Victor Gilinsky
Israeli Air Force F-15I and F-35I fighter jets fly alongside a US B-52 bomber during a joint exercise on March 4, 2025. It is unknown whether Israeli fighter jets are nuclear-capable. In the United States, both F-15s and F-35s are certified to carry non-strategic nuclear weapons.
The pause in Israel’s war on Iran provides an opportunity to reflect on the role of the United States in what is essentially the protection of Israel’s monopoly on nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
Washington’s unabashed protection of Israel’s nuclear goals is nearly unqualified. It goes against any consideration of US security interests and continues despite an increasingly aggressive and frightening Israeli stance. (Prime Minister Netanyahu recently referred to Israel as a “super-Sparta.”) The US public is catching on to Netanyahu’s overreach, but the administration is still locked in a tight embrace with Israel.
Israel’s nuclear proliferation. Of course, it is not in the United States’ interest for Iran to get nuclear weapons. But no more is it in the US security interest for Israel to continue to possess nuclear weapons, much less a powerful nuclear force that can potentially strike all of the Middle East, Europe, and beyond. That has become especially worrisome as political power in Israel has shifted to religiously inspired elements that favor uncompromising warfare to dominate the Middle East, even at the risk of catastrophe.
Israel has pushed so far beyond the limits of what is acceptable in warfare since October 2023, and so antagonized much of the world, that it could face a situation that threatens its exclusionist state. Would it use its nuclear weapons in extremis? The world—and Israel itself—would be better off if these weapons didn’t exist.
Given the current Israeli government and the pro-Israel Trump US administration, Israel’s nuclear program seems unlikely to change. But conditions do change, events happen, and opportunities arise unexpectedly. Consider, for example, the recent recognition of a Palestinian state by several Western capitals despite strong Israeli opposition, an event that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. The essential point is to clarify that it is in the US security interest for fewer countries to possess nuclear weapons and that those that do have nuclear weapons possess fewer of them. Israeli nuclear weapons should not be an exception to this principle.
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