Newsflash: If Iran has followed a playbook of nuclear deception, it was written first (in JFK Era) by Israel.

 

                   One of first works to dive into Israel's Dimona nuclear project

Few Americans, even dedicated history buffs, are aware that David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, decided in the mid-1950s that Israel needed a nuclear weapon as an insurance policy against its Arab neighbors. In the 1950s and 1960s, Israel secretly acquired the technology and material to build nuclear weapons, frequently misleading the U.S. government (and other governments) about its intentions.  The reason for the duplicity was clear: The then U.S. government (namely JFK's) was dead set against an Israeli bomb.

One of the first to document the Israeli subterfuge (and later enmity with JFK's government) was former British Intelligence officer Col. John Hughes-Wilson – whose seminal work on the Kennedy assassination I’d posted about in Aug. 2016:

 One Of Top Ten Books On The JFK Assassination - From Former British Intelligence Officer

 Hughes-Wilson has perhaps done the most to dig into the Israeli- dodges about their nuclear program and how it also may relate to the JFK assassination. He goes into details on p. 91:

 "Although Israel tried to keep the Dimona nuclear plant a secret,  the CIA was well aware of the clandestine nuclear program and the 'secret plans' were an open book to Jack Kennedy from the day he became president.  It signaled the start of what was to become one of the most poisonous relationships between two supposedly friendly states ever recorded. The truth was that by 1963, JFK and the founding fathers of the state of Israel heartily detested each other.

The starting point was that Israel wanted a bomb and JFK wanted to stop them from getting one.  Ben-Gurion lied to both his countrymen and to JFK. The ageing Zionist claimed to the Israeli parliament that the Dimona plant was a scientific research facility "investigating the problems of fauna in arid regions."

All of which meshes with Glenn Kessler's piece yesterday in the Washington Post:

How Israel deceived the United States about its nuclear weapons program

Wherein we read:

When U.S. intelligence discovered the secret facility at Dimona deep in the desert late in the 1950s, Israeli officials lied to the American Embassy and said it was only a textile plant. When that turned out to be false, Israeli officials offered another explanation: It was purely a metallurgical research installation that did not contain the chemical reprocessing plant needed to produce nuclear weapons.

In December 1960, Ben-Gurion revealed the facility in a speech in the Knesset, saying the 24-megawatt reactor at Dimona would not be completed for four years. It was, he said, “intended exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

Newly elected U.S. President John F. Kennedy, alarmed about the potential spread of nuclear weapons, pressed Israeli officials for regular inspections of Dimona. A 1961 team concluded the site lacked the necessary facilities — such as plutonium reprocessing — needed for a weapons program. Yet U.S. officials wanted regular inspections so they could assure Arab nations, especially Egypt, that Israel did not have a secret bomb program.

The diplomatic record, obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, shows that Israel put off or delayed additional inspections until Kennedy sent a blunt message in July 1963 to a new Israeli prime minister, Levi Eshkol. (Originally the letter was drafted for Ben-Gurion but he resigned before it could be delivered.)

But what Kessler leaves out, Hughes-Wilson covers in exhaustive detail in his Chapter 12.  Especially important, the fuse that finally set the Israelis against Kennedy, as noted on page 94:  

"Kennedy was undeterred and relentless. Once the inevitable Israeli political arguing and horse trading in the Knesset had settled down, Kennedy wrote to Ben-Gurion's successor Levi Eshkol- in a July 5 letter that was regarded by all parties as an ultimatum. Indeed, after highlighting his aborted discussions with Ben-Gurion. Kennedy made an explicit threat: if Israel did not allow American nuclear inspectors into the secret site at Dimona, the President of the United States threatened to cut off U.S. aid. 

It had the force of a diplomatic bombshell in Tel Aviv, where it was quite correctly seen as a 'cease and desist' - or else-  order."

