President Trump signed a secret letter last year pledging not to pressure Israel to give up its nukes after a contentious White House meeting with the Israeli ambassador, according to a new report.
Soon after Trump entered office, Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer and his delegation visited the White House, where he met then-national security adviser Michael Flynn, The New Yorker reported.
But the president’s aides were blindsided by the Israeli request — and were apparently unaware that similar letters had been signed in the past by Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
“This is our f— house!” one of the unnamed aides in the fledgling administration snapped in response to Dermer’s request in February 2017 about Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal, according to the magazine.
Later that day, Flynn resigned after reports revealed he met with a Russian ambassador and didn’t inform the White House.
Only a select group of US officials in the three previous administrations knew of the existence of the hush-hush letters, which they had interpreted as falling short of a binding commitment, according to the report.
Trump’s aides didn’t find copies of the previous letters, which had been sent to the archives, but Israel kept copies, The New Yorker reported.
In 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and President Richard Nixon reached an unwritten understanding whereby Israel would not declare, test or threaten to use its nukes in exchange for the US not pushing it to join a nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
The oral agreements continued to be honored throughout the Carter and Reagan administrations — but Israeli officials became concerned about whether it would hold during George H.W. Bush’s presidency after the first Gulf War, when the US called for a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.
Washington first signed a written agreement during the Clinton presidency in exchange for Israel’s participation in the 1998 Wye River peace talks with the Palestinians.
Clinton pledged that any US-led non-proliferation efforts would not “detract” from Israel’s “deterrent,” a reference to the Jewish state’s nuclear program, the mag reported.
Later, Israeli officials added language to make clear to Washington that Israel would “defend itself, by itself,” and that it would not deem the US nuclear arsenal to be a substitute for Israeli nukes.
George W. Bush later signed a similar letter, but when Obama took office, “We were all crazy,” an Israeli official told The New Yorker.
In an April 2009 speech in Prague, Obama set out “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
The president’s advisers later learned “how paranoid Bibi [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] was that Obama was going to try to take away Israel’s nuclear weapons,” said a former US official, adding, “Of course, that was never our intent.”
That May, Obama signed an updated version of the letter.
Dermer declined to comment on the letter, which Trump signed, telling The New Yorker that he did not recall any cursing.
