While I think your “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” analogy is close, I think it misses an important distinction. The difference is that in the military the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy means just that: “Don’t ask.” When it comes to nukes, however, the US is absolutely constantly on the looked for anything even remotely related to nuclear enrichment or weaponry. And I’m not so sure that this information was really kept all that quiet; at least not for the last 30 years. The Israelis certainly didn’t go around telling everyone they had nukes, but anyone who was even slightly interested in the topic either knew a fair amount about their program or they were living in a cave on a mountain in Tibet.

In any event, the crux of the matter is this: The law “Prohibits most U.S. assistance to any country found trafficking in nuclear enrichment equipment or technology outside of international safeguards.”

This law is only broken if two things occur:

1)First, the country in question has to be “trafficking” in the forbidden products; this simply means buying and/or selling such products. The problem here is that the US military merely confirmed that Israel does, in fact, have nuclear weapons. This is hardly an allegation of trafficking.

2) Second, the trafficking mentioned must be “outside of international safeguards.” So…a country does have the right to traffic in these forbidden technologies or equipment so long as they are not”outside of international safeguards.”

So we’re left with an announcement from the military which changes absolutely nothing. They made no allegations of trafficking at all, and certainly not of trafficking outside of international law.