“Textile Factory”... How did Israel and the United States hide the truth about the Israeli nuclear arsenal?

During the past two weeks, US Vice President J.D. Vance personally participated in indirect talks with Iran, with the aim of reaching a new ceasefire agreement and resuming negotiations, according to what the Axios website revealed, citing two sources familiar with these contacts.

Vance's role reflects Washington's efforts to exit the war

According to Axios, Vance's intense involvement in these talks reflects his assumption of responsibility for getting the United States out of a war for which he holds responsible for the significant loss suffered by Republicans in this week's elections. It also raises the level of the latest round of indirect talks to the highest levels within the US administration.

American officials and regional sources told the site that US President Donald Trump is ready, at the present time, to give diplomatic efforts a chance to move forward, and wants to know whether it is possible to reach any type of agreement.

Almost daily contacts with Qatari and Pakistani mediators

Sources with direct knowledge of the talks revealed to Axios that Vance is in almost daily contact with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani, Pakistani Army Chief of Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir, and other mediators, to discuss negotiations with Iran.

US envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump's advisor and son-in-law, are also participating in these efforts.

The sources added that Vance and the Qatari and Pakistani mediators discussed the possibility of holding a technical meeting at the expert level between the United States and Iran in the coming days, but this meeting has not yet been held.

Vance had previously opposed the war and advocated a diplomatic solution

Vance was one of the most skeptical voices about the war within Trump's inner circle before it broke out at the end of February, calling instead for a diplomatic solution.

Vance led the US negotiating team at the April summit on Iran, held in Islamabad, and also personally participated in the talks that led to the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran in June.

Then he led the American delegation in a round of direct talks with Iran in Switzerland, which ended with an Iranian pledge to invite UN inspectors to visit its nuclear facilities.

But the Iranian Revolutionary Guard resumed its attacks on ships shortly thereafter, leading to the collapse of the memorandum of understanding.

A message from Vance to an Iranian official to resume negotiations

The most notable development, according to Axios, came two weeks ago, when Vance sent a letter to the Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei, in which he proposed resuming direct negotiations.

According to the website, Iranian officials said that Vance's message contributed to creating positive momentum towards resuming negotiations.

Slow progress in mediation and signs that an agreement may be reached

Sources involved in the mediation efforts indicated, according to Axios, that the talks had made progress, but at a very slow pace.

The Qatari Prime Minister said, on Friday evening: “Over the past two weeks, we have worked with colleagues in the US administration who have a real intention to find a way to contain the situation and reduce the escalation. Thanks to them, and thanks to the wise voices in Tehran, we were able to prevent the situation from getting out of control.”

He added that talks with the Trump administration continued after the midterm elections, although not at the same pace as in the days before them, “because they have other issues.”

A group of American diplomats were riding in an Israeli helicopter in early 1960, when one of them caught the eye of a construction site sprawling in the Negev Desert, about 20 miles west of the Dead Sea.

The American official pointed to the site and asked his Israeli companion, Adi Cohen, from the Ministry of Finance, about the nature of the facility being constructed. Cohen replied that it was a “textile factory,” according to what he told the Americans, including the American ambassador to Israel at the time, Ogden Reed.

But what the passenger saw was the Dimona nuclear facility, known today as the cradle of the only nuclear arsenal in the Middle East. Only several months passed before Reid demanded a meeting with Cohen, after US intelligence services were able to determine the true nature of the construction site.

A secret US diplomatic cable, among a set of declassified documents collected by the National Security Archive, containing details of the helicopter flight, said: “Cohen initially treated the matter lightly, but the impression that was formed was that he believed that the reactor could eventually be used for weapons purposes.”

Five years later, American officials concerned with the nuclear file discovered the disappearance of hundreds of pounds of uranium enriched to a degree suitable for making weapons from a facility in Pennsylvania. Some American intelligence officials believed that this quantity had been diverted for use in the Israeli program, which was also indicated in a recent documentary, according to what the American network “CNN” reported.

