A group of Democrats in the United States Congress have called on the State Department to break the US government’s longstanding silence on Israel’s nuclear capabilities.

In a letter sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the Democrats pointed to the US-Israel war on Iran as the reason more clarity is urgently needed.

While Israel is believed to have possessed nuclear weapons since the 1960s, it maintains “a policy of nuclear opacity, never officially confirming the existence of its nuclear weapons program and arsenal”, according to the Washington, DC-based Nuclear Threat Initiative.