the world. Because of BushCo's belligerent foreign policy, no peace agreement or peace process has progessed between Israel and her neighbors. The consolidation of Shiite power with Iraq has led to a new period of confrontation with Iran, this time involving nuclear weapons.

Again, BushCo is trying to sidestep the mulilateral processes that the world benefitted from so greatly in the post-war era, in order to establish a military hegemony in the Middle East, and even in the rest of the world.

By allowing the nonproliferation and Middle East peace programs to languish on the sidelines while we blindly waged a unilateral "So-Called, "War On Terror" (SCWOT), have set the stage for greater conflict and destruction than we complained of in our drive to seek "security" in unilateral American action.