Reading this section showed clearly the parallels with today's antagonism and threats against Iran. The difference being that back then - 62 years ago- Israel was the 'bad guy' in trying to hide its own bomb program from the U.S.

Hughes-Wilson goes on (p. 95):

"Jack Kennedy had now become a sworn enemy of Israel, and by extension, the Jewish people. But Israel had power too. Not only did the Jews of America support Israel...there were other powerful forces that could be mobilized in support of any threat to Israel.  Specifically, Israel's Secret Service, Mossad, had links with a company called Permindex.  Permindex's darker side was revealed in 1962 after it was discovered funneling money to the OAS and paying  for assassination attempts on (French President) Charles DeGaulle in an attempt to prevent Algerian independence."

As I show in my book The JFK Assassination- The Final Analysis,  e.g.

JFK assassination suspect Clay Shaw was also involved with Permindex through  its subsidiary, Centro Mondiale Commerciale (CMC). Years later, with release of files under the JFK Records Act, it would become evident that Shaw was indeed a CIA Contract Agent. As CIA Doc. (JFK 1993: 6.28.16.07.26.560280) notes:

A memorandum marked for files says that J. Monroe Sullivan, #280201, was granted a covert security approval as of 10 December 1962 so he could be used in Project QKCHANT [Clay L. Shaw has #402897]

In effect, New Orleans' DA Jim Garrison’s tying him to the JFK assassination as a key coordinator had been validated. (At his 1969 trial in New Orleans Shaw denied he had an alias or worked for the CIA)

 Was Mossad involved in the JFK assassination? Hughes-Wilson doesn't go that far, but he does note (ibid.): 

 "Mossad's link with North America became aware in the summer of 1963 that Mafia sources warned of a death threat already made against JFK.  To Israel and its friends this could only be good news. It would remove the problem of JFK - and should anything happen to him, the successor would be Lyndon Johnson. Fortunately, LBJ was known to be a strong supporter of Jewish interests."

He has also been tagged as the architect of the assassination itself. This was by author Phillip F. Nelson, who leaves no arcane move unturned, in his masterful book:

 That includes that LBJ had previously been exposed in the killing of Henry Harvey Marshall, a USDA official - who had discovered Estes' underhanded business dealings with Johnson. See e.g.

Nelson’s book ‘LBJ – The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination’ – is noteworthy for its exacting documented detail. As he observes (Chapter 6: The Conspirators, p. 317):

“The crime could only have been accomplished with at least the acquiescence and foreknowledge of the only man capable of choreographing the massive cover-up which was immediately launched. It is axiomatic that since the cover-up started before the shots were fired, the order for JFK’s assassination could only have come from his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.”

He goes on to note that no other conceivable person, whether Santos Trafficante, Sam Giancana, Clint Murchison, H.L. Hunt….or Lee Harvey Oswald…" had the motive, means, the opportunity, the demonstrated pattern of previous criminal – even murderous conduct, and the resolve to see it through.”

So no, the Mossad and Israel may not have assassinated JFK, but they benefited from Johnson's role as the architect.  And the rest as they say, is history. But this history lesson is not about Iran’s program. It’s about Israel’s nuclear program — and how Jerusalem, too, deceived American officials about its intentions. If Iran has followed a playbook of nuclear deception, it was written by Israel.

As of 2021, Israel is believed to possess 90 nuclear warheads for delivery by aircraft, land-based ballistic missiles and possibly sea-based cruise missiles, according to an estimate by researchers at the Federation of American Scientists.

Those who lose sleep worrying about Iran's nuclear program might want to worry a bit more about Israel's - possessing enough warheads to incinerate the entire Middle East.

See Also:

Israel's Nuclear Weapons: How Israelis Deceived American Presidents From Eisenhower to JFK and Johnson

And:

Kennedy, Dimona and the Nuclear Proliferation Problem: 1961-1962 | Wilson Center

And:

The Battle of the Letters, 1963: John F. Kennedy, David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, and the U.S. Inspections of Dimona | National Security Archive