How can the United States possibly deal with the nuclear threat from Iran if Washington keeps believing in fairytales? How can it demand that Iran give up its uranium enrichment program in the name of preventing nuclear proliferation, while the U.S. refuses even to admit that Israel already possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons and thumbs its nose at the Non Proliferation Treaty.

Foreign experts have long concluded that Israel is the sixth-largest nuclear weapons power in the world—ahead of India and Pakistan.. Yet for the last 45 years since they developed the bomb, Israel and the U.S. have been able to keep the issue off the international agenda.

That this farcical game has gone on so long is testimony to Israeli chutzpah and U.S—and European—hypocrisy. Beginning in the sixties, one U.S. administration after another has agreed to abide by the fiction. The basic rule is “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

And everyone is still desperately trying to pretend the fiction is true.