by Dave DeCamp
\nANTIWAR.com<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak acknowledged that Israel has nuclear weapons<\/a> in a now-deleted tweet<\/a> about concerns over the current Israeli government\u2019s judicial overhaul plans.<\/p>\n Barak wrote: \u201cIn conversations between Israelis and Western diplomatic officials, there are deep concerns raised of the possibility that if the coup in Israel succeeds, a messianic dictatorship \u2014 that possesses nuclear weapons and fanatically wishes for a confrontation with Islam centered on the Temple Mount \u2014 will be established in the heart of the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s nuclear arsenal is an open secret, but Israeli officials and their US counterparts do not acknowledge its existence. Because Israel does not declare its arsenal, it\u2019s not clear how many warheads they possess. Current estimates put the arsenal somewhere between 90<\/a> and 300<\/a> warheads, but the real number could be higher.<\/p>\n The US and Israel have long had an understanding concerning Israel\u2019s nukes, which were first developed in the late 1960s. Every US president since Richard Nixon agreed not to press Israel to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in exchange for Israel not declaring its stockpile.<\/p>\n The arrangement allows the US to keep providing aid to Israel even though doing so is technically illegal<\/a>. Under an amendment to the Arms Export Control Act, the US cannot provide aid to nuclear-armed states that refuse to sign the NPT.<\/p>\n State Department spokesman Ned Price was recently grilled on the issue by journalist Sam Husseini<\/a>. When pressed about potential violations of the Arms Control Export Act and the State Department\u2019s refusal to acknowledge Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons program, Price referred Husseini to the Israeli government.<\/p>\n