A common expression on weapons

Over the next sixty years, the United States and Israel maintained an ambiguous position: neither recognized the development of Israel's nuclear arsenal. Cohen's spontaneous response to American diplomats, when he described the Dimona facility as a "textile factory," became a common expression used by Israeli officials to refer to the country's nuclear weapons. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even referred to the “textile factory” incident during a meeting with the head of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission in a speech on July 14.

Over time, the matter turned into what Israeli-American historian Avner Cohen described as “the worst known secret in the world.” The policy currently followed by the United States and Israel is based on opacity, or ambiguity, by hinting that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, without officially confirming this.

This policy helped the United States maintain a stated position opposing additional countries developing nuclear weapons, and also spared Israel questions about how it obtained the bomb, or whether it actually obtained it.

But this stable situation may be about to change, as the nuclear programs of other countries in the region advance. The United States and Israel are waging a war against Iran - in part - to prevent Tehran from possessing a nuclear weapon, although leading nuclear non-proliferation experts believe that these efforts may be futile.

It may seem that the long-standing American support for Israel's military ambitions is beginning to erode. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said that the United States may withhold about $4 billion in military aid to Israel by the end of the year, because it “no longer needs it.” In recent years, a number of Democratic lawmakers and pressure groups have also been calling for an end to what they described as the United States’ pretense of not knowing the truth about Israeli nuclear weapons.

Democratic Representative Joaquin Castro said, in an interview with CNN, that the American position based on ambiguity towards the Israeli arsenal has become an outdated policy that has “turned into something reckless and dangerous.”

Castro, a member of the House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Committees, pointed out that the United States waging a war alongside Israel without knowing the “red line” that might push it to use nuclear weapons, and without clarifying contingency plans in the event of using those weapons, or targeting nuclear facilities with military strikes, all of this entails risks.

A secret that everyone knows

If the policy of implicit denial is abandoned, this will be an introduction to reconsidering the roots of Israeli nuclear technology and the years of maneuvers aimed at preventing the emergence of conclusive evidence of the existence of the weapons program.

American inspectors never found the secret underground facility in Dimona, which was used to produce bomb-grade plutonium. According to a Hebrew-language television documentary shown in 2024 entitled “The Atom and Me,” which included interviews published after the death of a former head of an Israeli intelligence service who was charged with supporting the weapons program, Israeli officials were deliberately closing the elevator entrance leading to the facility before the inspectors arrived.

Revealing this information may also further undermine the credibility of the United States, at a time when it continues to oppose other countries joining the nuclear club. It may also lead to the imposition of economic sanctions, or a ban on arms sales to punish countries seeking to possess the bomb.

A US State Department spokesman said, “It is long-standing policy that the department does not comment publicly on reports related to specific military systems or situations.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment, while the Israeli embassy in Washington referred CNN's inquiry to the Prime Minister's Office, which did not provide a response.

“If Israel declares it is a nuclear state, it could increase pressure on other countries in the region to follow suit,” said Matthew Kroenig, a nuclear strategist and political science professor at Georgetown University. A runaway nuclear arms race in the Middle East is not a good thing for American policy.”

During a public hearing before Congress in June, Castro confronted Secretary of State Marco Rubio with questions on the issue.

Rubio, who is the second American after Henry Kissinger to simultaneously hold the positions of chief diplomat and national security adviser, provided perhaps the most frank public assessment by a US diplomatic official on the issue.

“I think most countries in the world see that they have it, but we have not...they have not acknowledged it publicly,” Rubio said. "As part of our foreign policy, we don't talk about it that way either, for various reasons."

Building a policy of denial

Experts told CNN that the secrecy policy arose out of Cold War necessities. The United States and Israel feared that revealing the program would lead to the launch of Arab military nuclear programs under the auspices of the Soviet Union. Israel also feared the diplomatic repercussions that might result from officially declaring it a state possessing nuclear weapons.

In the same year that the facility in Pennsylvania discovered the disappearance of uranium, Henry Kissinger visited Tel Aviv and informed senior officials of the American mission at the embassy about his conversations with the Israelis.

Kissinger, who was then a professor in the Department of Government at Harvard University, was a foreign policy advisor to a number of prominent Republican figures. Less than four years later, in 1969, he assumed the position of National Security Advisor in the administration of President Richard Nixon.