The Israel Lobby’s ‘QME’ Scam

Symington & Glenn now reside in the Arms Export Control Act and require the president to notify Congress of any proposed US foreign aid to a known rogue nuclear state. Rather than comply with the law, the last four Presidents instead caved in to Israeli and its US lobby’s pressure not to uphold that particular section of the AECA. Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump instead executed secret letters promising not to do so as reported by Adam Entous in The New Yorker. The National Archives refuses to release two of these letters. After a successful lawsuit was filed in 2011 to release damning US government information about Israel’s nuclear weapons production facilities, President Barack Obama even passed a 2012 gag order called WNP-136 forbidding any further releases. That has limited any informed debate about Israel, nonproliferation and related policies such as QME. Other legislation promoted by AIPAC, such as sections within S.2583, now mandate that the US withhold IAEA funding if the leading state sponsor of Middle East nuclear proliferation is ever “denied its right to participate in the Agency.”