UNITED STATES | How Many Nuclear Bombs does Israel Have? Democrats demand answers from Marco Rubio

(The Real News) – A group of Democrats in the House is demanding that the Trump administration provide critical information about the scope and size of Israel’s nuclear weapons capability in the midst of a war over nuclear weapons in which only Iran’s civilian nuclear program has been under scrutiny.

The lawmakers, led by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), say that the U.S. should hold Israel to the “same standard as any other foreign country” and speak candidly about the state’s nuclear weapons.

“We are, in the fullest sense, fighting this war side by side with a country whose potential nuclear weapons program the United States government officially refuses to acknowledge,” the lawmakers said in a letter addressed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week. The letter was first reported on by The Washington Post.

They say that the withholding of information about Israel’s nuclear weapons poses an enormous risk as the U.S. fights alongside and aids Israel in numerous conflicts across the Middle East. Meanwhile, it also risks harming nuclear nonproliferation efforts in the region, the lawmakers wrote.

“A policy of official ambiguity about the nuclear capabilities of one party to this conflict makes coherent nonproliferation policy in the Middle East impossible, for Iran, for Saudi Arabia, and for every other state in the region making decisions based on their perceptions of the capabilities of their neighbors,” the letter says.

The lawmakers then call on the Trump administration to answer questions on Israel’s nuclear weapons capacity, as well as any communications the U.S. may have had with Israel about the program.

The letter was signed by 30 lawmakers, and “breaks a taboo” that has existed for decades in terms of U.S. lawmakers’ acknowledgement of Israel’s nuclear weapons, as one expert told the Washington Post.

It is widely acknowledged that Israel has maintained a covert nuclear weapons program ranging back to as early as the 1950s, with Israel having stolen or bought information on nuclear weapons manufacturing from countries like the U.S. — and then turning around and helping South Africa’s apartheid regime to develop its own bomb. The U.S. intelligence community has previously acknowledged Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, and in 1974 produced a report finding that Israel had nuclear weapons — a report that was kept secret until it was declassified in 2008, as the lawmakers pointed out.

However, the U.S. government has never officially acknowledged Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, and the extent of its nuclear arsenal is not known. In fact, experts say the U.S.’s silence on the issue has helped Israel develop the program with little to no friction from other countries.

Israel has also refused to comply with inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency for decades, and is one of the only states in the UN that has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Commentators have noted that it is highly hypocritical for the U.S. and Israel to wage war to supposedly prevent Iran from ever having a nuclear weapon — which Iran is not pursuing, U.S. intelligence has assessed — while the two countries that launched the war both have nuclear weapons.

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This article was originally published by Truthout on May 06, 2026. It is shared here under a  Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.

Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master’s degree in environmental studies. She can be found on Twitter: @zhang_sharon