WASHINGTON -- In a private email exchange last year leaked this week by hackers, former Secretary of State Colin Powell discussed Israel's nuclear-weapons capability with a friend, saying the country has 200 warheads.
Though Israel is widely believed to have developed nukes decades ago, it has never declared itself to be a nuclear state.
Powell, 79, a retired Army general who has served as White House national security adviser and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday through a spokesman he was referring to public estimates of Israel's nukes.
"This email was written 10 years after he left government and has not received briefings on classified matters," the spokesman said in a statement.
In the March 2015 exchange from his personal email account, Powell was discussing a speech that day by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a joint session of Congress. The Israeli leader opposed the deal then proposed by President Barack Obama to curb Iran's nuclear-weapons program.
"Iranians can't use one if they finally make one," Powell wrote to Democratic donor Jeffrey Leeds, who serves on the board of the Colin L. Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York. "The boys in Tehran know Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran, and we have thousands."
Itai Bardov, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, declined to discuss Powell's email or his nation's policy of not commenting on whether it has nuclear weapons.
Asked about the matter at a briefing Friday, State Department spokesman John Kirby also declined to comment.
"I'm not going to discuss matters of intelligence," Kirby said. "We support the nuclear nonproliferation treaty."
Powell is not the first top-level U.S. government official to publicly discuss Israel's nukes. Former President Jimmy Carter has said in interviews and speeches that Israel has between 150 and 300 warheads.
A Section on 09/17/2016